What creation myth should I hold for accurate?
Genesis 1 or Genesis 2?
They can't be both fully factual.
1. It's not a myth. It's history.
2. Genesis 2 isn't about the creation of the universe in six days, but mostly about the creation of man and woman on the sixth day.
Nope. Two completely different poetic versions of the origin of earth.
Man is created in Genesis 2 before any other lifeform.
Then comes vegetation, and well defined streams of water. .
After that, animals were created, to give man a helper.
Man names all the animals, but non fits him as a helper.
Only after that, during sleep of the man, the woman is created from a rib of the man.
In Genesis 1, people are created at the sixth day, after the rest of the world has been created. They are created men and women, after the image of G_d.
Very different timeline, very different story.
Is one of these two versions false?
If one of them is false, how will I know which one to take as the absolute truth, and how can it be that there are lies in the book you say is factually true word by word?
Or are both something completely different than a factual report of how earth and it's inhabitants came to be?