Does Genesis 1 through 11 have an author prior to Moses?

Does Genesis 1 through 11 have an author prior to Moses? · Whoever the "Astute Observer" was — Science and Factually Exact Are Not the Same · Should One NOT Read Donald J. Wiseman? · For Anyone Disputing the Relevance of Genesis 5 and 11, the Genealogy of Matthew is a Go To

I am obviously not even envisaging JEPD as potentially true, that's the kind of madness people abuse their academic personnel for when they resolutely turn their back on the obvious and usually also true answer.

The other day, I read how in 1850, the rotation of the earth had been proven. No, it hadn't. The supposals used for taking Foucault's Pendulum (1851, not 1850) and three experiments in falling bodies (Benzenberg, Reich and before the Guilielmini, all three before 1850) as proof for this involve the unproven assumption, now abandoned by modern physics, that space is empty coordinates. I actually read that Brahe had been disproven. No. Even with rotation of the earth, unproven and counterintuitive as it is, the Earth could still have been direct centre for Moon, Sun, Fix-Stars and have the Sun as moving epicentre for "planets" (other than Sun and Moon, and including asteroids and comets, and with Titan or Io having one moving epicentre more, namely Saturn and Jupiter). The assumption involved in "disproving" this is, either a) God hates spirograph patterns, thinks they are too ugly for heaven, even in orbits (Copernicus' take), or b) this can't be since the movements are too complex for gravity and inertia, and God and angels either don't exist or wouldn't want to move either heaven or heavenly bodies.

The point is not that I'm an expert in astronomy. I'm hardly even an amateur. The point is, the assumptions made by the experts are published and known, and can therefore be criticised by non-experts, including myself.

Dito for the JEPD hypothesis. One of the assumptions, never stated and indeed never even admitted, so absurd is it, is "if Jews, Samaritans and Christians believed it was written by Moses, then therefore Moses can't have written it, such traditions of a religion are never right." This is a fairly open admission of animosity towards the God of the Old Testament, and a scholar who presents himself as serving a university faculty in theology usually wouldn't want to alienate all Church institutions by stating "we are Marcionites or Albigensians here, Jews and Catholics are not welcome" — but another one is pretty absurd too. It's that if two names for God, JHVH (Adonai) and Elohim, occur in different places of a text, it's really two conflated texts, one of the original authors using JHVH (Adonai) and the other using Elohim. A single author varying his names for God is seemingly not even on the list. A third is, if something markedly differs from Babylonian theology, while parallelling a Babylonian narratives (Flood section of the Gilgamesh Epic or Enuma Elish or Sumerian King List), the Babylonian narrative was naively taken over as overall narrative, the theological differences are the polemics against Babylonian theology, and that polemics is all there is of the real message of the Hebrew author ... who must obviously have been posterior to when Hebrews had their first admittedly welldocumented (i e in non-Hebrew sources) encounters with Babylonians. Both people inheriting the story that Noah had to tell, and his three sons had to tell, and the Babylonians being the people twisting history for purposes of adapting it to bad theology (like probably even eliminating a first human couple), somehow also not on the list.

There is a very different approach, which is not very often expressed in traditional Catholic scholarship, neither very much among today's Young Earth Creationists, at least not the ones I have a look on. The Hebrews knew nothing at all or had contradictory views about Henoch the son of Jared. On this view, not my view. Then Moses, precisely as God spoke to him and said He would send an angel before the people, Exodus 33, also received Genesis 4 and 5 like that. And while we are at it, the Hebrews didn't even need to go through the Red Sea, and remember it, it's sufficient that God spoke to Moses and told him to write the narrative in Exodus 14 and they somehow believed him. This is a parodic version of one idea about how Divine Inspiration for Scripture works, taken over from an idea of the Quran, when Mohammed is only dictating the Quran when "Allah" speaks to him, and the rest, the Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, for instance, is, venerable, but lower than what God dictated. To us, history which is in the Bible is not lower than what God dictated, even if it is not dictated this way. We can say God chose the words, but God did not take away natural sources, like prior histories or testimonies, He gave the hagiographer good and infallible judgement about them, and a correct choice of words.

So, given that Moses did the Exodus 430 years after God had given his promise to Abraham (and some would say more, claiming erroneously the 430 years started when Jacob went to Egypt and was received by his son Joseph, but the 430 years started pretty much right away, Abraham was living as an immigrant, certainly an immigrant Beduin with a large tribe, but an immigrant none-the-less), Abraham was not in a position to speak to Moses. And given that the Flood happened 292, 942 or 1070 years before Abraham was even born, depending on text, Moses could not have a chat with Noah either. So, given divine dictation was not Moses' (sole) source of knowledge, and given that contemporaneous testimony was no longer contemporaneous when Moses wrote, what happened?

P. J. Wiseman, like I. M. Kikawada and A. Quinn, will present a case for the more traditional view of the Book of Genesis against JEDP theory, though with a twist. Moses substantially the author of the Pentateuch, was not properly speaking the author of Genesis, but its editor.

I just cited:
Genesis, a finely unified tapestry
by Damien F. Mackey (on Academia)
https://www.academia.edu/114367942/Genesis_a_finely_unified_tapestry

So, Damien Mackey is attempting to give a review of three scholars that say Moses had sources. I agree on that point, if not on all the other ones. Here is one I don't agree on:

Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, the same can basically be said for the fundamentalist biblical approach, ridiculed by Kikawada and Quinn as reactionary.

For although those, such as the Creationists for instance, might give the impression of their complete dedication to uncovering the truths of the Bible - and I am sure that that is generally their sincere intention - they, too, read the text from a modern, generally Westernised, scientific point of view. In fact one astute commentator has rightly described Creationism as a form of modernism, attempting to reduce Genesis to science.

Damien Mackey is, if so, very far from à jour with current Creationist literature. We regard Genesis, not as true systematic science, but as true, chronological, sequence of events history. When I say "history" and not "historiography", some may object that it's not historic research conducted in the way that modern scholars conduct historic research. It's a very ancient historiography. Yes, but history the way that modern scholars conduct historic research is a very modern historiography. History primarily, throughout history, means what certain modern historians would call historiography.

I don't think modern historians are to be confused with scientists, and the ones doing so are not us Creationists, it's the ones pretending we confuse Genesis with science, when in fact we don't.

In fact, sorry, Damien, the paper just shown is an 18 minute read, and I'm trying to get this post finished, I may return to the 18 minute read later.

First, "with a twist ... not properly speaking the author of Genesis, but its editor." The question is, is this even a twist on the traditional view or is it the traditional view? Let's compare the idea that Samuel was the author of Judges:

This Book is called Judges, because it contains the history of what passed under the government of the judges, who ruled Israel before they had kings. The writer of it, according to the more general opinion, was the prophet Samuel. (Challoner)

Some are of opinion, that the judges might have each left records of their respective administrations, (Menochius) which might be put in order by Samuel. The author of this book seems to have lived under the reign of Saul, before David had expelled the Jebusites, chap. xviii. 31. (Du Hamel)

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition. JUDGES - Introduction
https://johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock/id564.html

Basically, when we say that Samuel is author of Judges, we mean that Samuel is in some sense final editor of Judges.

Before we return to Genesis, we'll take a look at Judges. The book starts after the death of Joshua, and Samuel lived 100's of years later. Judges is basically a work of cumulative narration and cumulative authorship. A diary has single authorship, but cumulative narration. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has cumulative narration, but through cumulative authorship. I believe Judges is essentially this kind of book. With Samuel as final editor.

Now, this brings up the question, was there a kind of summing up within the book of Genesis, for instance 1 to 11 or 2 to 11, prior to Moses?

Here I will first cite Haydock:

Concerning the transactions of these early times, parents would no doubt be careful to instruct their children, by word of mouth, before any of the Scriptures were written; and Moses might derive much information from the same source, as a very few persons formed the chain of tradition, when they lived so many hundred years. Adam would converse with Mathusalem, who knew Sem, as the latter lived in the days of Abram. Isaac, Joseph, and Amram, the father of Moses, were contemporaries: so that seven persons might keep up the memory of things which had happened 2500 years before. But to entitle these accounts to absolute authority, the inspiration of God intervenes; and thus we are convinced, that no word of sacred writers can be questioned. (Haydock)

Haydock's etc. GENESIS - Chapter 3
https://johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock/id329.html

So, he believed in oral tradition of each event (at the very least for the Genesis 3 event) up to the time of Moses, who relied (and was right in relying) on his family tradition.

I take a somewhat different approach.

Who Wrote Genesis? Are the Toledoth Colophons?
by Charles V Taylor, M.A., Ph.D., PGCE, LRAM, FIL, Cert. Theol. | This article is from
Journal of Creation 8(2):204–211, August 1994
https://creation.com/who-wrote-genesis-are-the-toledoth-colophons

Charles Taylor, and lots of Creationists after him, have taken the view, each of the patriarchs wrote, on a physical material. Again, Moses stringed the work together.

I take a view somewhat intermediate between Father Haydock and Charles V Taylor.

Oral tradition could have taken place all along the way up to Abraham. Or the tradition was written, and lost, and orally transmitted to Abraham. The reason why I believe the chapters up to 11 that have human observers implied for the events were orally transmitted to Abraham is, they are different, they are shorter, while later chapters of Genesis are more prolix. Why is that important? Because shortness is a very good way to keep a text memorisable, without written support. African Griots and Homeric aoidoi can memorise a list (Ship Catalogue and the Genealogy of Kunta Kinte existed orally, before taken down by the sons of Peisistratus or by Alex Haley). But the reason they can do it well is, each item in the list is, within that list, memorised as an item, a sentence, not several paragraphs. And the narratives, just as much as table of nations (Genesis 10) or as genealogies in Genesis 5 or 11 or the unchronological one in Genesis 4, are also short. We don't get dialogues between God and a patriarch about what to do in the face of another patriarch, as later on (Jacob and Laban). Hence, sufficiently few necessary intermediates (plus as many as possible redundant ones) plus shortness of text, makes a text transmittable.

Genesis 3 (as mentioned), could have been transmitted to Abraham this way, all the way from Adam and Eve. Or they could have been written down, Sarug had long time access to the books, but they were taken away when his son and grandson became idolaters, so, he had to transmit it to Abraham from memory.

Either way, from Abraham on to the migration to Egypt, the Beduin tribe that became the Ancient People of God could transport the very short text mass on camel back, and from Joseph's arrival to power and on, the camel back archives and the narrative of Joseph's own misfortunes and fortune could be restored in Goshen. This is the kind of material that Moses dealt with. It's rationally speaking at the very least, even if we do not bring Divine inspiration into the picture, a roughly speaking reliable historiography of events. The alternatives this contradicts are not better or more reliable historiography (including for Egypt), it's not science that's as good as Coulombe's law or Newtons III Law of Movement, its reconstruction and pseudo-science, on level with the infamous JEPD theory.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Candlemass
2.II.2024