Yes. No. Maybe? The purpose of this post is not to answer the question definitively (weak sauce, I know) but to add one thought to the likely many considerations you have. As individuals we may hold to a single view vehemently without allowing our opinion to be challenged, even by our own inquisitive minds.
If Moses was the first author of the Bible, how do we get the stories found in Genesis?
If you believe that scripture is inspired then obviously these stories in Genesis are sanctioned by God and are deemed to be truthful if they are to appear in his Word, but what does that mean about their composition? There are two polar views which we should acknowledge; and by course the reality may lie somewhere in between.
The first view is that God sat Moses down and said “We need to talk… about Genesis,” and then proceded to reveal to Moses the story of Genesis, which Moses dilligently transcribed.
The second view is that the Israelites already possessed versions of the stories now found in Genesis, stories which had been told to them by their parents and which they had been telling to their children. God then told Moses that an official version should be recorded, one that dispensed with Babylonian and Egyptian religious views in favor of a theologically correct version.
The first view had been my default growing up. Then, when reading about other ancient stories that had similarities, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, questions popped into my head: who copied who, could God have plagerized other myths? The answer is that the truth about what “really” happened was passed down from generation to generation and that by the time it got to the Babylonians, Egyptians, and to other societies, it had morphed into very different stories told with very different religious presuppositions.
So now our two polar views become nuanced differences. Did God re-adapt the story that the Israelites had been told into one that correctly placed him at the top, or did God cut through the millennia of story-telling and reveal to Moses the original, primordial version of events?
Our two polar views, which have now become nuanced difference, zero out as being identical when we consider this last piece of information. What would be culturally relevant?
I have a funny image in my head of Jesus being born with already graying, dark-blond hair and a sweater-vest, taking a moment before being baptized by John to remind those around him that baptism was merely a symbol, and preaching on irresistable grace and dispensational theology to the crowds who followed him.
Jesus did not teach twenty-first century American theology to first century Jews. In the same way, if God were to have used a process like evolution to bring about life on earth, he would have quickly lost the ear of ancient Israelites had he spoken of it in modern terms. Survival of the fittist alleles? Natural selection of religious proclivities? What?
The truth was revealed to Moses in a manner that would be culturally acceptable to the Israelites while not compromising the truth about who God is and what he has done.
We don’t have to hedge against 21st century science and terminology to protect our belief in an inspired word. Does this answer the question as to whether or not evolution actually occurred? Sorry.
The Swedish Meatball 