So, to be fair, this is sort of a joke question, but I’m interested in hearing serious answers to it from believers and/or Bible scholars and/or comparative religion majors.
So I was reading Genesis 1 earlier today (as you do), and something struck me : for the first three “days” (it never actually says “on the first day, yadda yadda”, did y’all know that ? I didn’t ! Floored me. Pop culture osmosis is shit) God does something, and then it says “and there was an evening, and there was a morning : that was the Nth day”.
However, it’s only on the fourth day that God reportedly sets up the whole lighting system that separates night and day to begin with. Soooo whence the days before ? Was God just a con artist before that fourth day, performing cheap theatricals to make believe there was a day/night cycle ? “Now you see the Universe, now you don’t, is that your planet madam ?!”
I’m sure the logical inconsistency has bugged people before, just as I’m sure leading Christian lights from Aquinas to Miley Cyrus have expounded on the subject and sort of retconned/handwaved it away, but how is that reconciled by Bible literalists and suchlike, really ? I mean it’s in the first few pages of the book. I’ve tossed fantasy or sci-fi books aside for lesser consistency crimes. What gives ? Is it a translation snafu, what ?
Gen 1:4 (Revised Standard Version): And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
Gen. 1:5 : God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Therefore, the “lighting system” was set up during the first day
(The fourth day mentions some stars and what not)
Sure sounds like the sun and moon on the fourth day to me (in English, can’t read Hebrew). Stars too, but also sun and moon. Does the Hebrew still specifically mention the greater and lesser great lights (that are not stars) or not? I can’t read it.
So yes, a plain reading of the English text (which is, of course, not the original) does say day and night were created before the sun.
Related to the creation order of light, sun, moon and stars.
Note that Alhazen was the first known to explain that vision is from reflected light in ~1000 AD. Before that extramission theory was the favored explanation for over a milienium.
While the first recorded explanation of extramission is from Empedocles in the 5th century BC, the text makes sense when you consider the miss-understandings about physics that existed at the time.
It only seems really confusing when people try to mold the original text to match our current understanding of physics.
First of all: it is not on the fourth day that G-d separates day from night, that happens on the first day. Genesis 1:4-5.
The establishment of the sun and moon was to mark the passage of time on Earth. It does not mean that time did not pass beforehand. When the prior verses refer to evening and morning, it speaks of the passage of that time in a manner that the Bible’s intended audience - i.e., human beings - can relate to.
So great, photons existed before the sun. But how did God separate day from night without the sun? And for that matter, the earth did not exist before the sun. I hate people trYong to shoehorn size 12 science feet into size 6 Bible shoes.
Either belive the Bible literally, accept it as metaphor, or treat it as fiction.
Sometimes I wonder if those days are terraforming steps that some super alien race made for us, seeding us on this planet which may have been rogue before their intervention, and relaying the story in a way that early humans could understand it for that time and one day further understand it’s meaning.
But as pointed out above God created the day/nite cycle up front, adding sun/moon cycles later.
As I stated above, back then they didn’t know about photons or reflections, and belief in extramission theory, visual is due to beams emitted by the eyes was common way past the time the books were assembled.
In fact there was a study about a decade ago that demonstrated that about half of present day adults still believe in this.
*Edit to add that the study was in 2002 (warning PDF)
*
A as a non-theist I need to point out that your second statement is a false (tri?)dichotomy. Bible literalism is rare outside of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians.
The parts of the Bible that make literal sense and refer to known history are insignificant and often wrong. The rest of the Bible, when taken literally, is BS. Incomprehensible BS, because taken literally, you can’t have the faintest clue why you would be reading this stuff.
As fiction, most of the Bible is vastly inferior to … well, anything good. And what would be the point. There are parts (Job?) that make pretty good fiction - maybe that’s why those parts are there.
When you get a book and the title doesn’t give enough clues about what the book is for, you read a bit and try to figure that out. If it’s a novel called “The 1956 Buick” but you start reading thinking maybe it’s a car repair manual, it will soon become clear that something is “off” with your understanding. When you get a book like the Bible, where the title is basically “Books” and it doesn’t fit the usual categories, it may take a while to know what it’s for.
Many of the people Augustine talked about - many of whom don’t even understand what kind of book they’re looking at when they read the Bible, let alone what it’s saying - are now respected and popular pastors and religious teachers, spreading stupidity far and wide.
I grew up being taught the first interpretation mentioned by nelliebly, which does seem to be the most straightforward reading of the text. The light just existed without the need for the heavenly bodies. Sometimes I heard that God himself was a supernatural source of light, making the metaphor literal.
I did hear the other variation as well on Evangelical/Pentecostal TV. It’s part of the “gap” theory, which posits a huge time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. It argues that the first clause should be more accurately translated “Now the Earth became without form”, and uses this to try and reconcile the older Earth with the younger account in Genesis. (Apparently the word for “was” can also be translated as “came to be.”) Wikipedia has an article on the belief, called “gap creationism.”
It also reminded me of “day-age creationism.” I do wonder how they make it work.
Just because they are all literalists doesn’t mean they all agree. This is a huge part of why I say it’s still just an interpretation.
An earthly light at night, however bright, doesn’t illuminate the sky. Light doesn’t seem to reflect off of air.
… Is it conceivable that early man didn’t understand that daylight originates from the Sun?
The explanation I got from mainly a bunch of Jesuits and Capuchins, with the occasional Filipense or secular priest thrown in for flavor, is that “it’s not a 24h day, it just means ‘and then’, which as of last check wasn’t an exact time either. The writer was trying to keep things more or less in what he thought was the logical order, but didn’t have a degree in Physics and wasn’t using a Swiss watch to make sure he got all the timings right (for those of you who have flunked geography: Switzerland hadn’t been invented yet). Same thing when you get to the NT and there’s all those ‘in those days’.”
One of my classmates once asked “so, it’s a bit like ‘let’s have coffee one of these days’?*” “more like ‘come to my house for coffee one of these days, here’s my address’ but yeah.”
If not accompanied by an actual address, it’s not an actual invitation. The address moves it from “vague polite noises” to “vague but actual invitation”.
