Genesis

Background and History

The chapters above are the King James text. This essay is the setting of Genesis: who is said to have written it, when and where, what happens in it, and how the text has been copied.

At a Glance

Who Wrote It

Genesis does not open with a signature. It opens with God creating. The traditional reading, Jewish and Christian, treats the book as Moses’ because the five books travel together as the law, and because Jesus names Moses as the one who wrote of him.

John 5:46John 5:46 · King James VersionFor had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.John 5:46 · King James VersionOpen the Source (2) has Jesus say that if his hearers had believed Moses, they would have believed him, for Moses wrote of him. Mark 12:26Mark 12:26 · King James VersionAnd as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?Mark 12:26 · King James VersionOpen the Source (3) calls the burning bush “the book of Moses.” Luke 24:44Luke 24:44 · King James VersionAnd he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.Luke 24:44 · King James VersionOpen the Source (4) names the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. Those sentences are about a writer and a collection. They are not a modern title page glued onto Genesis 1.

Inside the five books, Deuteronomy 31:9Deuteronomy 31:9 · King James VersionAnd Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and unto all the elders of Israel.Deuteronomy 31:9 · King James VersionOpen the Source (5) says Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests and the elders. Exodus 24:4Exodus 24:4 · King James VersionAnd Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.Exodus 24:4 · King James VersionOpen the Source says Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. Numbers 33:2Numbers 33:2 · King James VersionAnd Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the LORD: and these are their journeys according to their goings out.Numbers 33:2 · King James VersionOpen the Source says Moses wrote the stages of the journey. Genesis itself is the narrative that comes before those laws. Christians have read the early chapters as revelation given to Moses, not as a diary of events he watched. That is a claim about revelation. Who Wrote Genesis in the Bible? is the longer case.

Josephus, in Against Apion 1.8, says the Jews have twenty-two books, of which five belong to Moses, containing his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind until his death. (6) The origin of mankind is Genesis. Josephus is a Jewish writer of the first century. His count matches the phrase “the law of Moses.”

The Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b–15a, asks who wrote the biblical books. The baraita says Moses wrote his own book, the portion of Balaam, and Job, and that Joshua wrote his own book and eight verses of the Torah. (7) (8) The English on Sefaria is the William Davidson edition. This page does not reprint it. The point that matters here is the one the Talmud is already debating: the Torah’s closing can be discussed as another hand without the law ceasing to be Moses’. Deuteronomy 34:5Deuteronomy 34:5 · King James VersionSo Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.Deuteronomy 34:5 · King James VersionOpen the Source tells Moses’ death. A dead man does not write the notice of his death. An ending written by another hand can close a book that man wrote. Rabbi Yehuda’s view, in that discussion, gives the eight verses to Joshua. Rabbi Shimon’s view keeps Moses as the writer, in tears, of the lines about his own death. Both views are in the Talmud. Neither view says Abraham wrote Genesis.

Who It Is Not

Abraham did not write the book that tells his story. The narrator knows Sarah’s death, the cave of Machpelah, and a coffin in Egypt at the end. Joseph did not write it. The book ends with Joseph’s death in Genesis 50:26Genesis 50:26 · King James VersionSo Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.Genesis 50:26 · King James VersionOpen the Source (1). The traditional author is the man who comes after those events, in Exodus.

The documentary hypothesis is a different answer, not a second ancient signature. From the eighteenth century on, some readers argued that the Pentateuch was compiled from earlier documents. Julius Wellhausen’s Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1885) fixed the form still taught in many universities. In that account the sources are often labeled J, E, D, and P. J prefers the divine name rendered LORD. E prefers God. D is the style of Deuteronomy. P is priestly material: genealogies, dates, and ritual. Editors, on this account, joined the sources. Doublets do the work of evidence: two creation narratives, two flood narratives, two namings of Beer-sheba.

That is a real reading of the text. It should be stated at full strength. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 do not tell creation in the same order or the same words. The flood narrative repeats itself. The divine names change. A reader who has never heard of Wellhausen can see the seams.

The hypothesis is a theory about style. It is not a set of recovered scrolls. No manuscript has turned up that is “J” alone or “E” alone. The copies we possess, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, are copies of Genesis with both divine names already inside them. (9) A change of name can be the story the book is telling. Exodus 3 is itself a scene in which God reveals his name. It can also be a source marker. The hypothesis chooses the second explanation. Jesus’ sentence in John 5:46John 5:46 · King James VersionFor had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.John 5:46 · King James VersionOpen the Source chooses Moses.

When and Where

Genesis does not say “written in the wilderness in such a year.” Bible Gateway’s survey, by Jacob Edson, gives the Pentateuch, including Genesis, as 1446–1406 BC, and says those books may have been mostly oral until much later. (10) That pair of statements is the traditional range in At a Glance. The survey calls its figures an approximation. The book itself prints no year. Jesus and Josephus still treat the five books as Moses’. (2) (6)

A critical reading places the finished form in the exile or the Persian period, long after Moses. The British Museum’s Cyrus Cylinder is a Babylonian account of Cyrus taking Babylon in 539 BC. (11) That year is the fall of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom. It is not a line in Genesis, and it is not a date for the joining of sources. This page does not add a narrower year for that joining, because a page that printed one was not retrieved. The copies that were checked are later still. The Israel Antiquities Authority dates Qumran biblical manuscripts from the third century BC, and Genesis is among the books in that set. (9) The numbers a reader can check here are the survey’s 1446–1406 BC, Babylon’s fall in 539 BC, and copies from the third century BC.

The place of writing is not a line in the book. The traditional setting is Moses’ lifetime, after the exodus, outside the land. This page does not name a modern town for that camp. The events the book narrates run from creation to Joseph’s death in Egypt, which is the threshold of Exodus.

Rulers at the Time

The pharaohs in the Abraham and Joseph stories are not named. This page does not assign them a reign. No Assyrian or Babylonian king is a character in the book.

Places in This Book

What Is Happening

Genesis 1 through Genesis 11 are the primeval story: creation, the garden, the flood, Babel, and the line down to Abram. Genesis 12 through Genesis 25 are Abraham and Sarah, the covenant, the birth of Isaac, and the burial at Machpelah. Genesis 25 through Genesis 36 are Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and Jacob’s children. Genesis 37 through Genesis 50 are Joseph in Egypt, the famine, Judah’s plea, and the deaths of Jacob and Joseph. The last line is a coffin in Egypt. Exodus begins with that family still there.

Key Themes

The book is about God, who creates, judges, and chooses. Genesis 1:1Genesis 1:1 · King James VersionIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.Genesis 1:1 · King James VersionOpen the Source (1) says that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:27Genesis 1:27 · King James VersionSo God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.Genesis 1:27 · King James VersionOpen the Source says God created man in his own image, male and female. Genesis 12:1–3Genesis 12:1–3 · King James Version^12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: ^12:2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: ^12:3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.Genesis 12:1–3 · King James VersionOpen the Source is the call of Abram and the promise that in him all families of the earth will be blessed. Covenant, land, and offspring are the thread from Abraham to Joseph.

Christians who share this site’s confession still disagree about the days of creation and the age of the earth. They confess that God created. Can Christians Believe in Evolution? quotes that disagreement and does not add a verdict. A disagreement about the days is not a finding that the rest of the Bible is a poem.

How the Book Points to Christ

Genesis 3:15Genesis 3:15 · King James VersionAnd I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.Genesis 3:15 · King James VersionOpen the Source (1) says the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head, and the serpent will bruise his heel. Christians have read that promise as the first announcement of a deliverer. The New Testament names Jesus as the seed of Abraham in Galatians 3:16Galatians 3:16 · King James VersionNow to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.Galatians 3:16 · King James VersionOpen the Source. John 1:1–3John 1:1–3 · King James Version^1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ^1:2 The same was in the beginning with God. ^1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.John 1:1–3 · King James VersionOpen the Source says the Word, who was God, made all things. Luke 24:44Luke 24:44 · King James VersionAnd he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.Luke 24:44 · King James VersionOpen the Source has the risen Jesus say the law of Moses wrote of him. Jesus is God, and the creator in Genesis is not a creature beside him. What Is the Deity of Christ? is that claim. What Does Messiah Mean? is the office the later books name.

Text and Manuscripts

The Israel Antiquities Authority says the Qumran caves hold partial or complete copies of every book in the Hebrew Bible except Esther, many of them close to the later Masoretic text and more than a thousand years older than the medieval copies. (9) Genesis is in that set. The scrolls are copies, not the autograph. They do not settle who composed the book. Is the Bible True? is the wider comparison, including the Great Isaiah Scroll. This page does not name a single Genesis scroll whose museum label was not checked for this essay.

The Hebrew on the verse pages is the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Where a Hebrew verse number differs from the King James, the verse page says so.

Retold in the Book of Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees retells Genesis 1 through the opening of Exodus as words the angel of the presence speaks to Moses on Sinai. Jubilees 2:1Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Non-CanonicalNot received as Scripture by the Jewish canon or by the major Christian churches, apart from local exceptions such as the Ethiopian Orthodox canon, which includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees. This is not the Apocrypha.And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.Book of Jubilees 2:1 · R. H. Charles, 1917Open the Source (13) says that angel told Moses to write the history of the creation, how in six days the Lord finished all his works. Where Charles’s 1913 synopsis names a Genesis chapter, that chapter page lists the Jubilees chapters. The Book of Jubilees has the full text and the history of why the major churches did not receive it.

Further Reading

Who Wrote Genesis in the Bible? quotes Jesus, the five books, Josephus, and the Talmud, and states the documentary hypothesis. Who Wrote the Bible? is the wider claim about inspiration and human authors. Is the Bible True? is the manuscripts. Can Christians Believe in Evolution? is the disagreement about the days.