spin

Sorry, sport, but this is crap. You need to see light as not being related to the sun, but the sun related to light. Light was the first thing created with the first divine fiat: "Let there be light".

The sun was clearly created on day 4. To understand this clearly you need to understand the underlying structure of the creation. In the beginning the cosmos was without form and void. (It may have been without form but it was there in the beginning, ie no creatio ex nihilo.) The creation is in two stages of three days each. The first three days involves giving form to the cosmos and the second three days fills them, both stages require a certain amount of creation, and the sun was created on day four to inhabit the light created in day 1. The sun wasn't visible on day 1, it didn't exist according to the creation account.

The first part is correct. The second isn't. You need the difference between light and dark to have days, so there was obviously time when light was separated from darkness and this of course was the first creative act so time began with the creation of light and its separation.

Of course they are, otherwise the institution of the sabbath would have no sense whatsoever.

It was created in six days and the writer is telling you so in order to show that the sabbath is the day of rest for God rested on the sabbath.

It shouldn't. It doesn't deal with the text. This is a subject we have dealt with on this forum many times. If someone wants to be literalist and think that because light was created before the sun then it's impossible, well, they'd be right, but that would be beside the point. It doesn't require the reader to reassign what's happening to some more logical structure in order to make it more acceptible to the modern mind The story is a highly formalised one with aims that don't require modern ideas of literal correctness. It does require the reader to undertand what it is doing in order to appreciate its beauty, complexity and purpose.


spin

Magus55

Actually, you're incorrect.

Gen 1:1 In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth.

That is creation ex nihilo.

Gen 1:2 then says the Earth was created without form and void - which points out what the Earth was created as when God spoke it into existence. The Earth was most certaintly created ex nihilo.



As to the topic at hand, light was created out of nothing. There was no source of light. God created light by itself to shine on the Earth, and then on day 4, created a permanent source to give off the light.

hezekiah jones

How could God see before there was any light? Oh ... there wasn't anything to see.
What was God doing before there was anything?

number3

Creating the world in the dark - don't you know! and then he turned the light on and 'it was good' - what a result!

Amos

You scientific people are confused and think that the sun emits light but that is not true. Life must be created before the sun rays can be translated into light. In other words, we look with our eyes but see with our mind just as we read with our eyes but comprehend with our mind.

zeta77

I am thoroughly confused. So the sun does not emit light? What justification do you have for that other than the statement above? I think you would have to explain several thousand years of human experience that generally encompass a notion that the sun does indeed emit light.

So before life was created, the sun rays are not light? So in genesis 1:14 when God puts lights in the expanse of the sky and creates the sun, they did not emit light? If so, it is perplexing that they were in fact called lights. Considering that life isn't created until 1:20 or so, that would seem self-contradictory.

Interesting analogy, but if I am outside, I would find it hard to read with my eyes if the sun does not emit light to reflect off a page and produce an image on my retina. So if I can't look with my eyes, that just leaves me to see with my mind. I have yet to try reading with just my mind, but I am skeptical that it would work.

Amos

Well zeta, I keep thinking of that tree that falls in the forest that makes no noise unless someone is there to hear it and I think the same is true for light.

So when God created light there in Gen.1 he actually created the essence of life ex nihilo so Lord God had something to blow in Gen. 2:7. Notice that Lord God doesn't create but just gives form to that which was created in Gen.1.

It just spells essense precedes existence, that's all. You are correct. If you must go by the light of common day you need to open your eyes before you can see and after that you can read the words and then you can try to understand what the words mean.

I can now direct you to Rev.22:5 where there is no need for lamps, or lighs, or the sun because we can be illuminated by the celestial light. This light here, then, is the light that was created in Gen.1 -

NearNihil Experience

"It just spells essense precedes existence, that's all."

And free will is now in the toilet....ba-ding. Thats all. Not important...

Seriously though...
No one has mentioned that maybe, just maybe, this light is a metaphorical refrence to action...setting in motion...

...not necessarily photon emmissions, per say.

Every time you see "light" in the Bible, how often does it refer to photons and waves, and how often does it refer to some metaphysical cosmological non-sense cooked up some ancient insecure sheep-fucker?
Everyone keeps saying "light" like there's only one way to take it.
Either way is literal...light is just being used idiomaticaly.

Or we could go with "God the photon generator" and say that Vaccumm flux is what Gen 1 is describing...seperation of matter and energy(heavens and Earth,eh...).
Above said sheep-shankers just didn't know all the science we know and didn't have all the labels we do now.

Just some randomnesss to chew on....

Wayne Delia

"In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, Let there be light, and there was still nothing, but youse could see it." (Dave Thomas, "Sunrise Sermon," on Second City Television)

WMD

Wayne Delia

"Many people think that the whale is a fish, but that is incorrect. The whale is... an insect." (John Cleese, Monty Python's Flying Circus)

WMD