Hi Arachnophilla,
Thanks for responding.
Would you agree that the first five verses of chapter two refer to the verses in chapter one?
Assuming that you will say "yes" (risking being wrong but trying to conserve posts) the follow-on question is: would you agree that verse five says "...every plant of the field before it was in the earth..."
So, the first 36 verses of Genesis are about plants before they were "in the earth". We agree that they were created in chapter one so they must have been "created" somewhere else since they were not yet created "in the earth"? And, logically, if there were no plants then there were probably no animals yet in the earth? So they also were created somewhere else before they were created "in the earth"?
Knowing God as a powerful being, I would argue that it is reasonable that God's design process would be like an engineer's making a mock-up but it would be different in that God simply created the real thing somewhere else then recreated it "in the earth".
I look forward to your response,
BAE