When was the Book of Genesis written?
The alternate theory to that of single authorship by Moses is the compilation theory (officially known as the Documentary Theory), which indicates that the book of Genesis, along with other books of the Old Testament, were assembled over a long period of time from the traditional tales of Israel by several different authors. There could have been a great many sources for the stories of the Bible, but there are several very distinctive writers whose work appears throughout the Old Testament. For example, the author now known as J (the Jahwist, sometimes referred to as the Jehovist because of his consistent identification of God as Jehovah) is considered to have written a good deal of the material contained in Genesis, but also to have written material included in Exodus, Kings, and possibly Judges and I and II Samuel. J is the earliest known source of biblical material (in written form, as the traditions must go back much farther) and his work is dated to about 900 BC. J was an elegant
