On the contrary, I thought that evangelicals sought to understand the scripture and be challenged by it, not avoid it by re-definition!
Now, I know that there is a vast literature on these two chapters, and any descent discussion should take more words that I’m prepared to commit to right now, but here are some thoughts, with links to relevant articles below.
The basic reason that I don’t think that the two chapters are alternative accounts of creation is that the account in chapter two largely pre-supposes the creation, and does not explain it. It is an easy trap to fall into if the creation account is regarded as myth at some level, and not an account with a one-to-one correspondence with tangible events. I say this because most ‘myths’ including the famed Enuma Elish (also here on EE) also presuppose the creation, rather than explain it (which is a fundamental reason for rejecting the – I think blasphemous -- idea that Genesis 1 is somehow in debt to EE).
The account in chapter two also zooms into relationships. It doesn’t speak in the cosmic categories that preoccupy Chapter 1 which frames the creation in structural relationships and hierarchy, but its about persons: God and Adam and Eve, what they do together, the transactions that prepare the way for us to understand the Fall, and the role that A&E have with respect to each other, God and the creation. If this chapter was a creation account it leaves much unstated. That it depends on the information in Chapter 1 makes it so much the clearer, and an effective literary transition from the total scheme account of Chapter 1, and the covenantal sequence of personal relationships and interactions that follow it.
Literary Structural Parallels Between Genesis 1 and 2
The Unity of the Creation Account
The Hermeneutical Problem of Genesis 1-11
Genesis 1-2 in its Literary Context
E J Young 1 and E J Young 2
Green on the Unity of Genesis, at p. 9ff "No Duplicate Account of the Creation".
And, an image from a book by Kitchen on the OT
