I agree with Tamara in that it seems that the story was passed down orally for God knows how long (pun intended). How much of the story was distorted by the time it was written down? We, Eastern Orthodox Christians, are taught not to take the Bible literally and we ignore large sections of it. The Early Fathers of the Church tell us that everything that is necessary for salvation can be found within the Bible but not everythng in it is good or even necessarily true. Anyway, the path to understanding is long, difficult, full of forks in the road and does not necessarily get us to the place we thought we were going. Peace.