Following Friedrich Schwally’s 1904 lecture at the Hessian Folklore Society, the idea that the Priestly creation account (Gen. 1:1-2:3[2:4a?]) was a conflation of two independent sources developed and culminated with Gerhard von Rad’s division of the text in his 1934 book on Priestly writing in the Hexateuch. This popular source-critical theory of so-called “word” and “deed” reports fell out of vogue following O.H. Steck’s 1975 monograph-length study defending unity of the account. Questions about tensions nonetheless persist, thus arguments for competing “word” and “deed” sources are occasionally still proposed. In this paper, an alternative model of composition will be advanced to explain these lingering anomalies. Building on earlier suggestions and utilizing a multilayered methodological approach, I will argue for a five-stage theory of supplementation that began with a pre-Priestly tradition of creation by seven divine fiats and ended, so to speak, with scribal glosses found in the extant manuscript evidence.