Light Without a Light Source By Austin Cline

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, contains an error about the origins and nature of light. Genesis depicts God creating light on the first day before the creation of anything that could serve as a source of light. The stars and the sun aren't created until the fourth day, even though they would have to be the source of light described at the beginning. You can't have light without a light source, so the Genesis account of the creation of light is a mistake.


First Day of Creation

Genesis 1:3-5: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.


Fourth Day of Creation

Genesis 1:14-19: 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 the evening and the morning were the fourth day



There are multiple errors in these passages. First, you can't have the light described in the first day without some sort of light source, but the sources of light don't appear until the fourth day. Second, you can't have day and night without the sun to provide them but the sun isn't depicted as having been created until the fourth "day." How could there have been three previous days without the earth rotating in front of a source of light like the sun?

Humans in the ancient world didn't know and couldn't have known about how the sun and the start produce light, so we can't be surprised at presence of errors about this subject in human texts. Thus so long as we remember that the Bible is just a human-created text, there isn't a problem; as soon as anyone insists that the Bible is anything more, errors like this take on new importance.

Is this a legitimate, scientific error in the Bible or can the Genesis depiction of the the sources of light in the universe be harmonized with the facts of science? If you think you can answer this Bible error, explain how — but your answer cannot add anything new that's not already in the stories and cannot leave out any details that the Bible provides.