The literary status of the bible has been the subject of endless debate. The origin is obscure and the chronology tentative, although the best guess seems to be that the four principal ā??strandsā? were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC before being brought together as single narrative in the late 6th century BC. But what kind of narrative is it? It is comprised of individual stories, cultic regulations, patriarchal tales, lists of tribes, historical accounts and so many other varieties of prose that it seems almost to resist definition.

It is in a sense The Book, the source and origin of all the narratives of the world. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and their temptation by the serpent, is one of the shaping myths of the human imagination. The account of the creation of the world may have been called into question by the self-appointed prophets of more recent centuries, but who does not secretly still retain it as a possible and pertinent model of the universe? The myth is perpetual because it corresponds very deeply to some need or belief of humankind.