Let There Be Light

Joseph Francis Alward

If one can believe Genesis, God made the light on the first day and the sun on the fourth. How could the effect have followed the cause?

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth......And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.....And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day....(more creation)...And the evening and the morning were second day...(more creation)...And the evening and the morning were the third day." (Genesis 1:1-13).

The passage above tells us that three sets of "evenings" and "mornings" occurred. Now, evenings occur when the sun drops below the western horizon as the earth rotates away from the sun, while mornings occur when the sun rises above the eastern horizon as the earth rotates toward the sun. May we not assume that this is how evenings and mornings occurred during the first three days of creation? If so, then we have a problem.

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light [the Sun] to rule the day, and the lesser light [the Moon] to rule the night:.... and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."(Genesis 1:14-19)

How Could the Writers Have Made Such a Mistake?

Did the author realize that there couldn't have been sunrises and sunsets to mark the beginning of mornings and evenings on the first three days if the sun wouldn't be created until the fourth day?

Well, if there had really been just one author of the creation story, then the answer would surely be, Yes. But, what seems to have happened is that at least two different creation stories taken from two different times and places were blended together over time. One traditional story had the sun being created on the first day, while the other had it being created on the fourth day. Clearer evidence that this is exactly what happened is found in the commentaries,

This contradiction was noted about seventeen hundred years ago by Origen [1], who is generally considered the greatest theologian and biblical scholar of the early Eastern church, and who wrote around 230 AD:

"What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun? " (Quoted in "Mysteries of Adoni", p. 176)

[1] Origen (ohr-i-jin) was a true believer, so much so that, according to the historian, Eusebius, he took the command in Matthew 19:12 to mean that he should castrate himself, and he did.