Genesis Creation. The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity.
The narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In the first, Elohim creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses and sanctifies the seventh.
In the second story, God, now referred to by the personal name Yahweh, creates Adam, the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden, where he is given dominion over the animals. Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam and as his companion.
Borrowing themes from Mesopotamian mythology, but adapting them to the Israelite people's belief in one God, the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE and was later expanded by other authors into a work very like the one we have today. The two sources can be identified in the creation narrative: Priestly and Jahwistic.
The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism. Robert Alter described the combined narrative as compelling in its archetypal character, its adaptation of myth to monotheistic ends. Misunderstanding the genre of the Genesis creation narrative, meaning the intention of the author and the culture within which they wrote, can result in a misreading; misreading t