Before we begin our discussion, my question is what is your point of view about the creation of the world?
Humanity has not yet been created and at the beginning of Genesis God had already created light and darkness:
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Genesis 1:3-5
On a superficial reading of the English text, it is interesting to note that the ‘light’ in Genesis 1. 3-5 is a singular noun. As we continue reading ‘light’ is now in the plural. Let’s read this fourth day then:
Ones view may differ as people now live in the 21st Century. Perhaps a person has been influenced by the latest scientific discoveries or a person might think this story is only a myth and not true. Or one has a faith and these words are from God. Before making any judgement however I hope you read this article to the end and perhaps you will be convinced that there really is a Higher Order. The ancients were not any less intelligent than the so called modern man. If you want to know what each place is on the map go to (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World)
14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Genesis 1:14-19
Although light as a noun is used twice here in Genesis 1 there is a difference in function.
In Genesis 1. 3-5 the function was the creation of day a basic time unit.
In Genesis 1. 14-19 the function of time becomes more nuanced and user friendly for animals and humans with how light refers to ‘seasons, years and day…’
The timeline has moved on from the basic ‘day’ to the collection of days that make up the four seasons which make up a year. The expanse had already been created but now God has been painting the canvas with small lights (stars) the sun in the daytime and the reflective light of the sun on the moon at night time.
At the moment I have just done a cursory reading of the text yet we have learned quite a lot. From a brief description I already have some questions and statements:
- Why two stories of light creation?
- What are the qualitative and functional differences of these two separate days?
- How did the ancients perceive the lights in the heavens in early human history?
- Why the two stories use singular and plural for light.
- God shows his love for life in the small detail.
- God’s work is perfect.
- Chaos created by God was tamed by an intelligent Being (God).
- This flies against the theory of accidental creation of life.
- This goes against the theory that humanity and creation are moving towards perfection as everything God touched was already perfect for the miracle of life.
- Evolution in its principle state needs to be rejected because it writes God out of the history of the world and is offensive to most Abrahamic religious dogma.
This does not mean that I am too critical with modern views. We will however look at some views from Old Testament scholars about the creation story including ancient views such as Josephus. The other thing to realize is that the theory of evolution was not first created by Charles Darwin. Not at all, the ancient Greeks were playing with these ideas in the West. There are also the Eastern religions that see history not as a straight line but circular!
Gerhard Von Rad sees in these pages a critique of much of the mythologizing that took place in places such as Babylonia and Egypt for example with the worship of these heavenly bodies of the sun moon and stars. Genesis goes against the grain by pointing out that the Genesis story puts all the heavenly objects with the realm of created things and dependence on God for their existence. These astral bodies are merely part of God’s creation.
From my perspective I feel that Genesis 1 is a critique of Egyptian religion first and then the other religions. It makes more sense that way because this was the land in which the Israelites were made slaves and it is from this land that they were liberated by the Lord (Ha Shem). In Deuteronomy 4. 19 we read:
“ And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. 20 But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession, as today. Deuteronomy 4:19-20 NASB”
So, then you can see the parallel between Genesis 1 and Deuteronomy 4. The Jewish Encyclopaedia puts the main emphasis on Egypt but it also made the point that before God called Abraham he also worshiped the sun, moon and stars (until he was liberated by the Lord You will find more information online at …jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13990-star-worship (I usually leave the first part of the link out for security reasons.)) My view is a contrast to the old liberal view that we should first look at Mesopotamia. If you want to follow this through then I used the International Critical edition on Genesis by Skinner, from 1910.
I really don’t understand why modern scholarship overlooks Deuteronomy 4.19. Moses here makes it plain that this influence of worship came from Egypt! My argument here would be that the Torah is a unit of work attributed to Moses Thus it makes perfect sense to interpret Genesis firstly from the advantage point of the Torah. I think this is a mistake by these early 20th century scholars. They go digging in the various parts of the Middle East and forget to read the Torah and for the literary clues we find in there. Let’s not forget that Egypt was a highly developed country of its time. Egypt still holds a lot of secrets for example with metallurgy and the cutting of stone. The metals they used in those days was inferior to some of the tools we use today, yet they manged to cut granite and polish it which is one of the hardest rocks on earth. Tutankhamun’s dagger for example was made from iron and nickel which came from a meteor. Iron in the ancient world was very rare commodity but they were highly skilled in making this sword (from…en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun%27s_meteoric_iron_dagger)
Genesis is the first book of the five books of Moses (Torah). Thus there is an inner harmony for the first five books. Whether or not Moses wrote the Torah or was influenced by Moses or whatever the background the important point is that we need to take the whole five books as a unit. As a unit, there is no need to cut the book into various bits especially Genesis with dating such as this is Elohistic or this is Yxxstic thus this section is earlier than this section. There is no need for that. Perhaps these scholars ought to have paid a closer attention to the Rabbis thus no need for massive scholarly mistakes. Julius Wellhausen and others put together a documentary hypothesis in the19th century to try to work out the age of Genesis. The oldest book in the Bible from its internal evidence is actually the book of Job.
Reflection
Whatever the date God gave us times and seasons. This creative act on this day was a perfect and good creation. Having a natural rhythm of light and darkness, hot and cold. Everything is now ready for the next day with the creation of the animals.
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