Redaction has shown us that there are two accounts of Creation in the opening chapters of Genesis, chapter 1 and 2.1 The first account is better known although it is easy to mix the two stories.
In the Creation account of the first story, there were six days of creation with one day of rest (Genesis 1:31). In the second story, all forms of creation appear to occur in one day (Genesis 2:1). .
In the first, God simply spoke things into existence (Genesis 1:3) and male and female were created together (Genesis 1:27). In the second, God "used dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul " (Genesis 2:7) and created 'woman' by taking a rib from man; "and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs."(Genesis 2:22).
Here, man is created in the image of God. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27) There is no indication in the second story that man was created in God's image. .
In the first account, man was created to have dominion over all living things. "Rule over the fish in the sea, and over every living creature that moves on the ground."(Genesis 1:28) In the second account, man was created to be the servant of the earth, and the other living creatures were created to be his companions. .
Creation account one, lists things God created, followed by an explanation of the Sabbath (Genesis 1: 1-31). The second story is a moral tale that identifies the forbidden trees, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life (Genesis 2: 15-17).
In ancient times, there was no written language in existence. This means there was several hundred years where what is now written in the bible existed as oral traditions. By around 1000 BC, written language was developed and people thought it important to write down oral traditions that were passed down from generation-to-generation.