Introduction to Genesis

Why Read It?

Genesis is foundational to your theology as Christians. When I was a small child my grandfather struggled through the the seemingly immoral practices and beliefs of the Old Testament. Things like sentencing homosexuals to death, or stoning a woman who was raped- things that without a careful investigation leads us to believe that Bible says things that it doesn’t. This led my grandfather into a life away from God, as he firmly believed the God of the Bible was very clearly the evil one in the story of redemption. Further than that, my grandfather being a self proclaimed ‘man of science’ struggled through things like the global flood described in Genesis, or the account of creation found in its pages that seems to imply that the earth was made before the sun and moon. These seemingly obvious scientific contradictions pushed him far outside what he believed to be the reach of God. That is where he sat for most of his life, until God met him one day. I do not know that day or time, but I do know that one day while talking to him he causally dropped that Jesus was his Savior. An amazing answer to prayer- but not everyone like my grandfather can be so lucky to be reached this way. Some self proclaimed Atheists have rejected God’s messaging for so long the Spirit speaking to them sounds only like tongues that they cannot understand. This is because they have allowed their doubts surrounding the stories in the Old Testament (and especially Genesis) to harden their hearts, and they wish for nothing more than to be left alone on the topic altogether.

These people are making a fatal mistake, their mistake is not assuming that if God breaks his own moral standard than he is therefore evil; that is a completely logical conclusion. If God cannot hold himself to the standards he hold us to, he is then a hypocrite, thus making him a sinner and not God. It is impossible for God to sin due to the fact that sin is defined as something God does not do. Their mistake is thinking God did break his own moral standard in things like the flood. My goal with this deep dive study is to showcase that the Old Testament was always looking towards the New Testament; while also tackling these moral questions, and scientific ones as well. All of this starts back in Genesis, and going through it is going to be tedious, time consuming, and difficult at times. But the rewards of doing this will be to great to count, because it will help you better understand, formulate, and share your relationship with the true and living God. To do this as I said we will talking the ethical and scientific claims against the Bible, but more than that I want to go deep into the Word of God and talk about the historical background of passages, apologetics, archeology and the logic that God uses to communicate truth with us.

The Story of Genesis

The story of Genesis beings and ends the same way as all of scripture. In fact the first 3 chapters of Genesis begin and end in the same literary way. It begins with mankind and God in good standing, but quickly man rebels against God. God being rich in love and mercy redeems mankind as mankind sits in a sort of waiting place for the next stage in the story of redemption. The limbo of waiting for the next stage in the story of redemption is where very Old Testament character sat, its where humanity sat until the incarnation. With Christ being born into the world, with his earthly ministry, and with his death and resurrection, the story of redemption reached its second to last chapter. Now, we sit and wait, until the last chapter commences and our glorious King returns to judge all evil in the world today. This high and low and high of the Biblical story is all throughout each of the characters in the Bible; especially Genesis. Abram recieved a call of God in which he answered in faith (high.) Because of his impatience with God in the timing of his promise to be given a son through his wife, Abram takes matters into his own hands and committing adultery has a child with his wife servant (low.) But God being rich in love and mercy redeems Abram from this sin and fulfills his promise to give Abram a child (high.)

The common themes in the Old Testament are there for our benefit, they help steer our reading where God wants it to be; in God’s redemption. Understanding these stories better shows us the Character of God, and understanding that helps us to grow closer in fellowship with each other and God. When understanding the book of Genesis was first have to understand who wrote it and why. To answer that question we need to turn no further than the Biblical text itself.

Who Wrote Genesis?

Before I give these options I think its important to note that just because one believes either of these things it does not automatically mean the conclusion that follows is indicative of their heart. Often times people believe things about the Bible that are unprecedented or incorrect and logically follow to mean something that is outright heretical. This does not mean they believe the heretical thing that logically follow, human nature is not always logical. It is important to grant people grace when it comes to differing opinions and recognize that someone disagreeing with you does not always mean that they are not saved.

When it comes to the authorship of Genesis it is an important question to analyze the evidence of carefully. Depending on how we answer the question is drastically changes our ability to use literary style to help our interpretation of the text, and it lowers our methodology in interpreting it down to it’s genre alone; which is narrative. If we use only narrative to interpret Genesis it means we must assume only the literal interpretation of all the text. Anything else would be guilty of the logical fallacy called ‘begging the question.’ Which is when someone makes an argument that requires the conclusion be true in order for the argument to be coherent.

In other words, if Moses didn’t write Genesis and we cant use the literary styles found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy to help us understand it. So if I were to say that there is any literary styles used in Genesis it would be have to be based off of the authority of ‘what I say is true because I only say true things.’ So, in order to find out who wrote to Genesis, lets carefully go over the evidence in favor of Mosiac authorship, and also go over the claims against it.

The question of Mosiac Authorship did not exist to the ancient Jews, or the earliest of Christians. In fact, the question did not arise until the 17th century when Baruch Spinoza, a philosopher, brought up the question. This was the first prominent author to bring it up, however the idea was not entirely new all the way back to the late 11th century Jewish scholar Abraham Ibn Ezra brought up the question ‘how could Moses know things happened after his lifetime.’ This objection is not one that I am going to be covering in this study, as no events took place after Moses’s life in Genesis, however if I ever do a study through Deuteronomy, I will cover it then.

I think that the most convincing evidence in favor of Mosiac Authorship is that Genesis is accredited to him as far back in history as we can possibly go. We are told in Exodus 24:4 “And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” Deuteronomy 31:9 “Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel.” Deuteronomy 31:24–26 “When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.” That Moses wrote what we call the “law.” These verses have been found in the dead sea scrolls and date from 30BC- 250BC. The significance of the phrase ‘Moses wrote this law,’ is that it seems to be referenced as being true in the book of Joshua 8:31–32 “just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, “an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.” And they offered on it burnt offerings to the Lord and sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.” The word for the law in both examples is the word ‘torah’ which is where we get the Hebrew name for the Pentateuch, the Torah. Most of fragments of Joshua 8 were found in the dead sea scrolls and were dated to nearly 300BC. Where Joshua says ‘law of Moses’ we see the Hebrew phrase “Torah Moshe,’ which was found as the title of the Torah in the 11 Q Paleolithic-Levi fragment which is dated to 200BC. Meaning all the way back to 300BC and up to as recent as 30BC the text of scripture is consistent on the fact of Mosiac Authorship of the Torah; which includes Genesis. However the questions raised by Ibn Ezra and Spinoza launched Julius Wellhausen to write a paper known as “Documentary Hypothesis” that skeptics will now cite as proof that Mosiac Authorship is impossible.

In Wellhausen’s paper he claims that throughout the Torah we see evidence not of a single author, but rather a conglomeration of authors over the course of many decades of writing; he concludes in his investigation of the Torah that it was based in composite authorship, rather than Mosiac. This took place in the 17th century and the Christians around this time simply took this lying down without further investigation into the claims (as far as I can tell at least.) They did claim that a composite authorship does not take away from the claim of divine authority behind the authorship; a claim I agree with. However to be consistent about the text of scripture, we would have to change our definition of what inerrant means, as the Bible very clearly accredits authorship of the Torah to Moses. I have read this Documentary Hypothesis, and what I found is that it is guilty of the logical fallacy of begging the question. It concludes that we cannot take the Torah literally, and then uses that conclusion to force the text to contradict if we do take certain parts of the Torah literally. The entire argument is predicated on the conclusion (that Moses did not write Genesis) being correct, and therefore the narrative style of whoever did write it must be taken without there being room for literary styles to be present. However, if the conclusion is wrong and Genesis WAS written by Moses, the explanation to the vast majority of these issues can be attributed to literary styles within the text, ones that we see consistently throughout the rest of the Torah. Here are some examples.

They will claim that the Author of Genesis erred if we take plain and simple reading of Genesis 37:25–28 “Then they sat down to eat. And looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers listened to him. Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.” Along side Genesis 37:36 “Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.” And Genesis 39:1 “Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there.” They claim this as evidence that the book of Genesis is a composite work with many authors and this is why there is the confusion of who bought Joseph and sold him to the Egyptians.

The response to this is simple, Midianites and Ishmaelites are used synonymous elsewhere in scripture. Judges 8:22–26 “Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.” Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.” And Gideon said to them, “Let me make a request of you: every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil.” (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) And they answered, “We will willingly give them.” And they spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings of his spoil. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the collars that were around the necks of their camels.” More than that, it seems that this is in line with a tool that is used in other parts of the Torah as well, specifically regarding Moses’s wife. In Exodus 2 we are told that Moses’s father in law is a Midianite, or at least a priest of Midian. In Numbers 12:1 We are told that Moses’s wife is a Cushite. Cush and Midian are not the same place, however Zipporah is clearly said to be both. We know that this is the same woman because after Jethro helps Moses in Exodus we are told that Israel traveled to Mount Sinai, and when Aaron and Miriam are rebelling against Moses it is right after they left Mount Sinai. The text here seems to be implying that Exodus 19 and Numbers 10-12 are taking place right after one another. In fact if you read Numbers 11, it seems to indicate that this might be where God worked through Jethro to command Moses to anoint elders over the people of Israel.

It’s important that we don’t make this more than it is, but I also don’t want to make this less than it is either, if Moses wrote the entire Torah we see an example of a woman being called both a Cushite and a Midianite by him. Similar to how we see the people who bought Joseph called both Ishmaelites and Midianites. Especially since there was no place called Ishmaelites, meaning that the origin of their names would be familial, and Midianite would be geographical. It is very possible that in both cases of Moses’s wife and the slave traders Moses is identifying them both by their family relation (to Ishmael and Cush) and then by their geographical place of origin (Midian.)