Hear David Taylor

Who wrote Genesis?    We are indebted to P. J. WISEMAN, C.B.E. for his in depth study on this subject


A good question! Who wrote Genesis? It is the popular belief among many people that the facts of Creation and the first book of the Bible was handed down from YHWH to Moses orally. It has been brought to my attention that this is not the case. I have spent some time studying Wiseman's paper, and have written this presentation of it.
The first point I would like to make is that written language has been in existence since long before Abraham walked on the earth. This writing was executed on clay tablets. The earlier chapters of Genesis are no exception, with abundant evidence in the British Museum and other museums across the world.
At the end of each of these early tablets or set of tablets a Colophon was used to identify the author. (Colophon = a statement at the end of a book, typically with a printer's emblem, giving information about its authorship and printing.)
This mode of writing is in evidence on clay tablets discovered in Mesapotamia depicting the Book of Genesis. On many of the tablets we have the signatures or 'colophons' of the actual authors of them. These authors were the Patriachs themselves, including Adam, Isaac, Esau, Noah and so on. So, there is now evidence supporting the fact that although Moses compiled the books, they were initially written by the heads of families preceding him.
This is an exciting find, as we now know that the authors were actual individuals who wrote the events first hand!
As chapters and verses and headings have been added to Biblical texts, Beth and I have attempted to write out the eleven books of the Patriachs as they were originally written to demonstrate these facts.

The colophons used in Genesis begin with the words ''These are the generations of...''
We have been under the misapprehension that these words were an introduction to the history of a person or events, but in the authentic Mesapotamian way of writing, these words were the signature of the writer and at the end of the account. We have coloured these 'signatures' or colophons yellow.    
Also, it is also worth recording, that when reading Genesis we often come across additions to the text recording facts which cannot have been known at the time historically, but were added later by Moses when he compiled the finished text. We have coloured these texts blue for easy identification. (and you may also come across more as your yourself discover them as you read the book of Genesis)
Also of course, according to Exodus 6:3 "...and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, (El Shaddai) but by my name Yahweh was I not known to them." So, every time you read the Name of God, Yahweh in Genesis, it has to have been added later on by the compiler of the books, Moses. We have coloured these green.

Click here to see how Genesis was originally written!

Clay tablets are, next to stone, the most imperishable form of writing material known to man. Even when dried in the sun they become so hard, that for thousands of years they have remained intact and legible. Ordinary cuneiform writing became general at an early date. Thousands of clay tablets have been found written before the Patriarchal age and altogether there are about a quarter of a million cuneiform clay tablets distributed among the various museums of the world.
Nearly a thousand years before Abraham was born and a millennium and a half before the birth of Moses, Lugalzaggisi, King of Erech, began his inscriptions with words which do not differ greatly from those used by the last King of Babylon, 2,200 years later. In Egypt where the papyrus plant flourished, papyrus became the usual material on which to write. The earliest papyrus manuscript still in existence is stated to have been written about 3000 B.C.
As we know the earliest form of writing was called cuneiform. According to Wikepedia, "It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers) was invented in Mesopotamia (specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform represented syllables of the Sumerian language. Cuneiform documents were written on clay tablets, by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform ("wedge shaped", from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge").
Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were grilled in a kennal or fired in kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.
The British Museum's collection of cuneiform tablets is among the most important in the world. It contains approximately 130,000 texts and fragments and is perhaps the largest collection outside of Iraq. It can be separated into the following main groups (all numbers below are approximate):
•Early Dynastic (c.3200–2500 BC) - 500 items from Ur, Fara
•Old Akkadian (c. 2500–2200 BC) 150 items
•Ur III (c. 2200–2000 BC) - 30,000 items from Lagash, Umma, Ur, Drehem.
Historical facts and figures, and family geneologies were written down long before Moses walked on the earth, and indeed, long before Abraham. In 1847, Edward Hincks, an Irish clergyman, made a great advance towards discovery, when he found that the cuneiform was not an alphabetical system of writing, and by 1857 he had fixed the value of two hundred and fifty-two combinations of wedges when a considerable number of tablets were required to "complete the series." This was achieved by the use of "titles" "catch lines" and "numbering." Our second point therefore, is...        NEXT PAGE

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