Have you ever wondered how Moses was able to write the first 11 chapters of the Bible and have a high degree of confidence that what he wrote was accurate. How would he have known about Adam and Eve and their sons? How could he have known the genealogies from Adam to Noah, or about the sons of Noah? Where did he get the historical narrative concerning ’The Great Flood’ or the ‘Tower of Babel’? All of these things happen centuries, and in some cases millennia, before Moses was born.
Of course, we know that all Scripture is given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit (see II Timothy 3:16) and because of this, there is no error in it. So when it speaks of historical events (i.e.; The Flood, Tower of Babel) we always understand it to have happened exactly as told. Assuming this to be true, what was the process by which God worked through Moses to provide us the first few chapters of the Bible, or even the whole book of Genesis for that matter? Because even the last chapter was written a few hundred years prior to his birth.
Well, I read a book several years ago called “The Genesis Record” by creation scientist Henry Morris, and he provided what I believe to be the most likely process as to how this book came to be. In it, he noted that there were only 3 possible methods by which it could have been produced, all of course being under the direction and oversight of the Holy Spirit. First, Moses could have received it by direct revelation from God. In other words, Moses acted as a secretary and just took dictation in producing it. Second, he could have received it all through oral traditions passed down from father to son, which he collected and edited, as guided by The Spirit; or third, he could have used actual written records of the past, collected and edited them, until he brought them together in its final form.
Morris believed the last option to be the case and I tend to agree, as we have no record of any historical narrative written anywhere else in Scripture dealing with the past that was produced by the first two methods. So, where did he get the records from?
Well, the clue to finding this answer may be located within the book of Genesis itself. Beginning with Genesis 2:4, we have a key phrase that occurs repeatedly throughout the book, “These are the generations of”. This first instance reads, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.” The second time it is used is in Genesis 5:1 that says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” The next in Genesis 6:9 we find, “This is the book of the generations of Noah.” In each case the information presented prior to the statement would have been events that were contemporary with the one identified (i.e.; Noah). For example, the information involved in Genesis before chapter 2:4 could have been provided only by God Himself to Adam, who may have recorded it. Everything from Genesis 2:4 to 5:1 happened during the life of Adam, and he could have recorded that. The same thing is true of the next section. We have this same phrase, “the generations of” occurring in Genesis 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 36:9 and 37:2.
So, based on this information, it is highly likely that what Moses did was to take these documents handed down by those before him and, being controlled by the Spirit of God, compiled and edited them to produce the book of Genesis in its final form, exactly as God intended it. Further evidence to support this possibility may be found in the fact that, according to Morris, even though Moses is credited with producing all of the Pentateuch, of the 200 times the book of Genesis is referred to in the New Testament, not once does it specifically refer to him as “the author” of the material.
For God’s glory and His alone,
Pastor Terry