Who wrote the book of genesis in the bible? (please don’t respond “some jewish guy”, i need specifics)
IANA;j but IIRC, the traditional answer is that the first five books were transcribed by Moses directly from the words of the Divine Author Himself.
KneadtoKnow is correct in his answer – traditionally, Moses is held to be the author.
However, a widely-held scholarly view is called the JEDP hypothesis. Its main idea is that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) are the result of compiling four earlier works, or threads. The initials JEDP stand for the four supposed threads, which are
J – Jahvistic (or Yahvistic)
This source is believed to have come from the southern kingdom of Israel.
E – Elohistic
This source is believed to have primarily concerned itself with the affairs of the northern kingdom.
D – Deuteronomistic
The contributions of this thread are believed to be mostly in the book that bears its name – Deuteronomy
P – Priestly
This is believed to be the major part of the Pentateuch and concerns itself with Israel’s worship history.
I studied all this in college, but the brief summaries above were put together from information I found here.
If this hypothesis is true (and it has many detractors), chances are that the history of each of the four threads is as complicated as the history of the Pentateuch itself.
So the simple answer is Moses. The more complex answer is nobody really knows.