Our modern literalistic culture places a harmful interpretive shade over our eyes as we read ancient texts written during a time rich with allegory. We are an information-fed culture where analogous language has been reduced to clichés, rendering us symbolically challenged. Our default interpretive mechanism is to interpret literally all textual objects of communication, unless instructed otherwise. Couple this with the technological, linguistic, generational, and cultural gaps between now and the time that Genesis was written, and the challenge for us to understand the original intent being expressed by the author(s) becomes evident.
Since a formal education system was non-existent, the use of allegory played a vital role in ancient cultures. An allegorical narrative was entertaining, communicated an underlying principle, and easy to remember so that it could be passed on. The Hebrew language and the cosmological understanding of the Hebrew author(s) were not flexible enough for God to reveal a detailed explanation of creation. The primary objective of the Genesis creation texts was to declare God as the sole Creator of an intentional existence, and that He alone should be worshiped.
