Two books that you should read as you study Genesis, Chapter One are "The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate" by John Walton, and the booklet, Genesis One and the Age of the Earth" by Rodney Whitefield, or the longer version, "Reading Genesis One: Comparing Biblical Hebrew with English Translation."

In a nutshell, here's the problem. One cannot hope to translate any foreign work accurately until one has thoroughly grasped other writings penned at the same time in the same language and the cultural milieu at the time of their writing.  Genesis One was understood in this manner by the middle of the 19th century and this understanding was so widespread, that no one saw a need to include it in Seminary courses in America. As a result, shortly after Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared, Certain American Evangelistic movements began to see (erroneously) that an old earth threatened Biblical credibility. These books return their reader to the original Hebrew in the original culture at the time that Moses (and his "muse," the Holy Spirit) wrote Genesis to correct this misunderstanding.

Both of them review the meanings associated with the Hebrew words and phrases "bara" and "asa", "tohu and bohu", and "yom."  Genesis One cannot be appreciated or understood until these words are comprehended in the sense and setting in which they were originally used.

An additional good read that relates more specifically to understanding the cosomology of the time which provided the setting for Moses' writing, is Denis Lamoureux's excellent book, "Evolutionary Creationism: A Christian Approach to Evolution," or the shorter, more readable, "I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution."

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