Is Genesis written in the first person or the third person?

It's clearly third person. The author who has nothing to do with any of the persons or events is documenting the story. In this case, the story had been in existence prior to its writing, and was likely handed down from generation to generation verbally (the early Israelites, as well as many other civilizations of the time, were oral-tradition driven).

 

Grammatically, it is in 3rd person. Theologically, it is also in 1st person since it is also the Word of God.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Genesis was probably written during the Babylonian captivity.

 

Genesis was written while Moses was in exile from Egypt - during that 40 years - he wrote the book of Genesis and possibly also the book of Job.

But that is not a view humanists would be happy with --

Obviously.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Job is probably Jobab, the son of Joktan, brother of Peleg. What he saw in terms of natural disasters fits the time of Peleg and immediately after.

Genesis is primarily first person accounts although the last section was probably written by Joseph's scribe and not by Joseph himself.

Moses came into possession of the tablets and collated and edited them. We have clear record of some of his editorial comments, such as Genesis 2:5-6

 

It means that even though humans may have written it in 3rd person when referring to God, that since it is the Word of God itself, it is also a 1st person account of the creation as well. That is, unless you believe the Bible is simply the word of man and nothing else. I personally believe it is the Word of God. This seems so simple to me that I am surprised I even have to explain.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Gold Dragon, did you just edit out your question about sources? If so, you did it after I started looking up some stuff!

Here is an interesting article about all of this:
http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/genesis.htm

The material seems to consistently go back to Wiseman and his book New Discoveries About Genesis, written in 1936.

 

It is interesting. However, Genesis 1:1-2:4a has only one possibility of an Author, since there was only one Eyewitness to creation, so that part HAD to be divine revelation, or at least divine writing (as He did with the Ten Commandments).

 

No argument there. Only curiosity about the human authors...smile.

 

Why can't Genesis be a result of both complilation AND the direction of God in doing the compiling? I agree Genesis certainly shows signs of being compiled from more than one source, and the sources were obviously regarded with great reverence and treated with such devotion by the compiler(s) that we can still see the occasional conflicting accounts that remain.

But God certainly inspired the compilation of Genesis as we know it.