July 30, 2008

Genesis 1.3-5

And God said, "Let there be light!" and there was light.

And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'Day,' and the darkness He called 'night'.

And there was morning and there was morning: one day.

5 comments:

Rob said...

Am I miss reading this? The only way we can have light and more light in the Bible is by having one of the old Leaders keep thier arms up in the air to stop the sun moving. Can't remember if that was Moses or Elijah corrections welcome!

Paul L said...

I've always liked this part of the story since it posits there being Light apart from the physical sources of it -- sun, moon, stars. This reinforces that the purpose of the story is much deeper than to explain material phenomena. (Ditto for "morning and evening" without the sun to demarcate them. "Day's a-breakin' in my soul" takes on a whole new meaning.)

But just now I realized that the light is "separated" from the darkness. This is kind of unusual since we usually think of it as the other way around: Light having substance and Darkness being the absence of light. Is it really that Light is the absence of Darkness? This is a provocative thought, to me.

forrest said...

I was miswriting this, thanks! ('l' where I should have typed 'n')

Vision is 'light' and 'darkness.' With some kinds of blindness, all the person sees is light--but that's a vague, blah sort of light. (Like newage spirituality when a person gets too literal about it.)

One way to look at this might be: that everything we see is an obstacle to the light. And another way: that the light and the darkness are both the work of God making beauty.

Mental 'darkness'? Emotional 'darkness'? Moral 'darkness'? Are these metaphors that hold up under examination? Are these things, in other words, all necessary for contrast?

I think there is something definitely fishy about that assumption. Some clearer way to describe what's going on?

Unknown said...

Think of "light" as knowledge, not the kind you see with....

forrest said...

Hmmm, maybe, but is it 'knowledge' as in 'thoughts-about' or knowledge as in 'intuitive understanding'? Does one block the other, & is that a good thing or otherwise?