Christian answering questions.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Again no. the story did not start over. The creation account starts Genesis 1:1 and ends Genesis 2:3 The GARDEN Account (all of which happens day 3) starts Genesis 2:4 to the end of the chapter. Genesis was a Detailed account of what happened day three only between YHWH and the Garden/Man made in the image of God.

Yes, it's likely that one tradition told the story of the interaction of god-and-man in the garden, while the other story tried to tell of cosmological origins. They're two stories. They were just combined into one.

You can assert your claims here all day, and it still is two stories. Whether they were written at the same time and by the same persons (as you claim) can be debated, but it's still two stories by any measure... one is a general, sweeping view of the earth's creation and our origin/place in it, and the other is your "Detailed" account.

Now how can we tell which of the assertions is more likely to be true? One author or two and a redactor?

Well, we look at things like writing style (there are two different styles, here), what words are used to describe the same thing (one uses Yahweh, while the other uses Elohim), and whether they both cover the same details that could have been omitted if it was a single tale (because it was covered a few lines before), and so on.

Now, you can try to assert the claims of some fundamentalist "scholars" (I use the term loosely), who will try to argue that the Documentary Hypothesis is bunk, but most serious scholars will acknowledge that it's a cut-paste job; they simply quibble over who, why, when, and how much.

Again, your cult's conditioning blinds you to the ability to see what is well-recognized by everyone else. (The hallmark of a cultist!)