1“Surely there is a mine for silver,
and a place for gold which they refine.
2Iron is taken out of the earth,
and copper is smelted out of the ore.
3Man sets an end to darkness,
and searches out, to the furthest bound,
the stones of obscurity and of thick darkness.
4He breaks open a shaft away from where people live.
They are forgotten by the foot.
They hang far from men, they swing back and forth.
5As for the earth, out of it comes bread.
Underneath it is turned up as it were by fire.
6Sapphires come from its rocks.
It has dust of gold.
7That path no bird of prey knows,
neither has the falcon’s eye seen it.
8The proud animals have not trodden it,
nor has the fierce lion passed by there.
9He puts his hand on the flinty rock,
and he overturns the mountains by the roots.
10He cuts out channels among the rocks.
His eye sees every precious thing.
11He binds the streams that they don’t trickle.
The thing that is hidden he brings out to light.
12“But where will wisdom be found?
Where is the place of understanding?
13Man doesn’t know its price,
and it isn’t found in the land of the living.
14The deep says, ‘It isn’t in me.’
The sea says, ‘It isn’t with me.’
15It can’t be gotten for gold,
neither will silver be weighed for its price.
16It can’t be valued with the gold of Ophir,
with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.
17Gold and glass can’t equal it,
neither will it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.
18No mention will be made of coral or of crystal.
Yes, the price of wisdom is above rubies.
19The topaz of Ethiopia will not equal it.
It won’t be valued with pure gold.
20Where then does wisdom come from?
Where is the place of understanding?
21Seeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living,
and kept close from the birds of the sky.
22Destruction and Death say,
‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.’
23“God understands its way,
and he knows its place.
24For he looks to the ends of the earth,
and sees under the whole sky.
25He establishes the force of the wind.
Yes, he measures out the waters by measure.
26When he made a decree for the rain,
and a way for the lightning of the thunder,
27then he saw it, and declared it.
He established it, yes, and searched it out.
28To man he said,
‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.
To depart from evil is understanding.’”
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)