Walton provides air-tight arguments for why it is necessary to re-read Genesis through the cultural-historical lenses of the Ancient Near East. Walton argues that the creation story we are so familiar with is actually a functional creation, an assignment of roles, rather than an "ex nihilo" (out of nothing) creation; God unpacks the furniture and dedicates each room of His home for Himself to dwell in (day 7), He doesn't necessarily build a house from the ground up.

Some surprising views that I found very interesting is that Walton doesn't see the serpent in Genesis 1 as Satan, but rather as a chaos creature from Sheol below. The serpent is not necessarily a creature of disorder (evil), but of non-order (neutral). Another view that I found really interesting is the view that what God deemed as "good" did not mean "perfect." This meant that death was already in the world, but that life can be sustained by the tree of life in the garden. Adam's sin created a blockade that prevented mankind from living forever. He also sees Gen. 2 as a sequel to Gen. 1, which means that Adam and Eve weren't the only ones around, but that they were assigned a priestly role (again, back to the functional creation rather than an "Ex nihilo" creation) to represent mankind. This is reflected in the Hebrew phrases "you too shall die" and the story of Cain's murder (Cain goes out to hide in a city and is scared that others will kill him, suggesting that there are plenty of people around.

I know this sounds like an explosion of heresy to many of you, but I challenge you to check this out. Walton not only backs this up with analysis of Hebrew terms, he also backs this up with historical, cultural, and philosophical reasons as well.