Don

God inspired the gospels attributed to Matt, Mark, Luke and John; and they are all describing the same person Jesus; but the merging of accounts needs to be done VERY carefully. I dislike verse stitching across pericopes even when it might appear to work, because there are so many times it does not work.

On Genesis, my sis is a Young Earth Creationist and I am not, but we both accept the other as believers. I am not sure what you are, but I accept you as a believer and hope you also accept me. My sis and I obviously view some Gen. verses differently.

On literally true, if something is poetic, taking it literally means taking it as poetry; yet I agree that other believers can differ from me on what is poetic and what is not.

What I think happens too often with Gen 1-11 (AKA Gen Prehistory) is that A way of reading it is claimed to be THE ONLY VALID way of reading it.

On create and form, elsewhere in the Bible these are processes that can take time; however, some of the Gen readings exclude this potential. I do not see Adam being created twice. I also do not want to get too far away from the thrust of your blog.