101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #8:
Vegetation appeared before the sun.
The Myth: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and
it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and
the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was
good. (Gen. 1:11–12)
The Reality: Genesis follows the Egyptian Creation sequence in putting the
appearance of vegetation before the sun.
The third day in Genesis finishes with the appearance of vegetation: grass, seed,
and fruit. Parenthetically, this creates problems from a scientific view, since plant life
requires sunlight to survive and grow and the sun has not yet appeared. But, we concern
ourselves here only with the mythological aspects of the discussion.
Keeping the Genesis description of the third day in mind, consider this brief
excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, c. 79:
Hail Atum!—
Who made the sky, who created what exists;
Who emerged as land, who created seed.
This passage describes the same precise sequence as in Genesis, the appearance of
sky, followed by land, followed by vegetation. The same sequence appears in other
Egyptian texts describing the Creation process. The oldest son of Heaven and Earth,
for example, was Osiris, whom Egyptians identified with grain, again showing that
vegetation appeared right after heaven and earth.
Throughout the Egyptian Creation tradition, vegetation appears right after the
division of heaven and earth and the gathering of the waters. This is the sequence followed
in Genesis, and shows the continuing parallel, event for event, between Egyptian
Creation myths and the Genesis Creation story.
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