In this post I want to hit on what is known as the “literary framework” view of Genesis 1. Basically, this view suggests that what happens on each of the creation days makes no scientific sense — but makes very good sense in terms of a deliberate literary design to show a correspondence between days 1 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 6.  If this literary arrangement is deliberate, it not only explains why the science makes little sense — it argues that science wasn’t the point from the beginning.

For the record, I’m not married to this view, though I think it does point to deliberate literary arranging of the material. My view doesn’t depend on this literary arrangement being correct, though.  I think Genesis 1 (and all the creation accounts of the Bible – fodder for the next post) have nothing to do with scientific information but are about theology — and specifically, a theological polemic directed against other ANE cosmologies and deities.

Here is a pretty decent explanation of the literary framework view. Not too long; essentially a distillation of Meredith Kline’s articulation of the idea (Kline is a favorite OT scholar for me; he passed away not too long ago).