The creation stories in Genesis indicate that the human being was created by God and provide a specific description of this process. The account as it now stands was written by looking backward from Israel's experience of God's action in creating and saving it as a people, and the account is derived from different traditions which now present God as the utterly transcendent Creator and Lord of the entire cosmos. The story was written by more than one hand over a period of time, and different versions of the stories in Genesis were combined. The Yahwist tradition, as it is called, was the first to combine the national story of Israel with mythic stories about primeval history. The Priestly tradition has been attributed to the priests of Jerusalem and takes a different point of view from the Yahwist tradition. The stories offer explanations on different levels for aspects of the human condition and for the establishment of a relationship.
The composition of the bible took over 1,000 years, with the Old Testament being developed between c. 1200 B.C. to 100 B.C. The process took place in Palestine, Babylonia, and peripheral regions. The Bible includes oral material handed down over several generations, and it was then put into written form by various people. Each book was rewritten by numerous hands (Miller and Miller 71). The primary segment of the Old Testament is a historical and legal work originally in nine volumes and extending from Genesis through II Kings 25. the first five books were separated from the whole about 400 B.c. as the Pentateuch. Jean Astruc in the eighteenth century noted that the Pentateuch is based on even earlier sources. The two chief sources have since been identified in Genesis on the basis of their respective uses of Yahweh or Elohim in referring to the deity. they are called J for the Jehovistic or Yahwistic source and E for the Elohistic source, and P for the Priestly source was later sepa...