(post deleted by author)
Sorry for the repost here. But this isn’t necessarily true.
I understand the point about “And God said” marking the start of each day, however that is still an interpretive choice rather than something the text itself explicitly defines as the beginning of the day. It’s a recurring action formula, but it doesn’t necessarily function as a boundary marker that excludes 1:1–2 from the six-day framework.
Even in the dependent-clause reading, it’s quite natural to understand 1:1–2 as describing the initial condition at the start of the creative process (“When God began to create”), with 1:3 introducing the first command within that process rather than the absolute beginning of it. Ie the text doesn’t say “Before God began to create”. And since God’s actions occur on day 1, then conditions that exist “when God began to create” naturally can be read to occur on day 1 as well.
So I don’t think the narrative markers place 1:1–2 outside the six days. They can be read that way, but they don’t require it. Similar to your other arguments, we’re dealing with one plausible interpretation among several, rather than something the text clearly establishes.
And I’ll try to explain this better. Even if “And God said” marks the beginning of day one, that doesn’t require placing verse 2 outside the six days.
In a dependent-clause reading, verse 2 describes the condition of the earth when God begins to create, and that condition can still hold when God first speaks. So it’s quite natural to understand verse 2 as describing the state of the world at the start of day one, not prior to it.
It would be like saying, “V1. When I began to ride my bike, V2. it was sunny outside”, V3. and I pushed on the pedal".
“It was sunny outside” is a condition of the background setting when I pushed on the pedal and when I began to ride my bike. And since I pushed on the pedal and began to ride my bike on day 1, it naturally reads as though it was also sunny on day 1, when I began to ride and when I pushed on the pedal.
The sunny conditions are described as “when” I began to ride my bike, not necessarily ”before” I began to ride my bike.
Now, you could read it differently. You could interpret it as “In the beginning I rode my bike to the store”, now it was sunny outside. Then I pushed on my pedal. As if verse 1 is a completed event and that” it was sunny outside” is a detail outside of the time in which I began peddling.
But ultimately the grammar is just ambiguous on the matter. The text could be read and understood in a variety of ways, many of which do not require the background conditions as existing outside of the 6-days.