Ignorance of the nature of the sources from which the Book of Genesis was compiled has led modern scholars into saying things like: "The second chapter of Genesis is more ancient than the first," or: "The order of Genesis is wrong," or again: "There are two accounts of creation, each written centuries after Moses."
The documentist view is that the first chapter of Genesis was put into writing by an unknown author, or school of writers, in about the 8th century BC (many hundreds of years after Moses). I believe that the arguments presented in this article completely lay to rest any such claims.
But, asked Wiseman, does the narrative of the first chapter of Genesis itself give any clue as to the time when it was written? To which question he answered that, in addition to the ancient literary method of the colophon dating, there are "some pieces of evidence which seem to assist us in ascertaining the chronological place of Genesis chapter 1 in the Old Testament."(55) And he went on to list these as follows:
