Specific Critiques of Genssi Chapter 1

[BIG NIGE]

Wow I had no idea my thread would become so popular. Somebody called into question the meaning of light, with regard to my claim that Genesis says that light came before stars, saying that God is light, but not physical light, or something like that. So now I have the text of Genesis in front of me and I'm going to give specific critiques.

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).

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?

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?

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.

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".

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?

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.

8. In 1:26, God says "Let us creat man in our own image." This really puzzles me. Who else is God referring to when he says "us" and "our"?

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?