Dr. Steve Boyd briefly explains why the first chapters of Genesis should be accepted as real history that actually happened.
DEL: Steve, it seems that there is a lot of history in the Bible. Is that how you see it?
STEVE: Oh, absolutely. In fact, the first thing is that it’s an accurate historical account. The presentation is such, and the perspective of the writers is that they believed they were talking about real events. It’s very obvious because of the way in which they insisted the next generation learn their history.
DEL: When you look at these early chapters in Genesis, what do you see? Can you take us through this?
STEVE: It starts with “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There’s no word in Hebrew for universe. That means He created everything. And then the next thing we find in Genesis 1:2, we find a water ball that is in space. God in the subsequent days is going to fill that universe.
DEL: Well, you’re talking about days here. Do you see these as literal days? Is that what the text is telling us or, you know, what other people think, that this is just a poetic kind of view?
STEVE: Well, first of all, it’s not poetry. The world’s greatest Hebraists all affirm that this is a narrative. And they say that’s one of the unique features of the Genesis accounts of Creation and the Flood is that they are narratives. Because in the ancient near East they are done in epic poetry, which is very different. And here we have a narrative to indicate that this is historical. What that means is that you should understand the words, the normal way in which the Hebrew words were understood. The word ‘yom’ — it means day. The foundation of its usage is what we mean by a day. It’s a 24-hour day. The only way you’d want it to mean a longer period of time is if you impose an alien concept to the text and say, ‘well, I think that these are ages and therefore it has to mean ages.’ What you have to do is start with the text. If we start with the text, ‘yom’ means day.
