Whom did Moses write the book of Genesis for?

Answer 1

It is not known exactly where he either wrote or compiled the writings. However, there were several lengthy periods where he may have had the time to do so. The Israelites camped for a lengthy period around Kadesh-Barnea, as is also evidenced by many pottery fragments from the relevant period. Obviously the Torah could not have been written prior to the Exodus, as it had not yet been given to Moses, and so it could not have been written while in Egypt for example.

Whether Moses actually wrote the original text of Genesis or acted as the editor who put it in its final form, he had time to do this during the 40 years in the wilderness before Israel entered Canaan. Particularly, a large part of this time was spent in the region of Kadesh-Barnea and so this is considered as a likely location for this work to have proceeded.

AnswerMoses did not write the book of Genesis, or at the very least it was edited heavily by later writers while in exile. There are date/knowledge errors in the book. AnswerThe currant view of some Biblical scholars...who definitely know more than I do about this subject, say that the Pentateuch was mostly oral knowledge passed down thru the centuries, and was written much later than the time of Moses. Genesis alone has two anachronisms that couldn't have been known till around 550-500 BC. Theoretically the Pentateuch was written somewhere about 1400-1500 BC. Even the Jewish people acknowledge that the book was put to paper or papyrus or whatever they used back then in the 500's BC.

Answer 2

A:The book of Genesis had three main authors, widely separated by time and space. The earliest author, now known as the Yahwist, wrote in Judah, the southern Hebrew state. Another source, now known as the Elohist, wrote in Israel, the northern kingdom. The Priestly Source, writing centuries later, about the time of the Babylonian Exile, probably wrote his (or their) contribution in Babylon.

The final Book of Genesis was redacted and compiled by the 'Redactor' after the Babylonian Exile, probably in Jerusalem.

Answer 3

Opinion

Mosaic authorship is supported for the following reasons:

• more evidence in favor of Mosaic authorship than against it.

• archaeological discoveries support a single author

• ancient literature supports that Genesis fits into the historical setting and timeline of Moses' life and do not fit the time-scale of the later date of multiple authors as proposed in the documentary hypothesis.

• until 200 years ago, Moses was accepted as the author.

Others are of the opinion that Moses compiled the historic record known as Genesis from documents handed down by the ancient patriarchs and added explanatory comments. So, Moses is thus regarded as the author of Genesis, although using eyewitness accounts from an earlier time. Opinion

Moses did write all of Genesis. This is able to be believed by those who a real supernatural all powerful God and that The Bible is the inspired Word of God.

Moses wrote it, nor did he collect it from a bunch of people and compile it. If you read the first five books of the Bible, you will notice over and over again that God from the fire on the mountain, or from the cloud etc. etc., spoke to Moses. And it wasn't just voices in his head - the whole congregation saw the cloud! He spoke to Moses what He wanted Moses to write and say. That is what divine inspiration is all about. God wanted specific things down to the very letter written down perfectly. Moses got the information included in the Book of Genesis from God Himself, from one of their many conversations together. If I accept that the God of the Bible is God, I also feel safe to conclude that He is also an expert on the subject of the Beginning and of the material he gave to Moses to write down in Genesis, and so it can be thought of as exactly reliable information.

So it really comes down to one thing - is God who He says He is in the Bible, Is the God of the Bible God. If He is, then all that is written in the Bible is true and from Him because God ensured that it would be, so that He would have an accurate means of communicating to man.

Answer

Archaeologists have been saying for decades that there is absolutely no physical evidence to support the story of the Exodus.

It is fact that there is no evidence at all for a world-wide flood. It is fact that archaeologists and other earth scientists have denied that Adam and Eve were real...now DNA science has confirmed this...they never existed.

What do these actual facts do to the myth of Moses. The stories are just mythical nonsense and Moses never wrote the Book of Exodus.

Answer

Moses is traditionally considered the author of the Book of Genesis. He could not have known anything about the events described, but the assumption of this tradition is that God told Moses what to say.

On the other hand, the consensus of biblical scholars is that Moses was certainly not the author of Genesis. They say that Genesis was written over a period of several centuries during the first millennium BCE, and that the book was produced by three principal sources, all anonymous and now known as the Yahwist, the Elohist and the Priestly Source.

Answer 4

The Pentateuch is believed to have been written by a number of authors, distributed in both time and place. Some early material from the ninth and eighth centuries BCE was probably written in the cities of Samaria and Jerusalem. Other parts were written in Jerusalem during the seventh century BCE, while some was written during the Babylonian Exile, probably in Babylon.

Answer 5

A:Tradition has attributed the task of writing Genesis to Moses because the Book of Exodus claims that God spoke to Moses. The idea seems to be that if God spoke to Moses and gave him two heavy tablets that contained the Ten Commandments, then God could well have told him everything to write in the Book of Genesis. Perhaps this is a little anachronistic, since Exodusis careful to recount each occasion on which God spoke to Moses, and these were always on a mountain, leaving no occasions in which Moses was alone with God long enough to write down such a long book. It is also anachronistic because the one time God is stated to have given Moses any written instruction (the Ten Commandments), they were chiselled on tablets of stone, but the entire Book of Genesis would have been an impossible undertaking, tablet by tablet - especially as such a mammoth project would surely have been mentioned in Exodus.

Scholars say that Moses did not manage to write the Book of Genesis at all. The book was the work of several authors, writing piece by piece over a period of centuries long after the time attributed to Moses.

Answer 6

It is possible to answer unequivocally that Moses did not write the Book of Genesis. We are even told that most scholars do not believe that Moses was a real, historical person.

As long ago as 1862, Samuel Davidson, D.D found clear literary evidence that Genesis was not written by anyone in the time of Moses. The author mentions events as if they were in the distant past, demonstrating that at the time Genesis was written those events really were in the distant past.

The following two examples show that when the writer lived, the Canaanites and Perizzites had been expelled from the land:

• "And the Canaanite was then in the land." (Gen 12:6)
  
• "And the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land." (Gen 13:7)
  

Hebron is the name almost always used in Genesis, yet the city did not get that name until Caleb named it (after the death of Moses):

• Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel. And the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba; which Arba was a great man among the Anakims. And the land had rest from war. (Joshua 14:14-15)
  

Abraham is said to have pursued the kings who carried away Lot his nephew, as far as Dan (Genesis 14:14). But we learn from Joshua 19:47 and Judges 18:29, that the name of the place was Laish, till the Danites took possession of it and called it Dan, "after the name of their father." Anyone writing before the settlement of Israel can only have used the name Laish.

The last clause of the following verse could hardly have been written till after there had been a king in Israel:

• And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the land of Israel (Genesis 36:31).
  

In fact, it is clear that there were several authors of Genesis. One author (now known as the 'Yahwist') calls Moses's father-in-law by the name Reuel or Hobab. Another author (now known as the 'Elohist') calls Moses's father-in-law 'Jethro'. Would Moses really have been so unable to decide who his own father-in-law was?

There are also many 'doublets' where each author provided his own, separate version of the same event. We can be sure that had Moses had been the author, he would have chosen a preferred version and stuck with that one.

Answer 7

Yes, Moses wrote the entire Torah-scroll as we have it today (Deuteronomy 31:24), including Genesis (Rashi commentary, Exodus 24:7).
The same literary devices which the Torah employs to enrich its text, have been used by Bible-critics in an attempt to reassign its authorship.

The Jewish sages, based on ancient tradition, identified many of these devices, which include:

recapping earlier brief passages to elucidate,

employing different names of God to signify His various attributes,

using apparent changes or redundancies to allude to additional unstated details,

speaking in the vernacular that was current during each era,

and many more. While Judaism has always seen the Torah as an intricate tapestry that nonetheless had one Divine source, some modern authors such as Wellhausen (the father of modern Biblical-criticism, 1844-1918) have suggested artificially chopping up the narrative and attributing it to various authors, despite the Torah's explicit statement as to its provenance (Exodus 24:12, Deuteronomy 31:24). This need not concern believers, since his claims have been debunked one by one, as Archaeology and other disciplines have demonstrated the integrity of the Torah. No fragments have ever been found that would support his Documentary Hypothesis, which remains nothing more than an arbitrary claim:

http://religion.answers.com/theory/debunking-the-jepd-documentary-hypothesis

http://www.WhoReallyWroteTheBible.com/excerpts/chapter4-1.php

Answer 8

Moses didn't write them. God did on Mt. Sinai.

Answer 9

Moses didn't write them, God did. Moses received them at the top of Mt Sinai.

Answer 10

After God wrote them in stone (Exodus 31:18), Moses recorded them in Exodus ch.20.