Dr. Dylan Johnson

Yeah, just this place across the great desert, the great Syrian desert.

Just the other side of the Fertile Crescent, really.

So second chapter.

Second chapter.

So the first chapter in the beginning, we have the first creation story.

So this might shock some viewers, listeners.

There are two creation stories.

The first one being a fairly unilateral act of God who creates man and woman in his own image.

And then chapter two talks about another creation, which is Adam and Eve.

And we'll probably have to qualify Adam, whether that's a name or not.

So as always with biblical texts, we're not sure.

We have some good evidence to think it's older than chapter one.

So chapter one looks very heavily influenced from the experiences of Judahites, so biblical writers in exile, which means fifth century.

So it looks probably older than that, but we can't be sure.

And there are people who think, no, it's also exilic.

I myself think it's probably pre-exilic, that it dates to a time when kings were still around, which puts us in the usual time frame that I give for a lot of dates of biblical texts, sometime between the 9th and 6th century, somewhere in there.

Yeah, somewhere in there, probably even more towards the mid, if anything.

So this is truly in mythological time.

This is what we call antediluvian time before the flood.

And this is really important because this is an idea of chronology that's not just unique to biblical writers.