No historian was here to witness creation, so skeptics naturally assume the early parts of Genesis were cobbled together from a variety of ancient myths.  After years now of struggling to understand the Bible, I’ve discarded my skepticism.  I’m confident that the Bible has been inspired by God and the Genesis creation story could only have been written by God, through Moses.  It contains all the truth we need to understand about creation, expressed just as God wants it. 

Prose works to explain things like science, or processes like how to bake a cake.  Deeper concepts need symbols and pictures, so God described the process of creation using poetry – symbolic language and word pictures. 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1-5 NIV

In just the first five verses of Genesis, we find three important word pictures: God Created the World out of Nothing, Creation Began in the Mind of God, and Creation Separated Light from Darkness.