There are four major textual witnesses to the book of Genesis: the Masoretic tex

t, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and fragments of Genesis found at Q

umran. The Qumran group provides the oldest manuscripts but covers only a small
proportion of the book. In general, the Masoretic Text is well preserved and rel
iable, but there are many individual instances where the other versions preserve
a superior reading.[12]
For much of the 20th century most scholars agreed that the five books of the Pen
tateuch Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy came from four sources,
the Yahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source, each tellin
g the same basic story, and joined together by various editors.[13] Since the 19
70s there has been a revolution in scholarship: the Elohist source is now widely
regarded as no more than a variation on the Yahwist, while the Priestly source
is increasingly seen not as a document but as a body of revisions and expansions
to the Yahwist (or "non-Priestly") material. (The Deuteronomistic source does n
ot appear in Genesis).[14]
In composing the Patriarchal history the Yahwist drew on four separate blocks of
traditional stories about Abraham, Jacob, Judah and Joseph, combining them with
genealogies, itineraries and the "promise" theme to create a unified whole.[15]
Similarly, when composing the "primeval history" he drew on Greek and Mesopotam
ian sources, editing and adding to them to create a unified work that fit his th
eological agenda.[16] The Yahwistic work was then revised and expanded into the
final edition by the authors of the Priestly source.[17]
Examples of repeated and duplicate stories are used to identify the separate sou
rces. In Genesis these include three different accounts of a Patriarch claiming
that his wife was his sister, the two creation stories, and the two versions of
Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert.[18]
This leaves the question of when these works were created. Scholars in the first
half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that the Yahwist was produced i
n the monarchic period, specifically at the court of Solomon, and the Priestly w
ork in the middle of the 5th century BC (the author was even identified as Ezra)
, but more recent thinking is that the Yahwist was written either just before or
during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century, and the Priestly final edition
was made late in the Exilic period or soon after.[6]
As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest
, although still controversial is "Persian imperial authorisation". This propose
s that the Persians, after their conquest of Babylon in 538 BC, agreed to grant
Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the
local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community.
The two powerful groups making up the community the priestly families who control
led the Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wandering
s, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced the
ir own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land were in conflict over man
y issues, and each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of
greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooper
ate in producing a single text.[19]
Genre[edit]
Genesis is perhaps best seen as an example of "antiquarian history", a type of l
iterature telling of the first appearance of humans, the stories of ancestors an
d heroes, and the origins of culture, cities and so forth.[20] The most notable
examples are found in the work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their
intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and hero
ic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth, legend, and fact
s.[21] Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the b
asic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old

is valuable, nothing is eliminated.[22]

such antiquarian histories: antiquity is
raditions to the nations (the neighbours
, and to reconcile and unite the various

Ska also points out the purpose behind

needed to prove the worth of Israel's t
of the Jews in early Persian Palestine)
factions within Israel itself.[22]

Themes[edit]
Joseph recognized by his brothers (Lon Pierre Urbain Bourgeois, 1863)
Promises to the ancestors[edit]
In 1978 David Clines published his influential The Theme of the Pentateuch
influ
ential because he was one of the first to take up the question of the theme of t
he entire five bo