Who wrote Genesis?

Did you know there's a debate about who wrote Genesis? Most Christians agree that Moses was involved. But there are some different ideas on how he did it. That's because many of the events in Genesis actually happened thousands of years before Moses' life. Just think about it: Moses writing about Adam is like you writing about Nehemiah--more than 2000 years later! Traditionally, it's thought that God simply told (inspired) Moses what to write down. Or stories of the distant past were passed down orally, and Moses wrote these accounts down with God's inspiration guiding him. While certainly possible because God was involved, every other book in the Bible was written by men who were eye witnesses or knew eye witnesses. For example, the book of Luke was written within 30 years of Christ's death and resurrection. The author knew people who witnessed Jesus' life and ministry. Because of this and other factors, we can have confidence that Luke got it right. (Note that there are people out there who are trying to discredit the Gospels by saying they were written hundreds of years later.) Here's another interesting idea about Genesis and Moses: Moses was the editor of early Genesis rather than the actual author. In other words, Moses included ancient written accounts for early Genesis, but he authored the later parts. According to this theory, people like Adam and Noah wrote down what they witnessed. These accounts were passed down though the generations to Moses. He used them because they were eye witness accounts, and he himself wrote about what he knew. The main evidence for this are unique sentences found throughout Genesis 1-11: "This is the account of ___." According to this theory, these markers come at the end of a passage and tell the reader who wrote the preceding account. If you ignore the chapter breaks and headings--which were added much later--this way of understanding early Genesis really works! So what does it matter? If early Genesis was written by people who actually witnessed the events--rather than hundreds to thousands of years after the fact--we have good reason to see this book as accurate history. Did you know that not everyone views Genesis 1-11 as history? Some see it as metaphor or even legend. That's one big reason why there are so many different ideas about origins, even among Christians.