you can't read the bible literally in this sense, just like you can't read it literally in the sense of Daniel 9:24-26

There's no reason to think that part was anything but literal. Else evening and morning, and the creation of celestial bodies to help us determine time of day, seems like pointless writing on behalf of Moses

Daniel 9:24-26 refers to sevens which translated from the original hebrew meant weeks, and yet the prophecy concerning in this chapter say at what time in history the Messiah would appear, and when one does the calculation properly, it matches up within a year of christ's birth and death

the book of daniel is set approximately 490 years before christ's death

which is exactly what is predicted in the book through the prophesy of daniel.

But he is, of course, a prophet

The creation isn't about prophecy, it's about history. It was written after the events it refers to, while Daniel is written before the events it refers to

and we also need to understand that the writers of the old testament were not secretaries of the holy spirit. Genesis got the order of creation exactly right, but the timeframe of how fast or slow is off.

And of course the context in which that Hebrew word "yom" is used, I'm inclined to take it literally when it says evening and morning

Remember days were measured from sunset to sunset

well, let me put it another way. we have never uncovered a fossil of any kind of human that appears in the same strata of rock as say, a dinosaur, yet genesis would tell me that at one point mankind and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time. also, based on the dimensions specified in Genesis concerning the Ark, and that god commands that a pair of each and every living creature on earth be put inside, it is literally impossible to fit that many creatures in the same confined space for almost 8 months without warping spacetime inside the ark to make the interior far larger than it actually is.

Then maybe a lot of them were dead?

Maybe there was not as much genetic diversity and so instead of a thousand kinds of dogs/wolves, there was just two or three

by that logic then there would be far less diversity than we see on the planet

case and point the different types of finches on the galapagos.

We think of a world covered in dinosaurs but in reality we haven't actually found that many fossils

Job 40:15-19

We've got ancient drawings of them

going back to one of my older points, the flood would have done nothing to distort our detection of the radiological cosmic background, and most physicist will tell you that that is an adequate means of measuring the age of the universe

Mankind has a lot of creativity but I don't see them inventing a monster in their heads that turns out to be real 5000 years later but predating the artist by 500 million years

65-150 million years to be precise. if it were only 5000 years old, and remember that Job is after genesis, then they would be still around.

maybe not where Job was, but they would have been referenced by many more cultures than just the Hebrew, especially since Job takes place after the events of Solomon (about 870-830BC)

Most Biblical scholars put Job as the oldest book

Job cannot be older than Genesis, otherwise job would be first in the bible, and from what I know Job was first written between the 7th and 4th century BC

The physical writing, not the event obviously

Job 22:16 references the flood. So we know it's after Noah

The sacrifice in Job 1:5 is of the patriarchal "rite" which is pre-Mosaic

Same for the daughters' inheritances in Job 42:15

And the measurement of his wealth in flocks instead of money, Job 42:12

keep in mind that in oral cultures the core details of a story are preserved very well, but the secondary details tend to fluctuate.

And for him to live 200 or so years, this happened for some time after the flood but not by the time of Moses

So I'd put him pre-Abraham

But not by much

it's reasonable to assume that the secondary details of the story changed over the possible millenniums. but here we ask, is it unreasonable to say that is Job were a big part of the story of the bible, surely he would have been mentioned in the details of Genesis?

or even exodus?

There's a lot of stuff left out, or even stuff included that may seem strange

Most people don't notice it

I'm Catholic so this may seem like a biased perspective but there's a ton of references to deuterocanonical books (rejected by Protestants). But to be fair there are actually Biblical references to books rejected by all Christians, and even books entirely lost forever.

the problem I've had with Genesis is that in oral cultures legendary details tend to seep in over the generations (usually after 120-130 years), so when the bible says "days" in genesis, I've never taken it to mean literal days. the new testament I've taken much more literally since the people who were in the events were still alive as the books were written down, in some cases as little as five years after the death of christ

And other books that we may not know what it refers to; could be books we still have, some we don't

Well I have to rely a bit on the supernatural for this; God's word isn't gonna be lost.