The Adam and Eve story was almost certainly written by an anonymous author of the southern kingdom in the eighth century, when kings had started to commission epics for their royal archives. Eighteenth-century German scholars called him “J,” the “Jahwist,” because he used God’s proper name, “Jahweh” (“Yahweh”). At the same time, another writer known as “E” (because he preferred to use the more formal divine title, “Elohim”) was composing a similar saga for the Kingdom of Israel.
