This means that, according to the text, day 1 begins in verse 3 and not in verse 1. This is made clear in the original text by the fact that the verb “created” in Genesis 1:1 is in the perfect tense, and “the normal use of the perfect at the very beginning of a pericope22 is to denote an event that took place before the storyline gets under way.”23 The use of the narrative tense begins in verse 3.
