It has long been recognized that a natural break occurs in the middle of Genesis 2:4, which separates two very different creation accounts.  Genesis 2:4 begins, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created."   This phrase, "These are the generations of…," is used 11 times in the first five books of the Bible,[1] and it is a queue that the proximate verses constitute a contiguous stand-alone passage within the text.  It is a very common way to indicate an independent passage.  Hence, Genesis 1:1 thru 2:4a is one passage, and the text following it is a separate unrelated passage.

     Genesis 2:4b marks the start of a different creation account: "In the day that Yahweh-Elohim made the earth and the heavens…"  From the very first verse of this second account, three points are in tension: 

In Genesis 1, God is called Elohim.  In Genesis 2, God is called Yahweh-Elohim. 

In Genesis 1, creation takes six days.  In Genesis 2, it only takes one day. 

In Genesis 1, it says "the heavens and the earth."  In Genesis 2, the phrase is inverted – "the earth and the heavens."

Three times Genesis 1 lists "heavens and earth" in that order.[2]  But the second account breaks this pattern, saying "earth and heavens."  What are the chances that the author would reverse the order of "heavens" and "earth?"  Compound those odds with the chances of that same author using another name for God, and also contradicting oneself with a one-day creation instead of a six-day.  These are long odds.  It is much more probable that we have two different authors, one for each passage.  Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 were written by two different people! 

     The evidence for dual authorship compounds quickly as we further compare the two passages.  Not only are they written by two different people, but they are entirely contradictory toward each other!  In Genesis 1, humans are the last thing God created.  In Genesis 2, Adam was the very first thing God created.  In Genesis 1, plants and trees and grass were created on the third day, which was before Adam and Eve were created.  In Genesis 2, Adam was created before there were any plants or herbs in the field.  In Genesis 1, the animals were created before humans.  In Genesis 2, the animals were created after Adam.  In Genesis 1, Adam was supposed to govern the entire earth.  In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve were originally supposed to be confined to the Garden of Eden.  In Genesis 1, the earth was submerged in water before creation.  In Genesis 2, the earth was dry before creation.  Hyers notes,

 

The setting of Genesis 1 is one in which there is an overwhelming abundance of water… Genesis 2, however, begins with an opposite problem: not enough water… Genesis 1 has drawn upon the imagery of the great civilizations inhabiting the river basins and/or adjacent to the sea, while Genesis 2 has drawn upon an imagery more in accord with the experience of wandering shepherds.[3] 

This observation ties Genesis 1 to Babylon – a place where two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, provided an abundance of water, and where there had been a myth concerning a great Flood, to which Noah and the Babylonian legends of Gilgamesh and Atrahasis all testify.  Genesis 1 is therefore tied to Babylon.  Since Israel did not fall under Babylonian influence until the late 600's BCE, there is cause to assert that Genesis 1 was not incorporated into the Bible any earlier than the 600's BCE. 

          In contrast, Genesis 2 could very well date in some form to a much earlier date, for it fits the original lifestyle of the earliest Hebrews, who were desert shepherds in the 2^nd millennium BCE.  Genesis 2 is therefore the original creation story of the ancient Hebrews.  Genesis 1 is not.

Click to read more about how we know Genesis 1 is a forgery.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.

---