“Is the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 in the mythic, poetical style of most Near Eastern stories of the origin of the world, or is it of some other type of literary genre? What are we to make of the repetitious nature of a number of its phrases and of what appears to be a certain stereotyped form to each of the creative acts of God? What is more, look at the way God is depicted with hands, nostrils and the like. Isn't that enough to convince any thinking person that this is not a straightforward natural account of what happened in the creation? All speech of all literary types will include some, if not many, forms of figurative language. The issue of literary types is a separate matter. To declare that since figurative language is present we can assume that the material of Genesis 1-3 is less than a straightforward presentation of real events is to jump to conclusions. Certain other categories can, however, be ruled out because they fail to meet the fairly uniform criteria that are normative in such decisions. First of all, the biblical account of creation does not exhibit the forms of substance of myth...nothing has been found in the biblical narrative of creation to tie it to the mythical ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies. Neither can we say that Genesis 1 and 2 is poetic in form. The Hebrew form of the verb is exactly the same as is routinely used for Hebrew narratives. Furthermore, Hebrew poetry seldom if ever uses the Hebrew indicator for the direct object, whereas Genesis 1 and 2 do. There are additional grammatical and syntactical forms in Genesis 1 and 2 that can only be found in prose literary genre, not in poetry. Thus these accounts may not be listed under poetry. What we do find, however, is a carefully and closely reasoned narration of events that in Genesis 1 are set in almost a dry didactic form. Emphasis is laid on definition, naming, evaluating and a general ordering of events. As such, the accounts have more in common with narrative prose than anything else. While the Genesis narrative cannot be called “historical” in the usual sense of the word, in that most use the term to indicate facts independently verifiable by two or more sources or witnesses, it certain appears to be claiming to record actual events in the stream of happenings in our kind of space-time world” (Hard Sayings of the Bible, Intervarsity Press, 1996).