First off, by using "the Scriptures", these authors explicitly bring in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, including the Mosaic Law. In the era when the New Testament was being written there was much controversy around what the role of the Mosaic Law was to the Gentile believer in Christ. In their zeal to stand squarely on the whole Bible and still be explicitly Christian, these authors gloss over the interpretive issues that exist between the teachings of Jesus & Paul and the teachings of Moses & the Prophets. In some cases, Moses was upheld by Jesus, and in others not; similarly for Paul, who often went back BEFORE MOSES to find an ethical principle to apply.
Secondly, for ethics to be "Christian", does that mean they must be drawn directly from the teachings of Jesus? Or Jesus and His Apostles? Or Jesus and His Apostles' successors? Or Jesus and teachings of theologians in the church He founded, including historic and present-day Christian communities of faith? Jesus didn't explicitly speak to DNA testing, stem cell research, and genetic manipulation of farm crops and in animal breeding. But, the church has. So… what exactly are the definitive sources we go to for "Christian" ethics?
Thirdly, why should they be particularly Christian in the first place? The new convert to the Christian faith in 40 AD had no access to Christian Scriptures, yet needed an ethical framework to navigate life. So did the God-fearing Jew living in 10 BC (prior to the incarnation). So, too, the worshipper making sacrifices according to the Mosaic law in the temple of Solomon in 1000 BC. Not to mention the descendent of Jacob making bricks under harsh masters in Egypt (before Moses was born). What about a descendant of Esau whose offspring later followed the prophet Muhammad? And did not Abraham's father and grandfather need an ethical framework for living, prior to Abraham's call by God to leave Haran? Didn't Noah's sons need an ethical framework to repopulate the earth after the flood? Didn't Methuselah and Enoch face moral choices? Didn't Cain?
You get my point, I hope. First, we are human beings. All human beings face moral decisions and need an ethical framework in which to make them. Those of us human beings who are montheistic and follow in the faith traditions of Abraham, generally agree that God is responsible for this world in which we live, and that we are made in His image and bear his likeness. This informs our particular ethical framework. But to be more granular than that in our scheme of ethics serves only to narrow down our frame of reference to the point where our decisions become incomprehensible to those around us who do not share our particular Christian doctrine.
We need to be careful not to be so overtly New Testament and doctrinaire in our ethical framework that we forget about the thousands of years of human history before Christ where people, made in God's image and living in the midst of God's creation, made moral decisions every day without the benefit of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount or Paul's letters to the Corinthians. How did they do it? How did they walk before God in peace of heart? How did they recognize a mistake?
There is first and foremost a "human" ethic. Once we figure that out, we can then see how faith in Christ informs it. Otherwise, we risk falling into the trap of Modernity which presupposes that people who lived in generations past were by definition more primitive and less informed than we are, and so were deprived of the enlightenment we possess. Taking this approach to Christianity results in the thinking that all those who lived before the Cross were lacking in revelation and deficient in their understanding of God.
There's a lot to be said for "ancient wisdom". We would do well to remember that Wisdom was personified in the Proverbs of 1000 BC, and that the Logos of God was at work long before the Incarnation. Ethics has been around a lot longer than the New Testament has.
This is what the LORD says:
"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls. "
----- Jer. 6:16
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