1Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. 2You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. 3Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. 4In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. I will destroy every living thing that I have made from the surface of the ground.”
5Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him.
6Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth. 7Noah went into the ship with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, because of the floodwaters. 8Clean animals, unclean animals, birds, and everything that creeps on the ground 9went by pairs to Noah into the ship, male and female, as God commanded Noah. 10After the seven days, the floodwaters came on the earth. 11In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the sky’s windows opened. 12It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13In the same day Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth—the sons of Noah—and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the ship— 14they, and every animal after its kind, all the livestock after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort. 15Pairs from all flesh with the breath of life in them went into the ship to Noah. 16Those who went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him; then Yahweh shut him in. 17The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ship, and it was lifted up above the earth. 18The waters rose, and increased greatly on the earth; and the ship floated on the surface of the waters. 19The waters rose very high on the earth. All the high mountains that were under the whole sky were covered. 20The waters rose fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. 21All flesh died that moved on the earth, including birds, livestock, animals, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22All on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. 23Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, livestock, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ship. 24The waters flooded the earth one hundred fifty days.
There is controversy today in the Christian community far more important than differences among believers in many decades regarding the nature of the Genesis account in Genesis 1, 2, & 3. Liberal scholars have generally believed the creation account was not truly representative of an actual event but embraced a Darwinist explanation of the creation of the world (what is often called macro-evolution), that contends that all of life on earth developed from very small forms of life that were created by an accident in the primordial fluids of ancient earth billions of years ago. Even so, the current debate extends much further than believing in long periods for the creation days and even accepting some form of evolution. The current debate is whether Adam and Eve and the events transpiring around them in the biblical account ever occurred and whether Genesis is only a myth rather than factual history.
Christians, through most of Christian history (and the Jewish people before Christianity), have embraced a literal and factual creation by God that is found in Genesis 1, as well as the more detailed creation of humans in Genesis 2. In current Christianity, several scholars, who are generally conservative in most areas of theology, are advocating that the Genesis One account is, in reality, a myth or fiction. Moreover, there is a rejection of an actual Adam and Eve, a temptation and fall, and many of the events in the book of Genesis and elsewhere in the Old Testament. Allegedly, God only inspired a mythical account that provided a story in which He could teach an inerrant truth about Himself being the ultimate Creator of the universe.
However, there are several reasons to reject this manner of interpreting Genesis. First, this alternate view is contrary to the understanding of various persons in the Old Testament, Jesus, the apostles, and the church for most of its history. Second, though the factual account of creation and the fall arguably contains some poetic features, the essence is a true and historical account that is consistent with the mainstream scientific understanding of the chronology of the creative events. Additionally, the biblical account of creation is not in agreement with Ancient Near East creation stories, upon which many current scholars rely in rejecting the factual, historical account found in Scripture, as well as the uniqueness of the Genesis account of creation. As the literary scholar C. S. Lewis once stated, "Myth comes from history and not history from myth."
I would encourage you to view the free YouTube video, Is Genesis History? Click https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UM82qxxskZE&feature=youtu.be in the browser of your phone, iPad, or Computer for this excellent discussion of the historicity of the book of Genesis.
The writers of the Bible believed in the historical doctrine of the creation of the world and the specific creation of Adam and Eve. The Bible contains about 300 verses on creation.
Gen 1:1-27; 2:1-23; 3:1, 19, 23; 5:1, 2; 6:6, 7; 7:4; 9:6
Exod 4:11, 32; 14:21; 20:11; 31:17
Job 4:7; 9:8, 9; 10:8; 26:7; 28:6; 31:15; 32:22; 33:4, 6, 7; 34:15; 38:4-6; 40:15
Ps 8:3-8; 19:1-4; 24:1; 33:6; 52:7; 86:9; 89:11, 12; 90:2, 3; 94:9; 95:5, 6; 96:5; 100:3; 102:25; 104:2-5, 19, 24, 25, 30; 115:8, 15; 119:73; 121:2; 125:3, 8; 135:7; 139:14, 15; 146:6; 148:1-5
Prov 8:23-29; 14:31; 16:4; 17:5; 20:1, 2, 12; 22:2; 26:10
Eccl 3:11; 7:14, 29; 11:5; 12:1, 7
Isa 17:7; 22:11; 27:11; 29:16; 37:16, 26; 40:21, 26, 28; 41:20; 42:5; 43:1, 7, 10, 17, 21; 44:2, 21, 24; 45:7, 8, 12, 18; 48:13; 49:5; 51:13, 16; 66:2, 22
Jer 1:5; 10:11-13, 16; 27:5; 29:9; 31:35; 32:17; 33:2; 51:15, 16
Matt 13:35; 19:4, 5, 6, 8; 24:21; 25:34
John 1:3, 10; 8:44; 9:32; 17:24
Rom 1:19, 20; 5:12, 14-19; 8:19-23, 39; Rom 13:1, 4
1 Cor 11:3, 8, 9, 12; 15:22, 38, 45-47, 49
Eph 1:4, 39
1 Tim 2:13, 14; 4:3, 4
Heb 1:2, 3, 10, 14; 3:4; 4:3, 4, 10, 13; 9:11, 26; 12:27
Rev 3:14; 4:8-11; 10:6; 13:8; 14:7; 17:8; 21:1, 5; 22:13
Knowing the Truth about Creation, p. 150, from Norm Geisler, The Importance of Creation (PowerPoint Presentation)