The article deals with the nature of authorship of the Old English Christian poetry and reviews two basic theories of authorship that can be applied to this material. The theory of “unconscious” authorship by M. I. Steblin-Kamensky was based on the Old Norse literature which had two types of understanding the authorship: scalds who felt themselves “authors” and owners of the text due to the originality of its form, and epic poetry that was understood the part of a tradition and could not be viewed as personal. Old English poetry was mainly epic that is why it did not witness the coexistence of the two types of authorship. More interesting for the texts of this tradition was the way the poets were presented. Analysis of the Old English texts about first poets (Cædmon, Bede, king Alfred, Aldhelm) shows that the authority of them was more important for understanding this tradition. All these figures are presented as ideal, the stories about them contain an array of biblical allusions and topoi common to the stories about the Bible translators. Thus the authorship of the Christian poetry of this period can and must be viewed in the context of authorship as authority theory, presented by S. S. Averintsev. Although this theory was elaborated based on the Biblical and ancient material, it can be applied for the later epochs, especially for the traditions connected with the Bible and its translations.