Hi David

Your source looks similar to mine in terms of the phonetic transcription into English. However, the Hebrew characters are not precisely the same, although similar on the whole. The most obvious difference is that the words are in a different order. It would be reasonable to conclude therefore that d'Olivet is working from a different text; he would argue the earlier, original, therefore more correct version. But who knows?

You say the scholars you trust, but is there any confirmation bias at play here? You want to believe that the text is not contradictory, and therefore that the two accounts are complementary. You choose to trust the ESV version, but the NRSV says that there are clearly two different accounts of creation. Also, is it not better to at least be aware of the views of some non-Christian scholars? Did you read the link in my footnote?

Your quote, I would say, suffers from that confirmation bias itself, because the writer is presumably a Christian who believes the same sort of things that you do. There is, I believe, one true statement in it, however - chapter 1 portrays a sovereign, transcendent, while the following chapters portray a God who is immanent. The author tries to massage this idea, however, by saying that these complement and balance each other, thus covering over what I believe is the true meaning. More of that later in the series.

On the question of different levels, I would say that the deeper levels don't have to be consistent with the 'lowest', I would say the 'literal'. That is why they are deeper. The problem, as I see it, is that Christians on the whole have only seen the literal meaning. (And that's after the process of translation through Greek and Latin into English.) You say that you yourself are not familiar with this way of looking at the Bible, which I find somewhat extraordinary, and seems to prove my point.

Moving on to chapter 2, I'm hoping that you don't understand that literally.

Lots more to follow in the series.