One idea I’ve come across is that Genesis is a patchwork of oral traditions that have been linked together. Some things were chosed to be written down and others were not. There are a lot of gaps in Genesis.
Genesis is subtly, almost imperceptibly divided into twelve sections. The transition is so smooth we hardly notice it, although sometimes it does seem abrupt.
The first section, the creation account, transitions around Gen 2:3 to 2:4. And you find the words “such was the creation of the world” or something like that. There are other narrator turning points and it’s impossible to know what happened in the gap between these sections.
Some of the parts of the story that are hard for us to understand might have easily been understood in the time when it was written. For example, from 1:1 to 2:3, the creation account is a great rupture from the religions of the pagans surround the Jews. No, the stars and the sun and the moon are not gods, they were created by God. The animals were created, they are not gods. Trees and stones were created, they are not gods to be worshipped, The “great sea monsters” were not gods, they were created by God. That aspect of the prevailing pagan beliefs is assumed by the original hearers, so a lot of the significance is left out, and we need a good commentary to help us with such.
