Introduction

As with the subject of sources, the study of the backgrounds of the OT is difficult, complicated, and requires special linguistic skills. Bible writers did not produce their works in a vacuum, sealed off from the environments in which they lived, so many of the thousands of ancient documents from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria/Palestine offer insights for biblical study. Although those literary texts were probably not direct sources, they show that some of the most well-known stories in the OT, including the creation and Garden of Eden stories, were influenced by similar stories from the civilizations where they originated.

Given the controversy that exists even today regarding the role of creationism in modern education and thought, it is especially important to contrast simple answers about the beginning of the world with more complex and insightful ones. First and foremost, the Bible offers absolutely no scientific evidence or facts. Scientific research as we know it did not come into being for hundreds of years after the Bible was written. Yet, putting aside that undeniable truth, to suggest that we should believe that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh just because “The Bible Says So!” is to ignore significant insights we can gain from a more careful examination of the Bible itself. As a starting point, we need to acknowledge that the Bible actually has two different accounts of the creation.