Genesis 2 gives us another perspective on creation with an emphasis on man. Man is given the land to cultivate, and Adam is given Eve to help him. God instructs Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but he eats deliberately, knowing that this is a sin, and that it is grave matter. This meets the criteria of mortal sin. We can see the effects of Adam's sin immediately after, when Cain slays Abel.

The first twelve chapters of Genesis concern the origin of Man. The creation is structured into seven days, but appears to be a thematic categorization of creation into ages, as the word for day is used shortly thereafter to also mean an era. The universe was created by God, who existed before everything else and created it out of nothing.

Much of the scholarship of the book of Genesis from the 18th century to the early 20th century was based on Wellhausen's Documentary Hypothesis that the Torah was collated from multiple sources based on various factions. The evidence for this comes from the type of content in portions of the Torah, and in particular the words used for the name of God.

The theory proposes that there were four authors of all of Torah, the Jahwist author, whose writings are theorized to be very personal, at around the time of Solomon in 950 BC, the Elohist author, who was supposed to be much more philosophical and less personal, writing about 100 years later, the Deuteronomist author writing at the time of Josiah's reforms in 600 BC to support the reforms, and the Priestly author, who is supposed to be concerned with laws and rituals, writing after the end of the Babylonian Exile in 500 BC, and all of these various sources were later reconciled by an editor or editors. Please note that this is all conjecture and not endorsed by the Catholic Church.

No hard evidence for such documents exists, and similar differences exist in the writings of other ancient Semitic cultures. In practice, this theory tends to prevent a deeper faith.

Genesis is a book of origins, as the name suggests, but it is in many ways more addressed in the New Testament than the Old Testament. Genesis, along with the next four books of the Bible, was substantially written by Moses, though some portions, such as the death of Moses in Deuteronomy, may have been written or edited by others.

Genesis' origin differs profoundly from the Semitic origin stories of other cultures, which serves to highlight how different our faith is from that of other religions. Notably, the origin stories explain the gods emerge from the chaos. Genesis is suitable for instruction in the faith and not be dismissed.