Who wrote Genesis? Why it matters what you think.
Wasn't it Moses?

Who wrote Genesis? Does it really matter who wrote Genesis? If you’re not Jewish or Christian, maybe not to you. But if you are, it matters a whole lot.

Here’s the thing. Consider the old man in the adjacent image.

He’s standing at a table. There’s a bunch of scrolls. The one he’s working on in the image is Genesis. Or maybe it’s Exodus. Or Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy.

Is that Moses? Or is it someone else?

Maybe your answer is, “Who cares”?

If you’re Jewish or Christian, you should care.

Believe it or not, your very soul may depend on it.

Of course, this site is mostly about Christianity. And while I do go back into Jewish culture and the Hebrew language, it’s to show enough of it to make a point to Christians. Therefore, I don’t have the knowledge or the desire to get into the implications for Jewish people. I’ll just say it seems that it should be important to you, for many of the same reasons it’s important to me, as a Christian.

Who wrote Genesis?

The authorship of many, if not most, or even all, of the books in the Bible seems to be widely questioned these days. Having worked in a university environment for more than 35 years, I can offer some comments about why.

Publish, publish, publish, is the biggest thing, at least in universities that offer Masters and PhD degrees.

One way to get published is to essentially write something that compiles/repeats a whole bunch of stuff that other people already wrote about. And then you update a few things here and there to make it “yours”. Except it isn’t always really “yours”.

I was on the administrative side of the house. But I was asked by a VP to write a chapter for “his” book. Why? Because the book was about computer technology. And I was the lead technical person on his staff.

My point is this. Publishers don’t want the same thing, over and over. There’s just no money in it. If you’re trying to make a name for yourself, you need to either do something new or find a problem with something old.

It’s no different in publishing books about the Bible. Maybe it’s a change in historical “knowledge”. Maybe it’s a “fresh” view of a book in the Bible.

I’m not saying they’re all like that. However, when something new comes out, we do need to use what Christians refer to as discernment when evaluating it. That also means we should evaluate, rather than just accept something new.

Who wrote any book in the Bible?

The title is about who wrote Genesis. But really, what we’re going to see is that the same question can be asked about any book in the Bible. And I can’t help but wonder, is there any book that someone doesn’t question the authorship, date, or something about each and every one of them?

While it may be a way to make a name, or be a fun exercise in literary analysis, examining writing styles, grammar, individual words, whatever, there are serious consequences. For instance, how about the life or death of your soul?

I’m writing this because of something I’m working on for Ecclesiastes. It questions who wrote it. Solomon or someone else? It also questions when it was written. There’s one verse that gets a huge change in interpretation because of that. If it was written by Solomon, or someone in his lifetime, there’s a word that means destroy. If it was written much later, that same Hebrew word came to mean to let go. That’s huge! And it’s only one word.

However, when that one word is taken as a way to interpret the remainder of an important passage in the book, it changes the entire outlook of the book. I can’t help but wonder, for the person who decided it was written by someone else, was changing the meaning of a book the goal? Or was it merely an academic exercise and everything that followed was collateral damage?

As it stands now, the views on Ecclesiastes run the gamut from very depressing because life is pointless – all the way to life does have meaning and purpose. That just makes no sense. So these things are important.

Who wrote Genesis? Why it matters what you think.

We’re going to focus on Genesis. For a long time, a very long time, people “knew” Moses wrote Genesis. Not so much anymore. Because maybe Moses didn’t write Genesis the other four books in the Pentateuch, we now have license, according to some, to change what it means. To interpret it differently.

And from there, we can render portions either as myth, analogy, proven wrong by modern science, and all sorts of other things. Now, we can be “cafeteria Christians”, where we pick and choose what we want to believe and what we want to ignore.

That’s a problem, for a whole bunch of reasons.

Wikipedia thoughts on who wrote Genesis

I almost can’t believe I’m doing this. Quoting Wikipedia. But in this case, I think it’s appropriate.

I don’t believe anything I read in Wikipedia unless I can verify it from a reliable source. I used to sometimes use it as a beginning point for searching. But now, I go to Bing Chat to do it. Why Bing? Because it gives the sources where its responses came from. Again, it’s a beginning point to learn more.

Anyway, what we find from Wikipedia and Bing, while not necessarily correct or reliable, are things that other people believe to be true. Since we’re into a topic concerned about various things people believe to be true about who wrote Genesis, and since Wikipedia has whatever people put in it, it’s the perfect place to find not only a starting point but also misinformation.

With that said, here’s what Wikipedia says about who wrote Genesis, as of Jan 6, 2024 – subject to change at a moment’s notice when someone adds something different.

Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy; however, modern scholars, especially from the 19th century onward, place the books’ authorship in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, hundreds of years after Moses is supposed to have lived. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, most mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical.

Check out the very first phrase there: Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy.

It most certainly was not tradition that gave credit to Moses as the author of Genesis! Regardless of what Christian scholars may think of the Old Testament, it was and is first of all Jewish Scripture. To that end, even Messianic Jews have the following belief about Moses as the author of Genesis:

Introduction Page 1
Torah—the five books of Moses—has been a unifying force in Jewish life since the earliest days. Today virtually every synagogue in the world reads the same portion of the Torah each week, completing the cycle of readings every year. Each weekly Torah portion, called a parasha in Hebrew, has been the subject of commentary and discussion since before the days of Yeshua the Messiah, and continues to be today. This book is one student’s contribution to the ancient discussion.

Introduction Page 2

The authors encourage us to engage in the ancient conversation with and about Scripture that has been the pursuit of Jewish thinkers over the ages.
Let us consider an example of this conversation from the Midrash. Midrash is an entire genre of rabbinic literature that explores the meaning and implications of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. The earliest Midrash (on Genesis) dates from the classical Amoraic period of 400–600 CE, but is based on older oral material. Midrash Rabbah is the collection of such commentaries based on the five books of Moses and the five scrolls—Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations—that reached final form during the medieval period, but also reflects much older tradition.  ¹Resnik, R. (2000). Gateways to Torah: Joining the Ancient Conversation on the Weekly Portion (pp. 1–2). Messianic Jewish Publishers.

So while Christian scholars may want to change the author, timeframe, and even the meaning of Jewish Scripture, I wonder, do we have the right to do that? I mean, our Christian beliefs stem from the same God as the Jews. They are a continuation of what God started in the beginning.

We’ll get much deeper into that thought shortly. There are consequences when doing this, especially when we reach the point where someone claims most mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical.

Who gets to decide which Bible scholars are “mainstream” and which are, apparently, maybe not worth reading because they disagree with those declared to be mainstream?

Continuing with Wikipedia:

It is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author’s concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind’s relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish the relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel, God’s chosen people. At God’s command, Noah’s descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of the Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship) into the God-given land of Canaan, where he dwells as a sojourner, as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Jacob’s name is changed to “Israel”, and through the agency of his son Joseph, the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah) to a special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob).

Again, there’s a small phrase in there we must pay attention to. A phrase that attempts to trivialize the entire book of Genesis. It says Genesis sets out the author’s concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind’s relationship with its maker.

Excuse me, but don’t Christians believe the Bible is the inspired word of God?

So you see the problem here? While we believe Moses is the “author” of Genesis at a certain level, we also believe the true author of everything in the Bible is God. The human authors are the ones who recorded what God told them.

When we reduce it to Genesis sets out the author’s concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind’s relationship with its maker, God is removed. Genesis, and every other book in the Bible presumably becomes nothing other than some ideas from humans, from their point of view. Essentially, the Bible becomes just another novel.

That’s where we go when we decide Moses wasn’t the author of Genesis or the other books in the Pentateuch.

A Christian viewpoint of who wrote Genesis

Let’s switch from Wikipedia to a christianity.com article titled, Who Really Wrote the Book of Genesis?

They begin with:

We can see how God is the main writer of Genesis and the rest of the Bible; however, God led Moses through the Holy Spirit to record the events and to write down the message of Genesis for all people to know.

That’s what I described above.

Next, they have a different view from Wikipedia’s article on who wrote Genesis.

The authorship of the Book of Genesis has been debated over the course of many years. There are two main theories as to who wrote the Book of Genesis. The most popular and accepted view of who wrote Genesis is Moses. The second theory is the JEDP theory.

If both are to be “believed”, then the most popular view of who wrote Genesis is not the mainstream view. Interesting.

Letter	Stands for	Description
J	Jahwist	The conclusion of liberal scholars view that the J(ahwist) documents are the verses written by authors who preferred the Hebrew name Jahweh (Jehovah) to be used in reference to God. Most liberal scholars believe the J(ahwist) part of the JEDP Theory was written somewhere between 900-850 B.C.
E	Elohist	The E stands for the name of Elohim, which is another name for God. This part is supposed to have been written in 750-700 B.C.
D	Deuteronomist	The D is for Deuteronomist, in which the scholars view that a completely different group of authors wrote this part around the time of King Josiah’s reforms, which would have been in 621 B.C.
P	Priestly Code	P stands for the priests who would have written Leviticus as well as other sections during the time after 586 B.C.

What’s the bottom line here?

This theory ultimately rejects the entirety of the authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses and instead states that there were multiple different authors of the Pentateuch. This theory arose due to the fact that there are different names used for God throughout the Pentateuch.

There’s more detail in the article, but I leave it to you to get into the details if you wish. It ultimately reaches the same conclusion I did above.

 If you doubt the authorship of the Pentateuch to be Moses, then it could lead you to question other facts of the scriptures.

Here’s the thing about the names of God. Yes, there are different names for God in the Bible. I recently received an email regarding a book that had weekly exercises to take the reader through 52 different names for God in the Bible. Names can be descriptive. But that doesn’t mean each description was written by a different person.

Along those lines are the names of God in the first five books in the Bible. The Old Testament is a history of what God did from the creation of the universe, to His relationship with people, up to the birth of Jesus. When we read it, we see, among other things, how God essentially taught people how to be more “civilized” as they learned how to follow Him.

As people were ready to learn more about God, God Himself revealed different names for us to use for Him. Each revealed some new characteristic(s) above and beyond what we already knew about God. Once again, we need to remember the true and ultimate author of the Bible is God. As the new names are brought up, it’s not that the human author decided on a new name for God. It was God, through the human author, who gave us those names. The fact that new names are revealed over time has nothing to do with the human author of any book.

Furthermore, unless we flat out refuse to accept that the Bible is from God, we must recognize the variety of literary formats, tones, words, points of view, and everything else that went into the Bible were all from one source: God. When we try to use what we should believe is God’s own words to determine who a human author is – then we are denying that the true author behind the human author doesn’t exist. We are saying that there is no inspiration from God for what the human author wrote.

In a very real sense, we are calling God a liar.

If you think that’s going too far, consider this next example.

Another issue if Moses didn’t write Genesis

Here’s yet another problem with claiming the author of Genesis was someone other than Moses. It’s one thing to do grammatical studies, word studies, and whatever scholarly activities might point to alleged flaws in the Bible.

intro to below and conclusion after that.

Check out what Jesus said in the following passage.

Testimonies About Jesus

Jn 5:31 “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid. 32 There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid.

Jn 5:33 “You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. 34 Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. 35 John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

Jn 5:36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

Jn 5:41 “I do not accept praise from men, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

Jn 5:45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

There’s a whole lot of stuff in there, from none other than Jesus, about the validity of various testimony about Him.

But, for today’s topic, check out this one portion in particular:

Jn 5:45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

Jesus said that Moses wrote about Him.

If Jesus said Moses wrote about Him (Jesus), then what does that say about us when we claim Moses didn’t write the books in the Bible credited to Him? Are we not calling Jesus a liar if/when we do that? Do we really want to go there?

At what point are we willing to accept that what God said is true? And when we refuse to do that, exactly what do we think we’re doing?

Furthermore, look one more time at that last sentence:

47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?

Yes – if we don’t believe that Moses wrote something Jesus told us he wrote, how are we going to believe what Jesus said about anything?

everything above about us ultimately turning into cafeteria Christians who pick and choose what we want to believe and disbelieve is absolutely confirmed by Jesus’ own words. But then, if we trash portions of God’s words in order to suit our own “religion” that we happen to call “Christianity” but isn’t anything like what Jesus said, then do we even care? Probably not.

However, if we do care and we really do want to follow Jesus, then we need to think about these “little” things that turn into huge things. Things that can and do take us totally off the narrow path.

Conclusion – Who wrote Genesis? Why it matters what you think.

Let’s return to christianity.com. They reach the same conclusion I did above.

The truth of the matter is that Moses is the sole writer of the Pentateuch. The only part of the Pentateuch that Moses wouldn’t have written was the writing about his death in Deuteronomy. This part would have been written by his successor, Joshua.

Therefore, Moses is the sole writer of Genesis as well as the remainder of the Pentateuch. Jesus confirms it, as well as many biblical scholars have found this to be true through historical research.

It is important to remember that Moses did not write the Book of Genesis all on his own, but rather, he wrote as the Holy Spirit guided him. He recorded the events of the Pentateuch as well as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, we can see how God is the main writer of Genesis and the rest of the Bible; however, God led Moses through the Holy Spirit to record the events and to write down the message of Genesis for all people to know.

As evident in Genesis, Moses wouldn’t have been around during the times of Adam and Eve. God would have told Moses about these events, and Moses would have recorded them as God instructed.

It is always inspiring to look behind the authorship of the books of the Bible and to have a glimpse at who wrote each book. In the case of Genesis, Moses is the author.

While there are many theories opposing this idea, including the JEDP Theory, we can know with certainty that Moses is the sole writer of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Holy Spirit inspired these books, and Moses wrote as he was instructed.

So yes, it really does matter who wrote Genesis. The Holy Spirit is the One Jesus said would be sent by The Father to help us in all sorts of ways.

Jesus Promises The Holy Spirit

Jn 14:15 “If you love me, you will obey what I command. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

Jn 14:22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

Jn 14:23 Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

Jn 14:25 “All this I have spoken while still with you. 26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Jn 14:28 “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 29 I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. 30 I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, 31 but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
“Come now; let us leave.”

If we refuse to accept the Holy Spirit as being from God, that’s very likely the unforgivable sin. But then, if we say we believe the Holy Spirit is from God, but we don’t believe Him, are we really any different than someone who denies the Holy Spirit entirely?

I know, it sounds almost trivial, arguing over who wrote any given book. And it can be fun to analyze things like writing styles, at least for some people. But here’s the thing. Our allegiance isn’t or shouldn’t be, to any Pastor, Bible scholar, commentator writer, Etc. That’s just as true as something Paul wrote about the leaders of the early church.

Divisions in the Church

1Co 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas’”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

1Co 1:13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14 I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

At what point do we own our (own) faith? Yes, we need to learn. We learn by studying. But the bottom line is that the measure we should use when learning is how things fit in with the Bible – God’s Word. It’s not the other way around. We shouldn’t measure the Bible by what someone says about it. We must measure what people say about the Bible, about Christianity, about God, by what the Bible says.

Notice what Paul said about his purpose for what he did: to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Anything else is putting some other “god” above God.

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Footnotes

• 1
  Resnik, R. (2000). Gateways to Torah: Joining the Ancient Conversation on the Weekly Portion (pp. 1–2). Messianic Jewish Publishers.