Genesis

In the Book of Genesis - the first book of the Hebrew Bible - the creation of the world and the early history of humanity are mentioned. Before describing the origin of the Jewish people, the author of Genesis tries to give an account of formation of the world and early humans.

Actually, there are two creation stories in Genesis.

In the first (Genesis 1: 1-31, 2: 1-3), Elohim (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים ), the Hebrew generic plural word for God, creates the heavens and the earth in six days, starting with light on the first day and ending with Humankind on the sixth, then rests on, blesses and sanctifies the seventh. In modern Hebrew, Elohim is often referred to in the singular despite the -im ending that denotes plural masculine nouns in Hebrew. In Genesis 3:22 and in Genesis 11:7, God is referred as plural in Bible.

In the second version (Genesis 2: 4-25), a God, with a personal name Yahweh Elohim (Hebrew: יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים ), creates the first man from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden, then the first woman is created from first man as his companion.

In the six-day creation story, the order of creation is plants, birds, creatures of the sea, livestock, creatures that move along the ground, wild animals and finally mankind, while in the Garden of Eden story, the creation order is different, with man coming first, then plants, animals, birds and woman.

In the six-day creation story, mankind is created in a single act, while in the Garden of Eden story, mankind is created in two phases, first man then the woman.

In the six-day creation story, mankind is created in God's own image as male and female, while in the Garden of Eden story, man is created from dust and woman is created from the rib of the man.

The "environment before creation" in the six-day story is “Water” ["Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Genesis 1:2).], while in the Garden of Eden version, the environment before creation is “Wilderness” ["neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil" (Genesis 2:5).].

Borrowing themes from Mesopotamian mythology and probably combining them with a creation myth which was popular among Jewish desert dwellers, the author of Genesis tries to affirm monotheism and denies polytheism.

Our Earth might be billions of years old and Genesis is relatively a modern scroll which was written only around 3000-4000 years ago. Both of the above stories were included in Genesis, probably because its author wanted to please the two sects existed that time with these arguments.