Are the first two chapters of Genesis actual history, poetry, allegory, or something else?

Cornelis Van Dam is emeritus professor of Old Testament at Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, and an RHB author. His book, In the Beginning: Listening to Genesis 1–2, is an exceptional resource for questions regarding the interpretation of Genesis 1–2 as real history. Watch this video webinar in which Professor Van Dam presents a robust argument in favor of the historical reading of Genesis 1 and 2, and below that you will find an excerpt from the book itself.

Note: the English portion of the video begins at 8:35, so move the timeline slider forward to that point, unless you are a Dutch speaker!

Book Excerpt from In the Beginning: Listening to Genesis 1–2:

“Do the opening chapters of Genesis constitute real history or not? The prevailing academic consensus is that Genesis 1 and 2 are not recounting actual historical events. Yet, on the face of it, these chapters do appear to give an account of what happened when God created the world. What do we make of this conundrum?

Closely related to the issue of whether Genesis recounts actual history is the uncertainty and confusion about the origin of the human race that many Christians experience today. How did we get here? Does science or Scripture provide the true account of the beginning of the world in which we live? Or is this a false dilemma? Can Scripture be honored and understood to agree with current scientific hypotheses of human origins.

These are momentous questions and there appears to be a growing consensus among conservative interpreters of Scripture that we can accommodate our understanding of Scripture to the view of origins as given by current mainstream science, particularly in astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology. Secular science excludes any intervention by God and attributes all development to the laws of nature and very long periods of time, but Christians who embrace today’s regnant scientific theories speak of theistic evolution to indicate God’s involvement in bringing creation to its present form. Due to the pressures of the dominant scientific evolutionary hypotheses, influential evangelical, Reformed, and Presbyterian scholars who testify that they want to honor the authority of God’s Word are no longer certain that they can accept the biblical account of Genesis 1 and 2 at face value. Consequently, different proposals for understanding these chapters have been made so that current mainstream science and the opening chapters of Scripture can somehow be harmonized, but the common result is that Genesis 1 and 2 cannot be accepted at face value as narrating historical events. What are we to think of this? How should we interpret the opening chapters of Scripture? How does science relate to explaining or understanding the biblical record of creation? These issues need to be addressed.”