A question about the Bible for you Bible scholars.?

Question

Is Genesis the actual first book of the Bible, I was told it is not, that Exodus is. So if thats true wonder why they are reversed?

Answer 1

No. The book of Job was probably written first. However, the order of the Pentateuch is correct as given.

Answer 2

Because Genesis is an attempt to explain the creation of the universe by God, and there was nobody around at that time to write about it. So it was done much later, once man started believing in a single God instead of multiple pagan deities (around the time of Exodus), and saw the need to explain the world from this new perspective. They did so using myths that already existed in other cultures. For example the sumerians had accounts of the creation of the universe (Enuma ellis) and the Flood (the Poem of Gilgamesh) that are very similar to the Genesis account... But for obvious chronological reasons, they placed the account at the beginning of "The Book".

Answer 3

Genesis is indeed the first book of the Bible in both the Jewish Torah (Septugant) and the Christian Old Testament. However, some of the Books in the Torah were taken out while others were re-arranged for the Old Testament. The Books of the Prophets were placed at the end on the Old Testament as an "introduction" to the New Testament so as to "prophesize" the coming of the Jewish (and eventual Christian) Messiah.

Answer 4

Chronologically, Genesis clearly comes first. There is evidence within Exodus that suggests that God was dictating Genesis to Moses before the Revelation at Sinai. It's all in how one reads the original text in the original language.

That said, it is a definite principle that the 5 books of Moses are not necessarily present in chronological order and often it is obviously not.

Answer 5

All the books of the Bible were not written in order, of course. But Genesis is put first because it tells what happened first. Kind of like writing the body of a paragraph before the introduction.

Answer 6

Writer: Moses

Place Written: Wilderness

Writing Completed: 1513 B.C.E.

Time Covered: “In the beginning” to 1657 B.C.E.

IMAGINE picking up a book of only 50 short chapters and finding in the first page or two the only accurate account of the earliest history of man and a record showing the relationship of man to God, his Creator, as well as to the earth with its myriads of creatures! In those few pages, you gain, too, a deep insight into God’s purpose in putting man on earth. Reading a little farther, you discover why man dies and the reason for his present troubled condition, and you are enlightened regarding the real basis for faith and for hope, even regarding identifying God’s instrument for deliverance—the Seed of promise. The remarkable book that contains all these things is Genesis, the first of the 66 books of the Bible.



Bible Book Number 2—Exodus

Writer: Moses

Place Written: Wilderness

Writing Completed: 1512 B.C.E.

Time Covered: 1657-1512 B.C.E. evidently so.............but only by a year.........remember your counting backwards to get to Christs birth.

Answer 7

Exodus was written first, but Genesis fits well as a starting point if you're telling a narrative. Except its inconsistencies and cut-and-paste style make it not a very GOOD narrative.

It's like the Lord of the Rings trilogy being written first, but The Hobbit being added at a later date and inserted as a prequel to the more dramatic narrative.

^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ^v^

Answer 8

You must keep in mind the Old Testament is a documentary of sorts. They are put into the bible in event order.- kinda- The book of Geneses was not written before Exodus but the events took place prior to any other events.

Answer 9

Chronologically, in the story, Genesis is before Exodus. Exodus did reach it's finished form first, but that's not the same thing.

Answer 10

The first 5 books of the bible were compiled by Moses.
Jews refer to it as the Pentateuch.
Since Genesis means 'Origin' or 'Birth', If it wasn't originally the first book, it seems strange that it has such a title.
BUT
Even if it wasn't, so what?