Re: [asa] Light, waters, days of Genesis

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Cooper
  To: Charles Carrigan
  Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 12:26 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Light, waters, days of Genesis

  1) First light from the Sun for "Let there be Light"

  Charles said: With regards to point 1 - have you read on to day four? The sun is clearly referred to as "the greater light to govern the day". Claiming the sun was created on day 1 completely disregards the rest of the text.

  Not at all, IMO. I am not even claiming the Sun was created on that day, only that light emerged from it on that day. Since Moses can not possibly be an observer witnessing creation from Earth, Earth was not established until day 3, he had to be seeing things from a celestial frame. The Moon, in mainstream science, came after the formation of Earth, so it too would not have been around. If all Moses witnessed was light bursting forth from the Sun's shroud, he may or may not have known it was coming forth from the Sun. Either way, it would be considerably odd compared to what he was accustomed. It would have not looked like the Sun, but, since he mentioned the condition of the Earth (w/o form and void) then he may have reasoned it was light radiating on what would become the Sun as he knew it. With a dust shroud, the Sun would be an odd object indeed.

  Therefore, the account on day 4 is one that gives the official credit for Sun and Moon after they came into existence, as is normally seen, and this account comes from while his observations were taking place from his normal reference frame, namely a terrestrial one. It makes sense to me that he might have been perplexed by his celestial reference frame and elected to not offer conjecture, but simply write what he saw. This idea fits nicely, interestingly, with the command to John to simply write what he saw as given to us in Revelations; the last book helping us with the first.

  The question of why only now would mankind be in a position to understand more fully the account of Genesis is worth considering. The answer may simply be that God knew we would need to have a plausible explanation for Genesis in order to bolster our position of faith in scripture, countering today's more difficult struggle opposing faith.

  Thanks for your thoughts, Charles

  George

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Received on Tue Dec 4 13:28:12 2007