Learn English – good term for “a person or people who have made a statement”

I am currently writing an essay in response to a lengthy quotation by the authors of a book, and struggling for a concise way to refer to the authors. The book title does not feature in the question text, so I feel that "the authors" would be an unhelpful term – particularly as the subject is theology, so I am using the term author in another context already.

I have a tight word limit and a dislike of clumsy phraseology, so I'm not really happy using accurate but ugly phrases such as "people who made the statement"; ideally I would like to reference them within the flow of a sentence. Below is a sentence where I've put "authors", and would like a good alternative:

This being the case, it is likely that more people are being tarred with the authors’ “single model of atonement” brush than is really fair.

I suspect that there may be several answers that are technically correct, but I'll know the right one for this essay when I see it! If anyone posts an answer that fits the question but doesn't fit my usage, I'll edit the question to clarify.