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

22
yth #9:
God created the heavenly bodies.
The Myth: 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 God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the
day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and
over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was
good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. (Gen. 1:14–19)
The Reality: The biblical editors began with the correct Theban chronological
sequence for the arrival of the sun but then amended the story by following the Babylonian
tradition for the appearance of the heavenly bodies.
The fourth day of Creation brings about the creation of the sun, moon, and stars.
The narrative initially describes the creation of lights in the firmament (without specifying
which lights they are) in order to divide the night from day. This presents a puzzle
as God already had separated night from day, darkness from light, on the first day
of Creation, a paradox discussed earlier in Myth #4. These unspecified lights created
on the fourth day served a variety of calendar functions, marking off days, seasons, and
years. Next, after telling us about the function of these lights, Genesis finally describes
them, a greater light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night. And, almost as
an afterthought, it adds,“he made the stars also.”
These two major lights are the sun and the moon. We have already noted that in
the Theban doctrine of Creation, the Sun appears in the form of Re as a child after the
events involved in the divisions of heaven and earth and waters and the appearance of
vegetation, which is consistent with Genesis. But we don’t have any corresponding
Egyptian references to the appearances of the moon and the stars in connection with
the sun. We know only that in the Theban myth Amen (the Theban Creator deity),