Did Moses use source material from Adam, Abraham, and others to write Genesis, and does that answer the JEDP hypothesis?
A viewer asks whether Moses used source material handed down from God, Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and others to write Genesis, and whether that can answer the JEDP documentary hypothesis.
Answer
As conservative Catholic Christians, we hold that the Pentateuch itself says in about a dozen places that Moses wrote it, the only exception being his death, which Joshua would write. So where is he getting his information? Inspiration is not that God necessarily gives the author the exact information, but that he takes the facts the author already knows in his intellect and expresses them in such a way that there is no error. Even the most intelligent man recalling events from memory could make mistakes, so inspiration takes whatever is known and filters it through the Holy Spirit such that what comes out is true, though not necessarily everything that could have been said. The patriarchs mentioned in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 were the leading patriarchs of their dynasties, and their responsibility was to keep notes, what Genesis refers to about a dozen times as the toledoth, the records they wrote on stone slabs and carried with them wherever they traveled. Those records would have been taken aboard the ark by Noah as well, so all that history was preserved, and Moses came along and collated it all because God told him to, writing it down with ink on papyrus or vellum. So you do not need JEDP. What these men are trying to do is knock Moses out as the author of the Pentateuch and make the Bible a liar, and once you do that there is no telling what you can do, because then science and philosophy will just replace it all. Do not believe them for a second, because the Bible is crystal clear that Moses was chosen by God to write these things down.