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You can answer the first question yourself just by looking at other passages of Scripture and seeing how the Scripture itself uses titles and by looking at the flow of the narrative. Here are the first three verses of Genesis:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:1–3).
Notice how the narrative just jumps in and starts telling us the story. There is no literary device that breaks off verse 1 from the rest. Let us look at the beginnings of some other narratives:
“Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned’” (Exodus 3:1–3).
“As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’ And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, ‘They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but the kingdom?’” (1 Samuel 18:6–8).
“Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zeruiah and the servants of David went out and met them at the pool of Gibeon. And they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool” (2 Samuel 2:12–13).
Observe how it is common in Scripture for a narrative to just start up and go.25 But Scripture does make use of titles or similar introductory statements (underlined below):
“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:1–3).
“These are the generations of Jacob.26 Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him” (Genesis 37:2–4)
“To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. A Psalm of David. Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer! O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? Selah But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him” (Psalm 4:1–3).
The titles in the passages above are underlined. As you can see, it is generally pretty easy to tell when a passage starts out with a title or introduction as opposed to when the passage jumps right into the narrative. The conclusion we draw is that Genesis 1:1 is part of the story about what God did on the first day. It flows right into the rest of that story. It is not a title and not a summary of the rest of the narrative. There is no indication of any break in the flow of the story that would justify the fantasy of the gap theory.27 That answers the first question: verse 1 is part of the narrative; in particular, part of the narrative of the first day.
25Some translations will start a passage with And or Now. Hebrew often puts a conjunction where we would not do so in English. To omit the conjunction during translation is not necessarily wrong, depending on the context.
26Many other versions translate generations as history or something similar since that is roughly the meaning of the Hebrew idiom. (It does often refer to a literal genealogy.)
27The gap theory fiction was popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible. It has no textual support whatsoever. This false theory purports to teach that there was some undefined period of years between verses 1 and 2.
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