Tom Constable’s Notes on the Bible

Notes on Genesis

2022 Edition

Dr. Thomas L. Constable

Introduction

Title

Each book of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament, called “The Pentateuch” since about A.D. 160, called “The Torah” [instruction] by the Jews), originally received its title in the Hebrew Bible from the first word or words in the book. There are three divisions in the Hebrew Bible: The Law (Torah), The Prophets, and The Writings (cf. Luke 24:44).1 The Torah was originally one book, but the translators of the Septuagint (Greek) version (ca. 250 B.C.) divided it into the five books that we have. The Jews regarded the stories in the Torah as divine instruction for them, as well as the commandments and sermons, since they too teach theology and ethics.

The English title “Genesis” has come to us from the Latin Vulgate translation (Liber Genesis) made by the early church father Jerome (ca. A.D. 390). The Latin title came from the Septuagint translation. “Genesis” is a transliteration of the Greek word geneseos, the Greek word that translates the Hebrew toledot. This Hebrew word is the key word in identifying the structure of Genesis, and the English translators have usually rendered it “account” or “generations” or “history” or “records” (2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2).2

Date

The events recorded date back to the creation of the world.

Many Christians believe the earth is millions of years old. They usually base this belief on the statements of scientists and understand Scripture in the light of these statements. Likewise, many Christians believe that the human race began hundreds of thousands of years ago for the same reason.

Many evangelicals believe that the earth is not much older than 10,000 years. They base this on the genealogies in Scripture (Gen. 5; 10; 11; et al.), which they understand to be “open” (i.e., not complete).3 Evangelicals usually hold to a more recent date for man’s creation—more recent than the millions of years that evolutionists postulate—for the same reason.

“The history of man on the earth may easily be more than the supposed six thousand years and with no violence to the testimony of the Sacred Text.”4

Another group of evangelicals believes that these genealogies are either “closed” (i.e., complete) or very close to complete. This leads them to date the creation of the world and man about 6,000 years ago. I shall discuss the question of how we should interpret the genealogies in the exposition of the chapters where they occur.

Many interpreters have placed the date of composition of Genesis much later than Moses’ lifetime. Some of them do this because Genesis contains some names that became common designations of people and places after Moses’ time (e.g., the Philistines, Dan, et al.). I shall discuss these anomalies in the exposition to follow as we come to them. See also the section below: “Writer.” If one accepts Mosaic authorship, as most conservative evangelicals do, ...