Emily Parker spoke with author Paul Poulton about his new book 'Genesis For Ordinary People', how to understand the book of Genesis, and how humanity has got to where we are now.

Paul: I didn't understand some of the finer details until I really started studying it. It's never been a problem to me that Genesis and science don't work together, because for me they always have worked together. The more I find out about science, the more I think wow! Genesis has got that right! It's amazing that a book that was written so long ago will tell us things about science before the scientists tell us.

When I started getting inspired and was waking up early in the morning and having all these thoughts, I didn't want to write it down at first. I've written a book before and it's hard work and my music was going really well, too. I was busy with my music and touring round doing solo gigs and with my band. But it became so heavy on me that I ought to write this book that I thought right, I've got to slow down with the music and get on with this book, which is what I did.

I did start looking at some of the finer details. Adam is a plural word so when we read Genesis 1 we're talking about Adam as a bunch of people. God created Adam and that is man. When we get to Genesis 2, He takes one particular man and He makes a woman from this one particular man. Her name is Eve. She's not called Adam, she's called Eve. But in chapter 1 all the people are called Adam. It's a plural word. Some words can be plural and singular at the same time. 'Sheep' is a singular word, but it can be plural too. There are some words that can be plural and singular and Adam is one of those words. When you get to Genesis chapter 2, God makes a woman from the stem cells of a man. She has the same DNA as Adam and their offspring are strong; they are very beautiful and they live a long time.

All through Genesis you read little things like Rebecca was very beautiful, or Rachel was very beautiful. The women were beautiful. Outsiders wanted to marry them. Abraham was scared when they went to Egypt, because even though Sarah was getting on in years, she retained her beauty and he said, 'They will kill me to get to you.' She was so beautiful Pharaoh wanted her for his harem. You get this theme running through. God had done something with Adam in Genesis chapter 2 and the offspring of Adam and Eve lived a long time. Even in regular history that we read like in the Mesopotamian clay tablets, the cuneiform tablets, we read about people that lived long. In the Greek stories too, Hesiod talks about people who lived really long. In the Sumerian King list, the kings before the flood lived a long time. So these were the offspring of Adam and Eve. The Bible tells us about it and so do some of these writings. Beauty was one of the traits.

I was putting all this together and it was that family line that led to Christ being born. That was the end of it when Christ was born, because He was there for the purpose of Christ being born. That was one of the little things that I kept spotting, why does He keep mentioning the beauty of the people? Because it was leading to Christ who is the Rose of Sharon. He is the fairest of 10,000. David said one thing I ask, that I may gaze on the beauty of the Lord all the days of my life. So beauty was a trait that came from this couple Adam and Eve and it went right through to Christ. Another thing I was particularly struck with was the way that Yahweh would actually walk around.

Emily: Would you mind just explaining what 'Yahweh' means?

Paul: In our English Bibles, when we see the word 'Lord' in capital letters, in the Old Testament, it means Yahweh. Or Y, H, W, H. It's a tetragram. It's just four consonants. We put the vowels A, E in it so we end up with Yahweh. In other words, it's the Lord.

Yahweh would walk around just like Jesus walked around. Cain and Abel brought gifts to Him. When Cain killed his brother Abel, God spoke to Cain about it. When he was sentenced he had to leave the area. Yahweh closed the door on the Ark. Yahweh came down to see the city that was being built by the men and it was probably that city where he met Abraham and told him to go to another land. When Abraham got to the other land, which was Canaan, He came and met Abraham again and He sat down and had lunch with Abraham and two angels were there too. He explained about Isaac being born at that particular time. Then after lunch they walked for some way and Abraham had an interesting chat with Yahweh. Just the same way that Jesus Christ walked around on earth, in Israel, roundabout 2,000 years ago. Yahweh, His Father walked around too. Jesus said the Son can only do what He sees the Father doing and Jesus walked around here, on earth, as we do, as the Father did, only much earlier on.

Jesus would often tell parables about a landowner, or a vineyard keeper who planted a vineyard and then went away on a long journey. And Yahweh has left us here on earth because we don't see Him walking with Abraham, or walking with any of us anymore. Our sin has separated us from God. And Yahweh has gone away on a long journey, but He has sent His Son, Jesus Christ so that we may renew that fellowship that we originally had when God made us.

Emily: When you read the Bible, why is it always important to make sure that you read it and look at the context of why and when something was said?

Paul: Because we need a basic framework to understand things properly. You can't just dip into the Bible and take a few verses without really understanding the whole framework of what's going on. It's really important to grasp that. I've been reading the Bible since I could read; I was about four years old. I had a Bible next to my bed and I would read it every night and I still do; I read it every day, quite a bit of it. You get a grasp of what's going on in the whole story right from the beginning to the end.

It's important that we understand that if you truly want to study the scriptures, it's important to understand where we're talking about. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are talking about Mesopotamia, particularly southern Mesopotamia where the rivers that are mentioned in Genesis chapter 2 empty into the Persian Gulf. That's the area we're talking about. But God tells Abraham to move from that area and go to Canaan, so then the spotlight is on this little strip of land that we call Israel nowadays. The whole area is called the Fertile Crescent; it goes from southern Mesopotamia through modern Iraq then up through Syria and Turkey, then down into Israel and also features the Nile Delta in Egypt. Getting the geography right is important, but also getting the time frame helps tremendously.

Emily: Some people might be picking up the Bible for the first time and that might mean they go to the start of the Bible and Genesis will be the first book they read. What advice would you give to someone who is doing that and how should they approach reading this book?

Paul: Read it with all the knowledge that you have about the current universe, because in the generation that we live in, we have a wonderful opportunity to see how God actually worked. Other generations didn't have that, but we can see his modus operandi, His mode of working, the way He actually did it. We have that privilege in this generation. Genesis was written by men who didn't have that and it was written to men to read who didn't have that knowledge either. But we have that knowledge now and Genesis still makes perfect sense when we understand it as it should be read. So read it with all the facts and knowledge that you have about the astronomical aspects of the universe, or the geological aspects, or palaeontology, archaeology, or genetic research. Put your mind in gear as you read it and it will all make sense and it's all true.