When Was Genesis Written? (Debates and Evidence)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

As the opening book of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, Genesis introduces foundational accounts of the creation of the cosmos, the origins of humanity, and the ancestral history of Israel. These stories have shaped theological reflection, ethical traditions, artistic expression, and even political discourse for millennia. Yet one fundamental historical question remains the subject of intense scholarly debate: when was Genesis written?

This debate has touched on fundamental questions about Scripture, history, and interpretation. In this article, we’ll investigate both traditional claims and modern scholarly evidence to better understand how this ancient text came into being. Who was Genesis written to? We’ll also briefly explore that question and the surrounding historical context.

When Was Genesis Written (and Why Does It Matter)?

While they may see cultural value in the knowledge, even some devout Jews and Christians have wondered whether the dating of Genesis matters at all. If they accept that it explains divine truths about the origins of the universe and the Jewish people, what is so important about precisely pinning down when it was written?

Atheists, meanwhile, might say that while the book has a certain historical value, showing the ancient beliefs and practices of the Jewish people over time, nailing down an exact date isn’t all that necessary. So, how old is the Book of Genesis, and why should it matter?

First of all, as John J. Collins writes in his Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,

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While this is certainly true of the entire Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), it is perhaps even more true of Genesis, which purports to describe the creation of the universe.  Knowing when the Book of Genesis was written can therefore point us to the authorship of the book and the intended scope of its author or authors. As Collins says,

In addition, we are all aware of the vast influence the book has exerted over everything from theology to public policy. This may explain why interpretations of Genesis throughout history have varied so widely and been debated so fiercely. Knowing a bit about the sociohistorical context of the book’s composition through accurate dating can help us to ground our interpretations in historical facts and thus to see the text more clearly.

Finally, in a world in which the Bible has often been interpreted as scientific fact, Peter Enns writes

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Genesis narratives can merely be discounted, of course, but it does mean that more information about when and why it was written can help us to get more interpretive information from those narratives.

However, since the author or authors of Genesis never name themselves, let’s look at theories that have been proposed about its authorship.

Traditional Claims: The Books of Moses

Tradition says that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible — known as the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch in Greek (from pente "five" and teukhos “vessel or tool"). The word “Torah” is usually translated into English as Law, and while this is technically correct, John J. Collins notes that the sense of the Hebrew word is also tied to the idea of traditional teachings passed down from generation to generation.

Where did the idea come from that Moses wrote these books? Mostly from other biblical books. For example, the last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, begins by saying “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan.” Thus, the rest of the book is attributed to him, prompting ancient interpreters to believe that all the books of the Pentateuch were written by Moses.

Moreover, Collins notes that

By the 1st century CE, the Gospel writers reported that Jesus had indirectly claimed that Moses wrote the Torah as well:

Likewise, while debating with Jewish authorities in John 5:45–47, Jesus says

While this doesn’t prove that Moses wrote the books, it does prove, at the very least, that the Torah was widely attributed to Moses in Jesus’ time.

However, cracks in the theory of Mosaic authorship started to form, first in the medieval period. A 12th-century rabbi and scholar named Abraham Ibn Ezra questioned the Mosaic authorship of the Torah, raising several logical questions that were impossible to ignore. For example,

When did Moses write Genesis? Modern scholars have concluded that if Moses indeed wrote Genesis and the other four books of the Pentateuch, he could only have done so in the 13th or 14th centuries BCE, the period written about in Exodus. However, as Simon Oliver writes in his book Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed, modern scholars have confirmed that Genesis’ composition occurred much later (more on that below).

If Moses didn’t write Deuteronomy, then his authorship of the rest of the Torah, including Genesis was also in doubt.

Modern Study of the Pentateuch

While opinions about the authorship of Genesis and the rest of the Torah continued to proliferate, modern scholarly studies began, oddly enough, with the writing of a French professor of medicine Jean Astruc (1684–1766). Although not a biblical scholar, Astruc posed one simple question that Peter Enns says initiated a multitude of further studies: Why does God have two names in Genesis?

The two names Astruc was referring to were Elohim, the name for God in Genesis 1, and Yahweh, the name for God in Genesis 2 and 3. However, Astruc also noticed that the name change corresponded to two very different creation stories. Based on this, he decided that these two versions of creation were written by two different authors. Still clinging to the idea of Moses being involved in Genesis’ composition, Astruc proposed that Moses, as an editor, had stitched the material from these two sources together into one book.

Meanwhile, a 17th-century British scholar, Richard Simon, had gone even further than Astruc. In The Hebrew Bible Today: An Introduction to Critical Issues, John Van Seters writes that Simon, a Catholic priest and scholar, believed that the Pentateuch was the result of multiple authors writing in different time periods. Although vague, this theory would be verified and supplemented with more detail by later scholars.

This would eventually result in the documentary hypothesis, an idea proposed by several 19th-century German biblical scholars, but most commonly associated with Julius Wellhausen. This hypothesis proposed that the Pentateuch was the result of four different sources: the Yahwist, or J source, the Elohist, or E source, the Deuteronomist, or D source, and the Priestly, or P source.

This was a profoundly influential theory, remaining the most prominent theory all the way through the 1970s. Based on it, scholars like Wellhausen determined that the final form of the Pentateuch as a compilation of all four sources was completed by the 6th or 5th centuries BCE.  However, in the 1980s, this theory was called into doubt and has since been discarded, or heavily amended, by many critical scholars.

Instead, the current scholarly consensus, known as the supplementary hypothesis, says that there were only three rather than four Pentateuchal sources. While J, D, and P remain the designations of these three sources, the Elohist source is now seen as revisions of the J source.

Some scholars have differing views when exploring what year was Genesis written and how it fits into broader history. Simon Oliver writes that since the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of scholars have agreed that the book of Genesis was written after the Babylonian Captivity and exile, the conquest of Jerusalem in which many prominent Jews were forcibly taken to Babylon in 597 BCE. There is, however, some variation in this opinion.

For instance, in his book How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?: A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study, Ronald Hendel says that based on the type of Hebrew used in Genesis, the book was written around 550 BCE. However, a general date of composition in the 5th century BCE is the virtually unanimous scholarly consensus, although most acknowledge that its narratives were based on earlier oral traditions that may go back much further. While it would be nice to know what precise year the book of Genesis was written, nailing down the exact year of such an ancient text is all but impossible without more information.

Who Was Genesis Written For?

Many people curious about this text’s place in history also wonder to whom was Genesis written. As I noted, the current consensus of a date of composition in the 5th century BCE rules out Mosaic authorship. This makes it more likely that the book of Genesis was written by and for post-exilic Jews struggling to maintain — and perhaps even refashion — their collective identity after a long exile and widespread Jewish assimilation to the Babylonian way of life.

Conclusion

In Hebrew, the name of the book of Genesis is Bərēʾšīṯ (pronounced behr–eh–SHEET), the word meaning “beginning” or “in the beginning.” This indicates not only how the book starts but that it is concerned with how the world came to be as it is. But in which historical period? When was Genesis written?

The oldest traditions, both Jewish and Christian, said that Moses wrote the book, along with Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Various ancient sources, including other books of the Hebrew Bible and even the Gospels, verify that this theory of authorship was long held to be true. In fact, many Jews and Christians still adhere to this belief.

However, beginning in the 17th century, scholars began to seriously question this assumption. They noticed, for instance, that God was given two different names aligned to the two very different creation stories in Genesis. This led eventually to the widespread notion that Genesis was written by multiple authors (or authorial traditions). While the theory has been adjusted over time — the original theory of 4 sources has been whittled down to 3 — this general idea has remained dominant.

Beyond its authorship, is the question of when was the book of Genesis written. Modern critical scholars studying the matter are confident that the final form was finished sometime in the 5th century BCE. While this is much later than tradition claims, it makes better sense of the historical and archeological information available to us now.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Hebrew Bible, check out Bart Ehrman’s course In the Beginning: History, Legend, and Myth in Genesis and his virtual conference Insights into the Hebrew Bible.