Genesis Authorship:  Commonly ascribed to Moses, an individual not mentioned in historical sources apart from Biblical text, [whose name in Hebrew is mose, and in Egyptian it means to "give birth to Thutmose".  Moses is the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets who led the Israelites out of Egypt and as lawgiver, established their religion, prescribed the Torah for Israel: including its sanctuary, priesthood, sacrifices, and purification codes.

Purpose:  Moses may have recorded an oral and perhaps an earlier written record of the origin of the universe and planet earth.  His version is unique in that it  provides an ontological, ethical, and theological rendering regarding the status and meaning of natural things, spiritual reality, and human existence in a world given to degradation and chaos because of the diabolic induction of sin into the lineage of Adam.  The corruption of humanity, redemption, family life, different languages and nations, and the sinful career of Adam's generation for 2,391 years until the time of Moses, serve as an introduction to the law he presented to Israel, a Hebrew ethnic group.  The early chapters of Genesis have been continually under the scorching blaze of modern criticism, however, the facts of the Word of God by Moses' hand, when rightly presented, interpreted and understood, have never been disproven.

Genesis covers an immensely long period, longer perhaps than the rest of the Bible put together.  It begins in the distant past of creation, an event about whose absolute date we cannot even speculate, through millennia to reach Abraham at the end of chapter 11.  The first chapter in Genesis is devoted to the creation of the cosmos; whereas, chapter two in essential outline format, discusses humanity's relationship amid its deteriorating terrestrial, social and spiritual environments.   Chapters one and two contain just a few fundamental facts, while thirty-eight chapters in Genesis record the turbulent history of Abram's lineage.  At this point, the story line slows down and focuses on four generations of the family of promise as they move from Mesopotamia to the land of promise, only to conclude the book in Egypt.  Thus, we have a book of foundations that spans a time of unknown duration which follows the people of the Covenant as they travel from one end of the Near East to North Africa and back to the Near East.

Statistics:  Genesis is the first book of the Bible.  It is composed of 50 chapters; 1,533 verses; 38,267 words; 1,156 verses beginning with 'and"; 1,385 verses of history; 148 questions; 56 prophecies; 123 verses of fulfilled prophesy; 23 verses of unfulfilled prophesy; shortest chapter, 16; longest chapter, 24; 16 has 16 verses; Chapter 32 has 32 verses; 5 chapters have 34 verses; 4 have 22, 24, and 32 verses each; 106 commands; 71 promises; 326 predictions and other  data.  Let us Begin . . .