So when we say that Moses is the author of Genesis and the author of the Pentateuch as a whole, are we saying that he wrote every last line, every sentence, in every word and syllable and letter? No, we're not saying that. It is perfectly acceptable to maintain. The church teaches us I'm going to take you in just a moment here to the Magisterial document, the Pontagal Bill of Commission, but it is perfectly acceptable to say that Moses is the primary substantial predominant author, or everyone to word that, but that he also perhaps used other sources available to him at the time, oral sources or written sources, that he used those in the final composition of the book.
All right, it is also perfectly acceptable to say that while he is the predominant author, substantial principal author, that Genesis and the Pentateuch as a whole took its final form over this mysterious period of time over the ages, even up to after the exile. So yes, perhaps as we absolutely had some role in it as it took its final form, okay? Not that there are these original sources, JEDP, like we discussed, there's problems with that theory. It doesn't make sense.
It's just a theory. There's no proof. There's no internal evidence, external evidence. It's just a hypothesis.
Okay, so we look at all the internal and external evidence from Mosaic authorship, but we're not saying that he wrote every last little word. So the Pontagal Bill of Commission has this fantastic document. In the early 20th century, in 1906, they had to address, in fact, the title here is on Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and they had to address all of these other theories that came from the 19th century that were trying to undermine Mosaic authorship, and simultaneously trying to undermine the veracity of God's word. So here it is in 1906 and June 27th, the Pontagal Bill of Commission, known often as the PBC.
That office doesn't exist anymore. That's a long history lesson right there. But nevertheless, this document, I would say, is authoritative, and they address the authorship of the Pentateuch by Moses by maintaining these points that I just shared with you. So number one, it's all here in your notes.
Based on the internal evidence of the text itself, statements of Mosaic authorship in both the testaments, that's the internal evidence that we looked at just a few moments ago from the Old Testament and the New Testament. It maintains internal evidence. Now, it maintains Moses as the author. So based on the internal evidence, as well as the witness of Jewish and Christian tradition, we looked at all of that as well, Jews as well as Samaritans we threw in there, as well as the Christians, the apostles, and the early church fathers.
They maintain that Moses is the author and no one else. In the Bible and outside of the Bible, there are no complete competing claims to authorship. Internal External Evidence says it's Moses. Then it goes on to say the Catholic Church maintains Moses as the substantial author of the Pentateuch.
It's not a direct quote, it's kind of a summary there. So that's everything that we just went through. So he's the substantial author. There's no one else who claims to be the author.
Number two, Moses may have had secretaries to assist him in the composition of the work. That's totally acceptable. He's got a lot going on leading the people out of slavery into freedom from Egypt to the promise man. He's got a lot going on.
They could have totally used secretaries. Not that he couldn't write it himself because, keep in mind, a lot of people forget this. Moses received the best education in the world during his time. He was raised in Pharaoh's court, received the best of the best formation education that they had to offer at the time.
He's incredibly well formed, incredibly well educated. He could have totally written, again, the substantial principal work that we now have as the Pentateuch, or he could have dictated it to a secretary. In any case, it's perfectly fine to accept that. But don't forget that Moses received the best of the best education in Pharaoh's court.
Alright, so again, it's possible and probable that Moses used the sources, oral or written sources that were available to him at the time. Now we don't have these sources anymore, but he had them and he was able to incorporate them into the work. Now remember, God is the primary author of Scripture. He guides this whole process.
It's God breathed. But Moses is a true author and he is using the sources that he had at the time. That's logical and that's acceptable. And it's also logical and acceptable.
Like we said, he didn't write every last little word. He probably wrote the substance of it. Then over the course of time, other people added it to it, redacted it, expanded it to whatever it might have been until it took its final form and at the time of Jesus and the Apostles. It's totally acceptable to say that because some people will argue against Mosaic authorship by saying there are verses and lines in the Bible that Moses could not have written.
So for example, in Numbers it says, Moses was the meekest man on the face of the planet. Now if you're the humblest dude on the face of the planet, you're probably not going to point that out. So it's perfectly fine, like let's say Joshua or Ezra, whoever it might have been on both sides of that continuum there of the chronological time period. Let's just say it was Joshua.
Joshua wrote down he was the meekest man on the face of the planet because Moses is dealing with a bunch of knuckleheads, a bunch of hard-hearted wicked, sinful Israelites in that first generation. And so the Scriptures are going to clarify that he was a leader who was humble and meek. He probably didn't write that. Also at the end of Deuteronomy, it talks about his death in the past tense.
That would be a pretty interesting trick to be able to write about your own death in the past tense. So it's fine that other people wrote these two examples, wrote these verses, but you don't need to reject an mosaic authorship in its whole just because you have some of these examples. It could easily be explained by other editors or reductors or authors later on in the mysterious course of time. So again, documentary hypothesis, all the problems that we discussed, the origin in the 19th century, the Church of Pontifical Bible Commission clarifies that Moses is the substantial author, but we have these other elements in play as well that we just discussed.
So hopefully that makes sense. That's enough on mosaic authorship. Now let's move here to how it's organized and how it's structured because it's beautifully structured and organized. It's not haphazard.
Too many people just dive straight into the scriptures, but not looking at the big picture because the structure of the book or the epistle or the gospel, whatever it is, is really amazing. It actually demonstrates a great theological truth. So Genesis is beautifully organized. And here in your notes, this is this next section, Roman numeral one.
There are two ways to look at the structure of Genesis, how it's organized. And these two ways are theologically interconnected. They're not separate sections. They're theologically interconnected that's trying to communicate an important truth.
Okay, so the first way that Genesis is structured is according to major time periods. All right, so there are two major time periods that Genesis focuses on. In the first instance, it's Genesis one through 11 that's known as primeval history, and it records four major events. Creation, the fall, the flood, and the tower of battle, four major events.
Now this is universal in scope, right? It's over a vast unknown amount of time, I would argue, vast unknown amount of time, and it's focusing really on the drama of the human, families, origins, and fall, the origin of sin, being scattered and exiled from God. So universal in scope, over a vast amount of time, focusing on the drama of the human family. All right, creation of Adam, and then of course the generations that come after him leading up for the devoured battle.
So that's Genesis one through 11, four major events, universal in scope, the human family. Then Genesis zeros in and narrows in on the patriarchal history. In Genesis 12 through 50, okay? So now there are not four major events, there are four major characters, the patriarchs.
Now then you can argue the matriarchs alongside them. But these, of course, are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Now this is more particular in scope. It's zeroing in and honing in on one particular family.
Not the human family, but one family of Abraham, okay? And the origins of Abraham, his call, which of course is going to become the family of God, and it's a shortened period of time in the second millennium BC. So you can already see that these two periods, they're very parallel for events, for patriarchs, for characters, universal in scope, then it narrows down to be particular in scope, one gigantic human family. Now the one family of Abraham that will become the family of God, okay?
Now there are not two sections that are completely unrelated, like after you get to the tower of battle. You're like, okay, wow, that was interesting. Now let's talk about Abraham. No, there's always a flow.
There's always a logical, theological, and logical connection here. And that is that Genesis begins with the creation of the human family in Adam. But Adam, because of Adam's sin, we'll talk about this in a future lesson. Adam is spiritually Adam and humanity as a whole, is spiritually exiled from God's presence.
The relationship and the intimacy, the covenant that Adam had with God is now broken thanks to his disobedience and thanks to his pride. So this gets even worse, the human family is scattered abroad after Babel. Sin just gets worse and worse during these 11 chapters. So, the creation of the human family in right relation to God, then thanks to sin, there is exile and they're scattered, okay?
Then the theological flow is God wants to begin to rebuild the human family and restore the human family in a new creation. That's why it zeroes in on Abraham because he's going to be the father of God's renewed family. So Abraham's call comes right after the tower of Babel. So they're called Abraham and his faith in the patriarchs are going to be called by God to be an instrument of blessing to all the human family.
This is ultimately going to come back to Jesus. Jesus will fulfill all this. But the beginning of the return from spiritual exile, the beginning of the healing from sin starts with Abraham. So that's where the process begins here.
So that's what's going on, focusing on the universal in scope and sin and exile. But the return from exile going back to God, back to the garden, back to paradise that'll ultimately be completed with Jesus begins with the call of Abraham and his family. That's the flow. So hopefully you're following it, okay?
So that's the first way to understand the structure and the organization of Genesis. The next way, which again is very much interconnected, is by means of 10 cycles, okay? In Hebrew, there is this word. It's called tole-dote.
It's right here in your notes, okay? Letter B here. It's like cycles, really it's generations or genealogies. And there are 10 of them that organize and structure of the entire book of Genesis.
So by the way, the word Genesis, remember at the beginning of this lesson we talked about, the titles for the book, Genesis comes from the Greek, Genesis, generations. It's really translating tole-dote here. It's not translating in the beginning. I told you to pay attention.
This is why it's called Genesis in the Greek Old Testament. Okay, well in any case, there's these 10 cycles, 10 generations and genealogies. It's a very, very important word. We tend to skip over genealogies, okay?
But they're really important. And the fact that there are 10 of them is also really important. Because in the Bible, 10 is the number of completion of perfection of totality, not 7. Everyone gets this wrong, not everyone.
But it is often misquoted. There's misinformation out there. 7 is the number of the covenant. And I'll talk a lot about this when we go through Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 in the next couple of lessons.
7 is covenant. I mean, the Hebrew word for 7 is covenant is covenant. Oh, we'll get there. But 10 think, 10 plagues, 10 commandments.
We'll talk about that in our study on Exodus. If you want to go to the Salvation History course, we go through all of it as well. But 10 is completion and totality and perfection. So this is significant here because you've got 10 cycles.
And surprise, surprise, there are 5 of these tole-dote in the primeval history and there are 5 in the patriarchal history. They're listed here in your notes. So it's a perfect division here. And that's not an accident.
So as you can see here in your notes, the first tole-dote to the generations is in chapter 2, verse 4. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth. And then you have 5-1, these are the generations of the tole-dote of Adam. Then of Noah, then of Noah's sons, Shim Ham and J.
5. And then you have Shim, the fifth one, that's the first one. Because he's the first born of Noah. We'll talk about all of that in future lessons.
So 5 in primeval history. And then there are 5 in patriarchal history. As you can see, 1127, these are the generations of the total of Tarah, which is really Abraham's father. And then of Ishmael, Isaac, and Esau, and Jacob.
So 5 in primeval history, 5 in patriarchal history, 10 is the number of completion, totality, and perfection. So what is the theological message that's trying to be communicated here through the structure and the division of this beautiful book? Well, this structure through the use of the number 10 symbolically explains, get this. This is really important.
This symbolically explains the complete origins of all things by God from the view of life-transmitting genealogies, beginning with the human family of Adam, okay? Leading up to the renewed family of God in the man Abraham, in the family of Abraham, okay? So new life is going to be promised. A new creation will be promised.
It's already promised in Genesis 3. But it's going to begin to start taking shape in the call of Abraham, okay? So that's that, remember, the universal in scope, then zeroing in the particular family. That's what's going on.
But it's through the view of life-transmitting genealogies because God is the author of life. So God creates all life with in Genesis chapter 1 and 2. The heavens and the earth and Adam and creation, it falls. But now through life-generations, all right, life-transmitting generations, this is going to become restored in a new creation, beginning with the call of Abraham.
So I hope that makes sense because this is the overarching theme. Really, it sets the whole tone for all of scripture. All right, creation, and then exile from sin. And then there's going to become the promise of new creation in Jesus Christ and Adam, but it begins with Abraham and Abraham's family.
All right, so this is the way to see the structure of Genesis, and it tees it up very, very nicely for all of scripture as well. All right, so that's enough for organization and structure. Now we want to begin to talk about the questions. A big question is Genesis historical?
All these events, and Adam and Eve, and Abraham and his family, and Noah and the flood are the historical. How are we to understand this? And that's what we're going to look at in the next section here in your notes. I'm Dr.
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