>
>> I know nothing about it. But, I did recognize pieces of an extremely
>> poor version of the Eygptian myth of creation in it. The eygptian
>> elements are something like the aristotlian division earth, water,
>> air, fire, except the Eygptians started with a watery formless and
>> dark chaos, a flow, in which something formed, and from which emerged
>> a primodial mound. After the division of wet and dry, comes the
>> division of light and dark. So the Eygptians have to be source for the
>> water story. The garden story would then default to the Babylonians,
>> some form of oasis, Eden.
>
> Errr... I'm pretty sure the Eden story isn't Babylonian... perhaps the
> Babylonians swiped it from the Egyptians... as I recall, much of the story
> runs the same almost line by line... The Eden story is attributed to the
> source 'J' - which seems to have been a nomadic community and rather
> difficult to document. There was a best seller many years ago called "J" (I
> think)... the author argued that the author of J was a woman. From a
> scholastic perspective this is sheer nonsense...
>
That's the Book of J, by the infamous harold bloom, et al. as i recall, the most common response to its publication was laughter. it was very clever but probably said more about bloom than it did about J or about Genesis. i just pulled out my half-read copy of Robert Alter's "World of Biblical Literature," wherein it turns out that he has an entire chapter dedicated to "the book of J." he has much harsher words for david rosenberg's translation than he does for bloom's interpretive gymnastics.
incidentally, part of the problem with source criticism is that if you think there was a "J", then it begs the question, who was J? likewise E, P, and D. this is where the fun of biblical criticism begins! :-) here is where i think alter, for example, is on the mark: source criticism and redaction criticism really only tell you so much. i believe they're helpful, but in the end, there's the text, as it is, and you have to deal with it as such if it's going to mean anything.
having said that, we return you to your source/redaction-criticism program: the priestly account (7 days of creation, etc.) would be the one with more likely babylonian influences, having almost certainly been composed during and/or after the babylonian captivity (6th century BCE). moreover, if memory serves (and it may not, or may do so poorly), the P author(s) are likely to have been the redactors who pulled the J and E sources together with their own work. if a lot of my library weren't in boxes, i might be able to be more specific.
j (not *that* j)