Hypothesis or Top Down
In beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And Genesis chapter 1 tells us the most significant things about that event. The traditional presupposition about this account is that God created ex nihilo, or out of nothing and brought forth something that wasn't there before. This I believed at one time, but now think it proper to say God created ex Deo or out of Himself.
Moses writes, 'In beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.' God, who was, is and always will be, was already in action for all eternity, and now cuts into the infinite with the finite--the particular-- creating the cosmos. In beginning, he is hewing out the universe, which is now distinct from Himself, and conforming it to Himself. There is nothing outside of Himself, all resides within. He is binding up the universe with a single verse, and binding His own holy will. God, who is truly free and unbound, has bound up Creation and thus bound Himself for His own purposes and good pleasure a space-- better yet, space and time-- for His grand drama to unfold.
And God said, "Let there be light!" And there was light. This is the very first preaching, from the very first preacher. Creating something new is bound up with preaching it into existence. In this case, the preacher speaks to God and God recognizes the preacher. God suffers (allows) the light to come from Himself and confirms its goodness. Good things last, and last until the end of time.
Our omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator moves beyond these three propositions about Himself and communicates understanding in beginning the way Moses has narrated events to us. Augustine recognized that God could have made the universe in one day, but Moses tells us Elohim slowed to an eternal crawl of seven days to form heaven and earth. Genesis chapter 1 impresses some important things upon the reader: the God of this account is the God who makes distinctions. Each of these days is a start and more significantly, a stop. This account of the universe is distinct from our modern narrative today, which cannot see anything but continuous from the "beginning" of time. This is a God of personal will, which begins and ends when He so desires.
The narrative also makes an important distinction: there is God, who created heaven and earth, i.e. all things. God entails the creation and the narrative. God is outside of the bounds of Creation. Then we are directed to the Spirit of God, the Ruach Elohim, which is found in particular location; this is not to say the Spirit is localized, but the point of omnipresence is not the focus when it comes to the Spirit. The point is particularity. And then we are pointed to "the preacher."
Chapter 1 is a narrative of important dichotomies. Light and darkness; earth and water. All these things come about by God's will by first preaching them into being and then seeing them after. This preaching and seeing comes about no less than in ten utterances of "And God said," and seven, "And God saw." All the things listed are good, which means they will last throughout time. This is known by contrast to the 2nd day in which God separates the waters and nothing is said at all!
The God of this account does not create in chaos; this God creates according to His will and pleasure. One more distinction is to be observed that is worth noting: of all things this God creates man is the only creature or object that is not created by the spoken word. He is created in silent craftsmanship, broken only by the breath breathed into the man. Man is both the focus of creation week, and subtly, the thing held in suspense for our unfolding story, between the expanse of heaven.
Do you wonder why God "said," and then He "saw," in that order? I am going to draw a parallel here to the structure of this commentary. The "top down" section is heavily based on "hearing" first. In other words, we begin with certain presuppositions or a creed and then make our deductions-- or what we see-- after our first things. The following section is based on Newton's "Feigning no hypotheses," which is observation first, declarations later.
Feigning no Hypotheses
We observe these seven days of creation are seven turns of the earth, viewed geocentrically. The first day of creation the earth is turning against the cosmos, or heaven, in which are set the galaxies and the stars in our galaxy. This is probably what was revealed upon creating light, which allowed a viewer on the earth to tell time, even though the only viewer was God. The turning of the earth is constant throughout all of time, save for the fact it slows through tidal friction about one second a year. This amounts to about 4-6 hours of variance, or less than a quarter of one day in 6000 years. The turning of the earth is more or less constant. Thus, years are constant also. The moon, revolving around the earth gives us an independent variable in the examination of time. The earth revolves around the sun 365.242199 days/year. The moon revolves around the earth at 29.54 days per month. The stars of heaven rotate at 365.25 days per year. And the planets all have their own interesting revolutions as well. These are their fixed courses in heaven, and they "cannot be moved."
In the Torah, the day begins with evening and then morning. In a continuous calendar, the first day after Creation week ought to be Sunday, (or Saturday evening to be precise) and the 1st sliver of the moon ought to be visible indicating Aviv 1.
These days are highly ordered and show planning and purpose. The first three days are like foundations being laid out for further adornment. The last three days are in direct correspondence to the first three days as to with what they are adorned. The mysterious use of the week as a division of time is paralleled nowhere in creation. Some might say it relates to the month, however, a three-week month of ten days apiece would be closer than four weeks of seven. At any rate, it is a given proposition in the grand narrative.
