Re: Specific Critiques of Genssi Chapter 1
I do not claim to be an expert, but I'll give it a shot
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1. Clearly, like Sephus said, the light referred to in Genesis MUST be physical light, because 1:5 says that God called the light Day and the darkness Night. This is further supported by the mention of "evening and morning" which are distinguished exclusively by the amount of physical light present (because evening in one part of the world can be morning in another part at the same time).
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For number one I am not quite sure what you are asking since you wrote a statement and not a question. Also if you are writing a critiquing statement, I don’t quite know what belief you are critiquing, so if you could write something easier to understand for a guy like me it would be helpful.
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2. In 1:1, God creates the heaven and the earth. In 1:7, God creates "the firmament" which he calls "Heaven" in 1:8. How is this apparent inconsistency explained? Are there two "types" of heaven?
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1:1 seems to me to be a topic sentence, like In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, here is how.
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3. In 1:14, God creates lights in the firmament of the heaven (seems circular/redundant since God called the firmament Heaven) to divide the day from the night. However, God already did this in 1:4, dividing the light from the darkness and then calling the light Day and the darkness Night. What did God do in 1:14 that He hadn't already accomplished? And how was the light he created in 1:14 different than the already-existing light?
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In 1:4 God separated light and darkness. In 1:14 God creates lights to separate light and darkness and also for them to be signs for the seasons and for the days and years. So it seems to me that God just separated light and darkness in 1:4 and thus did not necessarily create the sun, stars, etc..
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4. In 1:16, God creates two light, a greater light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night, and God creates the stars also. One blatant inaccuracy here is that the moon, which is presumably what the "lesser light" is referring to, is not a source of light at all, it merely reflects the sun's light.
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The moon is a source of light, just not a direct source. If there was no moon then there would be no lesser light in the night. The moon is an indirect source of light, therefore a source.
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5. Also concerning 1:16, this is the third time that God created light (He also did so in 1:3 and 1:14). What exactly are all of these lights? In 1:4, God defines the first light he created as Day, thus in 1:16 God is essentially creating a greater light to rule the light. I am at a loss as to how this could possibly be explained. We already determined that the light referred to in 1:3 is physical light, so besides the question of how it could be possible, why would it be necessary for God to create a "greater light" to rule over the light he had already created and called Day? The point is that God never referred to Day as a time period or part of a cycle, but strictly as "light".
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Ok, first it is only the 2nd time, not the 3rd since 1:16 is still explaining 1:14. Second I would say that the necessary aspect, or the reason given is that they were created for humans to be able to tell the seasons and years and days since that is the reason given.
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6. 1:17 says that God set the two great lights in the firmament. Again, how are these lights different from the ones He put in the firmament in 1:14?
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I feel like you need to read this like a book and not sentence by sentence, it seems clear to me that 1:17 is still explaining what was started in 1:14.
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7. Another case of redundancy and repetition, as the phrase "to divide the light from the darkness" appears again in 1:18, EXACTLY as it does in 1:4.
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New American Standard Version... which I believe is the translation which translates most literally to English (a comparison would be the NIV bible which tends to translate more poetically to the bible, much the same way translators will translate the Aeneid in different ways.. etc). 1:4. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from darkness.... 1:18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw it was good. Maybe you can explain more clearly what you mean here, I don't quite understand... what I read is that God separated light from darkness one day. And on a fourth day God created specific things (sun moon stars) whose purpose was to keep the day and night separated and be signs for seasons, days, and years.
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8. In 1:26, God says "Let us create man in our own image." This really puzzles me. Who else is God referring to when he says "us" and "our"?
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This is the first piece of evidence towards the Christian belief of the trinity.
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9. Not really a critique, but I noticed that there are several cases of words being placed in italics for no apparent reason, especially "it was", although there are plenty of other words put in italics. What was the purpose of doing this?
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Ask the publisher, don't see it done in my bible, sorry.
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