Emily Parker spoke with author Paul Poulton about his new book 'Genesis For Ordinary People', how to understand the book of Genesis, and how humanity has got to where we are now.

Moses wants us to be astounded at some things that he wrote, for instance Adam lived to be 930. Now when he wrote that he expects you to be astounded, that's why he wrote it. What? 930 years? That's a long time to live! Sure it is. You're supposed to think that because there's something special going on with this particular family. Adam and Eve's line led to Christ. When you read the book of Luke he'll tell you all the steps along the way, from Adam right through to Christ. It's like a golden thread running through something, or a fuse that is slowly burning away and it leads all the way to Christ being born. It's supposed to be special. So don't worry about being astounded by things that you read in Genesis; it's there for a reason. If you put your modern knowledge into place you will understand how it is written.

Some parts of the Bible talk about the pillars of the earth. We understand the earth is not on pillars, but it's a way of speaking of the foundations of the earth. We're not talking about the foundations of a house, but there are foundations in the planets. There's the earth's core and that's a foundation. When it was written, 'There are foundations in the earth', they may not have been thinking about the inner core of the earth and the earth's crust and the mantle, in fact I'm sure they weren't, but nowadays we can think like that and we understand, wow, there really are foundations! When we read it with understanding and it does say that in the Bible actually, it says in understanding be men. Sometimes when we read the Bible we try and still be children when we should really understand it as God expects us to understand it. Put your mind in gear, read it and be open to what God is saying and doing.

Emily: If we want to get hold of a copy of the book how can we do so?

Paul: It's on Amazon and all the regular places. The second edition has just come out actually. It's got about 7,000 more words than the first edition. It's available at all the normal outlets, online particularly.