O.Y.B. - Week 1: Ham, Creation, and Snipes

I've finished the first 4 days of my chronological reading plan, which covered Genesis chapters 1-11, and has me reading Job chapters 1-5 today (haven't finished yet...). A lot of ground is covered in these first 11 chapters: the creation account, the fall of man (enter: sin), growth of the human population, Noah and the ark, and the Tower of Babylon. There is also a mess of genealogies in these chapters, filled with names, most of which i cannot pronounce, and have a little difficulty keeping track of who beget who, which lineage is blessed, and which one is cursed-- i'm sure Ham really appreciated his Dad Noah for that, even though it was Noah's fault that he got drunk and decided to strip down and pass out in his tent...

One thing that I need to wrestle with is the 7 day creation account. In college, I had read most of John MacArthur's "Battle for the Beginning", which makes a strong case for a literal 7 day creation. This was my view,  though recently, I am considering other options that I was unaware of before, as offered by Hank Hannegraff with the Christian Research Institute (Bible Answer Man, equip.org). From my listening to his radio program, I gather that there is evidence to believe that the writer did not intend for the 7 day account to be literal, but figurative. Not sure where i stand on this, but hope to dig into this at some point and see where the evidence leads.

Random thought: Noah was on the ark for 150 days with his family and all the animals. I'm curious what everyone had to eat during that time... Don't remember seeing the answer to that question, but have to wonder if there were a few species that didn't make it off the boat because a gator or a lion got the munchies... maybe that's what happened to snipes? anyways, i guess that's just some food for thought... man that's bad :)