Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4 Traditions of Authorship
Genesis 1-11
When we read Scripture, we must read it from a critical
outlook. We must take into account the culture of the author,
his original intention, the literary techniques etc.
We find in Genesis 1-11 the basis
of
Poetry
The culture of the authors of Genesis did not distinguish
between knowledge and belief, science and philosophy,
history and religion. Ideas were expressed in a way that
would engage the entire person; body, mind and
soul.
Many short sayings that are easy to memorize
can be found in the Genesis text
Parallelism is a technique that is used quite often:
Remember you are dust
and to dust you shall return
Myth
A Myth is a symbolic story that illustrates views of a
particular people regarding the relationship
and experience
Authorship
The written text of the Old
Testament is not linear. One
person did not sit down and write
the text from start to finish,
rather, different books and parts
of the bible were written at
different times
The Pentateuch was originally
thought to have been written by
Moses himself, but modern
scholarship has strong evidence
that the books were put together
over a long period of time by several
different authors.
4 Traditions of Authorship
Tradition
Abbreviation
Composition
Period
Yahwist
Up to 950 BC
Elohist
Up to 850 BC
Deuteronomic
Up to 650 BC
Priestly
Up to 550 BC
anthropomorphism
attributing human characteristics to
nonhuman realities when
speaking of God.
Example:
God personally speaks to
the first man and woman
God
speaking to humans
indirectly through angels
or dreams.