Structure in the Genesis Narrative
The creation narrative is highly structured, like poetry. We should not be surprised that the historical account of creation would be cast in literary, poetic, artistic form. It is the business of science to probe, to study, to analyze, and to understand how things work. All this is as inspiring as taking apart the motor of an automobile. Scientific reports often make dull reading. However, invention is an art, not a science. U.S. patents are only issued for advances beyond “the present state of the art,” not for the discovery of scientific principles. Engineering, the application of science to serve human purposes, is really an art form. Admittedly it is esoteric, understandable only to the initiated, but in that aspect it is no different from most modern art forms.
Engineering reports are usually dull reading also. Anyone who has tried to read the technical manual for a computer program knows that. Programmers are likely to say that their program is its own documentation. They might say that anyone who wants to know how the program works (and anyone who wants to know how to work it) should learn to read the source version of the program, as the programmer wrote it. Software companies learned long ago that producing user-friendly software usually requires them to hire people other than programmers to write the documentation. All successful programmers know how to communicate with machines, but only some of them communicate well with people. It often takes others, people with teaching skills, to translate technical jargon into the language of the ordinary user.
All this is because of a human limitation. God knows no limits. If He understands people well enough to create us, He also understands how to communicate with us. If He created beauty, He can also communicate beautifully. We should therefore expect what we actually find: a poetic rendition of the story of creation, which is nevertheless scientifically and historically accurate. Our task in collating the observations of science with the creation account is reduced to discovering how the poetic indications God has given accurately describe scientific scenarios.
One must remember that the Genesis creation narrative is highly structured. Like poetry, it has a kind of rhythm. There are two parts of three days each, and a one-day coda. The two three-day parts use the Hebrew literary device of parallelism, the rhyming of ideas instead of sounds. Let’s illustrate parallelism with a few examples.
Engineering reports are usually dull reading also. Anyone who has tried to read the technical manual for a computer program knows that. Programmers are likely to say that their program is its own documentation. They might say that anyone who wants to know how the program works (and anyone who wants to know how to work it) should learn to read the source version of the program, as the programmer wrote it. Software companies learned long ago that producing user-friendly software usually requires them to hire people other than programmers to write the documentation. All successful programmers know how to communicate with machines, but only some of them communicate well with people. It often takes others, people with teaching skills, to translate technical jargon into the language of the ordinary user.
All this is because of a human limitation. God knows no limits. If He understands people well enough to create us, He also understands how to communicate with us. If He created beauty, He can also communicate beautifully. We should therefore expect what we actually find: a poetic rendition of the story of creation, which is nevertheless scientifically and historically accurate. Our task in collating the observations of science with the creation account is reduced to discovering how the poetic indications God has given accurately describe scientific scenarios.
One must remember that the Genesis creation narrative is highly structured. Like poetry, it has a kind of rhythm. There are two parts of three days each, and a one-day coda. The two three-day parts use the Hebrew literary device of parallelism, the rhyming of ideas instead of sounds. Let’s illustrate parallelism with a few examples.
