Genesis

The Genesis story is mythological in nature and the story was not told to Moses by God.
According to the Genesis story Adam was formed from the clay and then brought to life, and he was the first human being to live on this Earth. The Genesis story offers us a genealogical record which tells us how long Adam lived and when he had a son. And we are told how long that son lived before having a son of his own. We can add up the number of years to the time of Noah, and we are told of certain events that happened after Noah. If we are reasonably sure that we know the date of one of these events it becomes possible to calculate how much time has passed since Adam was created. And the Jewish calender year is based on just such a calculation as carefully considered by rabbinical experts. According to the Jewish calender this is the year 5767 since the time of Adam. So according to the Genesis story Adam lived less than 6000 years ago, and if this is true then it is not possible that he was the first human being. There is sufficient archaeological evidence to prove for a fair certainty that the history of the human species here on planet Earth is at least 100,000 years long.

Consider for a moment Noah's flood. In the history of the world there have certainly been many great and devastating floods. In order for there to have been a flood that covered over all the land of the Earth, a very large amount of water would have to be brought to the Earth. And after the flood that amount of water must be made to disapear from the Earth. There simply is not enough water on the Earth today to account for Noah's flood. But perhaps it is still within the capacity of Heaven to produce that amount of water miraculously, even so this could not possibly have happened. This event happened after Adam's life, so it was less than 6000 years ago. Now we observe so much diversity within the human species at this time, we say that the people have many racial differences. And it is not possible for so much diversity to exist here if every single person on the planet were descended from one single family that lived only 6000 years ago.

The history of the Native American people on the North American continent is considered to be at least 10,000 years old. If Noah's flood had occurred less than 6000 years ago then the Native American people would have been completely wiped out. And of course the history of the Native American people precedes the creation of Adam as well.

Now perhaps we should consider that the Earth was created with all of this evidence for us to find. The full history of the Earth was fabricated and the world that we see is a deception. Therefor if the Genesis story is literal truth then the created Earth is a deception. Or else the evidence that we have found in the world is true and the Genesis story is a lie. If God were the source of the Genesis story then this God of Moses is a deceiver. And I personally do not choose to believe that the one true and most high God has any cause to deceive us or create a lie. The God that I believe in is a God of truth.

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that God is in fact a story teller. God is willing to fabricate a fable suitable for children because they will not be able to comprehend the truth. And by telling a fable the storyteller may incorporate some valuable moral lessons for the children to learn from.

But I believe that the most likely explanation for the source of the Genesis story is that it existed as an oral history among the Israeli people. And since we know that Moses was a well educated man by the Egyptian priesthood, we may comfortably assume that parts of the Genesis story were learned by Moses from documented Egyptian records. Moses brought the whole story together from several different sources most likely and wrote it all down in his Book of Genesis.