Genesis creation narrative

The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of Judaism and Christianity, found in chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Genesis. While both faith traditions have historically understood the account as a single unified story, modern scholars of biblical criticism have identified it as being a composite of two stories drawn from different sources expressing distinct views about the nature of God and creation.

According to the documentary hypothesis, the first account – which begins with Genesis 1:1 and ends with the first sentence of Genesis 2:4 – is from the later Priestly source (P), possibly composed during the 6th century BC. In this story, God (referred to with the title Elohim, a term related to the generic Hebrew word for 'god') creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, solely by issuing commands for it to be so – and then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh day (i.e., the Biblical Sabbath). The second account, which consists of the remainder of Genesis 2, is from an earlier non-Priestly source, traditionally the Jahwist source (J) dated to the 10th or 9th century BC. In this story, God (referred to by the personal name Yahweh) creates Adam, the first man, by "forming" him from dust – and places him in the Garden of Eden where he is given dominion over the animals. The first woman, "built" from a rib taken from Adam's side, is created to be his matching companion; after the couple are expelled from the Garden in Genesis 3 for disobeying God, Adam names the woman Eve.

The first major comprehensive draft of the Torah – the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy – theorized as being the J source, is thought to have been composed in either the late 7th or the 6th century BC, and was later expanded by other authors (the P source) into a work appreciably resembling the received text of Genesis. The authors of the text were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology and ancient Near Eastern cosmology, and borrowed several themes from them, adapting and integrating them with their unique belief in one God. The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism.

Scholars view Genesis as belonging to the literary genre of myth, a type of folklore consisting primarily of narrative that plays a fundamental role within a society. For scholars, this is in contrast to more vernacular usage of the term myth, which refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion.

Although Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians attribute the authorship of the Book of Genesis to Moses "as a matter of faith", the hypothesis of Mosaic authorship has been questioned since the 11th century and rejected in scholarship since the 17th century. Scholars of Biblical criticism conclude that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call the Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods".

The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts drawn from different sources. The first account, which spans from Genesis 1:1 to the first sentence of Genesis 2:4, is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P), largely dated to the 6th century BC. The second account, which comprises the remainder of Genesis 2, is from an older non-Priestly source – traditionally the Jahwist source (J) dated to the 10th or 9th century BC according to the documentary hypothesis.

The two stories were combined, but there is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form. A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th century BC. A sizeable minority of scholars believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, also known as the primeval history, can be dated to the 3rd century BC based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible.

The "Persian imperial authorisation", which has gained considerable interest and controversy,^{[citation needed]} proposes that the Persians, after their conquest of Babylon in 538 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single legal code accepted by the entire community. According to this theory, there were two powerful groups in the community: the priestly families who controlled the Temple and the landowning families who made up the "elders", which were in conflict over many issues. Each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.