The reason I find Gen 1:11 to be plausible in a non-scientific way, is that from the point of view of God's overriding interest in the earth and what happens on it, the commands of God in Gen 1:11 are not irrational if the earth is the pinacle or crown of everything created by God. Moreover, from the point of view of one hypothetically located on the surface of the earth, simply observing what is going on around him, the biblical account of creation is uncontroversial. And if Gen 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," reflects Day Zero, i.e. the ex-nihilio creation, then the "six days of creation" are plausibly seen to relate to the earth being fashioned by God to become a repository of human life.
I suggest that it is because the account is so plausible, that it seems to offer us science, and yet (to my mind at least) there is no science where the central concern of Gen 1:1-11, and the rest of the bible for that matter, is God's relationship with his creation.
As I wrote above, “Genesis 1-11 is written in a genre of prose literature that is radically different from that of Genesis 12-50 and the rest of the Bible.” Genesis 12-50 is written in the genre of prose literature known as the “Historical Narrative.” That is, it is a supposed literal, historical account of actual events in past time. Genesis 1-11, on the other hand, is written in a genre of prose literature that is very similar to the genre of prose literature used in epic tales, sagas, myths, and legends. Surely, this was not an accident but God’s way of bringing to our attention the fact that Genesis 1-11 is NOT a literal, historical account of actual events in past time. Indeed, as early as Genesis 1:6-8 we read,
6. And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
7. So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.
8. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. (NRSV)
Even on the first page of the Bible, we are told in these three verses that we are not reading a literal, historical account of actual events in past time but rather we are reading something much more akin to epic tales, sagas, myths, and legends. Even very early Christians were aware of this and wrote about it, but for eight centuries, Jewish Rabbis refused to believe the obvious. Today’s Jewish scholars of the Tanakh, however, take it for granted that Genesis 1-11 is not a literal, historical account of actual events, as can be seen in today’s best commentaries on Genesis by Jewish scholars of the Tanakh: Nahum M. Sarna, Ephraim A. Speiser, and Meir Zlotowitz.
