Endnote 4 – The Genesis of Genesis

Scholars have disagreed over the date of the composition. Some, like Thorkild Jacobsen, put it in the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium B.C.E.), when the city of Babylon first gained prominence in Mesopotamia, and others, like Wilfred Lambert, date it to the time of Nebuchadrezzar I (end of the second millennium), when Babylon was again in ascendancy and the statue of Marduk was returned from its captivity in Elam.