Which account of Genesis is true and which is false?

The Bible reveals God and is about God, not time or man's history. But in time, of God and man's time too. The Bible reveals a hidden history within the obvious. The hidden history is both before, within and after the obvious history. There is also an unseen adversary participating in a distorted way that hopes to come between God and man's history. The adversary uses pride and false modesty as a contriving factor of people's thinking, to keep them from seeing the things of God.

Neither!

The book of Genesis is a composite work that an editor stitched together from various pre-existing traditions some 2500 years ago. Genesis 1:1-2:4 represents what scholars call the "priestly" creation narrative because it reflects the traditions of the Jerusalemite priests. The subsequent creation narrative (Genesis 2:4-3:24) is called "J" (Yahwist) because it is marked by the frequent appearance of the divine name "Yahweh." This account represents the folk traditions of the Judeans. Here's some more info:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2...

http://barrybandstra.com/rtot4/rtot4-03-pt1.html#s...

The redactor of the present book of Genesis just placed both narratives one after the other, with only minimal editing to harmonize them. The details are different and logically inconsistent at points because the narratives were originally independent oral traditions. Both narratives are pre-scientific creation myths that attempt to answer the question of where our world came from in relation to their cultural and religious traditions. All ancient cultures had such myths and the ancient Hebrews were no exception.

That said, I do think that traditional myths from all cultures contain much spiritual and practical wisdom, the accumulated reflection of many generations upon the meaning and purpose of life, and the practical wisdom that comes from lived experience. But these myths are obviously NOT scientific nor literal historical accounts. The presence of these sorts of logical contradictions just underscores that fact...and undermines the position of the Creationists that the Bible should be read as a science textbook. But on the other hand, I also don't regard these ancient myths as utterly worthless either.

Whether true or false --

You need a better translation.

The first text is introductiory, the second expands on the first.

Both are parts of one story that complement each other.

===

@Michael - the so-called "documentary hypothesis" was developed by Wellhausden, et.al. out of nothing but their own guesses regarding literary usage based on the German translation and following their self-avowed "scientific anti-semetism" with the assumption that anything that comes from the Jews must be wrong (including any possible Jewish understanding of the Hebrew original)

The oldest account of Genesis so far found doesn't claim that God created the world, but instead terraformed it, establishing the conditions necessary for life from the materials already there. Since I wasn't there, can't tell you what actually happened, but is where we started near as important as where we end up?

Genesis 1 is more on par with science so you should go with that one.

The part following the words "In the beginning" is false. All of it. Deep down you know this already.

Everything is false except a women believes some snake.