What did God create in Genesis 1:1?

Agreed that God created the universe including the earth's foundation

Disagree that the ancients had any clue that the rest of the universe was created earlier than the earth (at least the formless earth of the first day)

Disagree that the narrative of Genesis One allows that there was ever any light anywhere until God said "let there be light".

Job 38:8-9
"Or who enclosed the sea with doors
When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;
9 When I made a cloud its garment
And thick darkness its swaddling band,
NASU


Hmm. Looking for light in that verse. Nope, don't see any light there.

Literally, there was no light until God said "let there be light". That's what the narrative says.

On the other hand, while our narrative explicitly states there was evening and morning for the various days, there is nothing to say that before the placement of the Sun and Stars in the Firmament there was necessarily 24 hours of time in those days. They could have been, I suppose, any length at all, but they would have been times of dark followed by times of light. But by calling them "days" the implication is they are timed like our days today.

The essential thing is that there was dark as in the darkness of night and light as in the light of the day, for days one through three. The narrator doesn't worry about how there could be light without the Sun; after all, God was there, and He is perfectly capable of making light without a Sun.

 

That is eisegesis . . .

 

So what do you make of the part about their singing? With what mouth do they make their songs? With what air does the singing spread through space? With what mind did they compose melody and harmony? With what mind do they understand the words of the song?

 

My reason for mentioning eisegesis is that you seem to come up with reasons showing that features of grammar or lexis prove your point.

Examples:

1. You claimed that the disjunctive waw prevented 1:1 from being a summary statement.

It does not do so. That is an issue of interpretation.

2. You insist that the meanings of "asah" and "bara" are necessarily different.

They are not necessarily so. The semnatic domains of words are broad and overlapping.

I believe, as I said before, that your argument is flawed. It seems to me that you have decided a priori that you want Genesis to be compatible with an old earth.

I do however concede (regarding a statement you made on the first page) that we cannot DISPROVE YOUR POSITION USING ONLY THE TEXT.

 

Paul33,

I admit that I am somewhat of a minimalist when it comes to linguistic theology. And as you might expect my favorite authors here are Stanley Porter, D A Carson, Bruce Waltke, Christo van der Merwe and others.

I disagree with your position - but that is my opinion.

My main point is to show that we must not overread the text. Much of our discernment of meaning comes properly from context and not text.

 

Well, most of us all know that stars shed light, and that there are lines MISSING from the light, where elements in the star have absorbed a certain part of the light.

Most of us see stars singing as a poetic touch not to be taken literally.

I'm curious as to what SCIENTIFIC source you actually have in mind about stars singing! Your statement is a definate assertion to the affect that "scientists" - plural even - have concluded stars "sing". Do you really have a source, or did somebody just make that up?

Or could this verse be (gasp!) poetic and non-literal?