THE CREATION OF DAYLIGHT
The first act of creativity, according to Genesis 1:3, is the creation of light.
"God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." (RSV)
This occurs three days before God said, "Let there be lights..." vs 14 (i.e. sun, moon and stars)
God separates the light from the darkness and calls the light: Day. This is Day Light. Could it be stated more clearly? Yet modern creationists speculate that it is actually Sunlight. In so doing they reveal that they are unaware of the ancient cosmology represented here. In fact, there was once considerable debate on the nature of daylight. Many saw it as a separate reality, a phenomenon apart from sunlight.
One religious cult of Sumeria (circa 2000 BC) proposed that it was the goddess Inanna (planet Venus) which ushered daylight into the sky. Ancient Roman mythology credited Lucifer (planet Venus) with this task. Indeed the word itself means Bearer of Light. Venus, once thought to be a different "star," was credited with ushering daylight from the sky after the sun "went down." The Greeks, recognizing that both phenomena (morning and evening stars) were one and the same, called the "star" Phosphoros (light bearer), aka "the bright morning star" (ho aster lampros proinos).
In view of the animosity which Judaism often displayed toward sun worship, it should not surprise us that The Light, associated with God Himself, was never, biblically, identified with the sun.
By 600 BC, Babylonian "scientists" had offered convincing proof that daylight is a result of scattered sunlight in the atmosphere. The Book of Genesis, compiled sometime later, chose to ignore this bit of "science" in favor of the older, traditional, view that the light of day is the light of God's presence. In that opinion, daylight is entirely unrelated to the sun-god of Babylon.
God separates the Light from the darkness and calls the darkness Night. "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." vss. 4,5 (RSV)
This definition of the time period, "one day," precludes the modern interpretation of the Hebrew term "YOM" to be an epoch of undermined length. Creationists attempt to apply this definition to the creation story alone, but allow it to mean what it says elsewhere in scripture.
In fact, the formula: There was evening and there was morning, X day; is repeated for each of the six days of creation. Apart from a desire to align the Bible with modern cosmogony, there is no reason to doubt that the narrative means exactly what it says.
It seems to me that the question is not so much, What does the Bible say?; but rather, Why does the Bible say it?
A study of the evolution of science provides numerous clues in answer to this question.
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