Genesis

Genesis (abbreviated form of genesis kosmou, "origin of the world"), the word used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew Beresh ith, the name of the first book of the Pentateuch. Genesis, like the rest of the Pentateuch, is written on a clearly-conceived plan - viz. to show how God chose out a people sacred to Himself, and to narrate the circumstances which preceded and attended that manifestation of the Divine Will. First among these, in order of time, was the creation of the human race itself and the place of its habitation. As the history advances, its scope gradually becomes narrower, everything being left on one side which has no direct bearing on the writer's main purpose. The narrative moves forward rapidly till we reach the call of Abraham, which may be regarded as the central point of the book, as the giving of the law on Sinai is of the whole Pentateuch. From this point onwards we have a detailed account of the lives of the Hebrew patriarchs, in regular order from father to son, and the style at the same time becomes more lively and flowing. The theory, however, that the book resulted from a compilation of older documents, first propounded by the Belgian physician, Astruc (1753), is now accepted by many competent Biblical scholars. The number of documents is disputed, but one can trace at least two, distinguished by the names they respectively assign to the Almighty - Elohim and Jehova. It is generally held that the "Jehovist" incorporated in his own work that of an earlier "Elqhist." The "Jehovist" was probably Moses, but others refer the composition of the book to a much later period.