How was Biḥār al-Anwār written?

Anyone who writes books knows how long and tiresome of a process it is to complete a single volume, let alone a multi-volume tome. Hence, when we were taught that al-Majlisī had a team of scholars, or a committee, that worked together to write the encyclopedic work Biḥār al-Anwār (110 volumes in the present edition), it made complete sense. After all, such a large work could not possibly have been written by a single individual. In a recent presentation, however, Sayyid Hasan Musawi Burujerdi used manuscript evidence to show that al-Majlisī was himself the author of Biḥār al-Anwār, and his students only played the role of scribes, or what he compares to ‘typists’, copying down the text of narrations as instructed by al-Majlisī. Furthermore, all the commentary in the text was penned by al-Majlisī himself, as shown by handwriting analysis and other clues. Al-Majlisī started the work quite early, at the age of about 30 years, and completed most of it before attaining the post of Shaykh al-Islām, which would occupy his time thereby slowing down his writing and research activities. Here is the audio of Burujerdi’s presentation (in Farsi).