Authorship In Genesis Research Paper

Taylor Thornbrugh

WLIT 1113 Linsley

Research Paper

November 30, 2015

Issues of the Authorship in Genesis Genesis has been a book that has been researched, debated upon, and rejected throughout the years for many reasons. From whether or not it is a true story or if it is fiction, right down to the very issue of who wrote the book. Authorship in Genesis has been a mystery that many scholars have been trying to solve for many years. The traditional teaching, what I was taught, is that God gave this message through Moses; but as we all know, not everyone has experienced the “traditional teaching” and may have different beliefs of this certain issue. Several scholars refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as The Pentateuch. This includes

H. M. Elwes. Spinoza states in the "Preface" of his Theologico-Political Treatise that “blind adherence to religious authority without free rational and critical inquiry is nothing more than superstition rooted in fear, resulting in prejudice and violence.” (Spinoza, Elwes 1951) “The author of the Pentateuch,” writes Spinoza, “is almost universally supposed to have been Moses, but such belief is ungrounded and even irrational.” (Spinoza,Elwes 1951) Spinoza agrees with Ibn Ezra, one who we discussed earlier in the paper, that there are certain literary problems that lead us to think that Moses was not the author of Genesis. Spinoza makes note of the third-person used in Genesis that is directed towards Moses. He also hit on problems geographically. One example he gave was in Genesis 14:14, when Dan is mentioned in the story of Abraham pursuing his enemies. Spinoza says this is not possible historically because the city is not named this until after the death of Joshua. Spinoza uses this to further state his claim that Moses was not the author of Genesis, but someone who had to of lived long after Moses

For example, in Genesis 1:1-4, the name for the deity is Elohim, which in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) means God, whereas in Genesis 2:5-25, the name for the deity is Yahweh, which means Lord in the NRSV. This was discussed by John Calvin earlier, but he didn't no recognize it in the way that Dozeman did. Calvin saw this as a technique that Moses used to put emphasis on the story. In Dozeman’s view, this shows that there are several contributing authors to Genesis, and the other four books of the