Halley's Bible Handbook/Genesis
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Authorship of Genesis
The age-old Hebrew and Christian tradition is that Moses, guided of God, composed Genesis out of ancient documents existent in his day. The book closes something like 300 years before Moses. Moses could have gotten this information only by direct revelation from God, or through such historical records as had been handed down from his forefathers.
Opening with the "Creation Hymn", there are then given ten "Books of Generations" which constitute the framework of Genesis. It seems that they were incorporated bodily by Moses, with such additions and explanations as he may have been guided of God to make.These eleven documents are as follows:
"Creation Hymn" (1:1-2:3). "The Generations of the Heavens and Earth" (2:4-4:26). "The Book of the Generations of Adam" (5:1-6:8). "The Generations of Noah" (6:9-9:28). "The Generations of the Sons of Noah" (10:1-11:9). "The Generations of Shem" (11:10-26). "The Generations of Terah" (11:27-25:11). "The Generations of Ishmael" (25:12-18). "The Generations of Isaac" (25:19-35:29). "The Generations of Esau" (36:1-43). "The Generations of Jacob" (37:2-50:26).
These eleven documents, originally family records of God's Chosen Line, and kindred families, which compose the book of Genesis, cover the first 2000 years of man's history, from the Creation of Man to the Settlement of God's Chosen People in Egypt.
The "Creation Hymn," 1:1-2:3
A poetic description, in measured, majestic movement, of the succesive steps of creation, cast in the mold of the oft-recurring Biblical "seven". In all literature, scientific or otherwise, there is no sublimer account of the Origin of Things.
Who wrote the "Creation Hymn"? Used by Moses, but written, no doubt, long before, perchance by Abraham, or Noah, or Enoch or Adam. Writing was in coomon use ages before the days of Moses. Some of God's "commandments, statutes and laws" were in existence in the days of Abraham, 600 years before the days of Moses (Genesis 26:5).
How did the writer know what happened before man appeared? No doubt God "revealed to him the remote past as later the distant future was made known to the prophets."
Who knows but what God himself may have taught this hymn to Adam? And it may have been recited by word of mouth, around the family circle, or sung as a ritual in primitive worship (hymns constituted a large part of the very earliest forms of literature), generation after generation, till Writing was invented, God himself guarding its transmission, till finally, under the master mind of Moses, it took its place as the Opening Utterance of the Divine Book of the Ages.
If the Bible is GOD's Word, as we believe it to be, and if God knew from the beginning that He was going to use the Bible as a main instrument in the Redemption of Man, why should it be difficult to believe that God himself, co-eval with his creation of man, gave to man the germ and nucleus of that Word?
