Sam, I agree that I overstated the irrelevance of True Myth in our discussions. You suggest, I think, that the writer of Genesis 1 may not have entirely understood the truths he was trying to describe, thus making it difficult for the reader to grasp the full meaning of the text. This would make the creation narrative a “category 1 True Myth,” at least in part.

Russ, you make a good point about the two creation narratives. The fact that they differ from one another not just in content but in style suggests that the redactor didn’t smooth over all the differences in the name of consistency. As you and Paul both say, it’s likely that the readers of the compiled Pentateuch would already have been familiar with much of what they read there, either through oral tradition or in shorter written manuscripts. So we can at least try to imagine reading or hearing the narrative that would later become Genesis 1 without having access to parts of the Bible that hadn’t yet been written or compiled. I too am curious about when and why the Pentateuch was finally pulled together into a continuous text.

I’m working on a summary of my reading of Genesis 1, recognizing that I may have to invoke Pascal’s apology: I have made this letter rather long only because I have not had time to make it shorter.