Don Johnson

FWIIW, I see Gen 1-11 as narrative with poetic elements or poetry with narrative elements.  Then the question is how much is poetry and how much is narrative and different people can think differently.  For example, my sis is a believer and she sees more narrative and less poetry in Gen 1-11 than I do. 
I see this as similar to the end times, there are various ways of understanding the end times and similarly, there are various ways of understand the beginning times.  It is exactly because I take it at face value that I think it does not tell us all we might wish to know.  But this is a tangent, so I will stop.