Myth #3:

Creation began with the appearance of light.

The Myth: Let there be light: and there was light. (Gen. 1:3)

The Reality: Genesis follows the Theban Creation doctrine when it begins the Creation process with the appearance of light.

In Genesis, God’s spoken command causes light to appear suddenly, an event that signifies the start of the creative process. No such doctrine appears in the Mesopotamian myths, but many Egyptian myths follow the same sequence. After the Egyptian Creator god speaks, light suddenly appears. One particular passage from a hymn to Amen shows how closely the biblical sequence follows the Egyptian.

[The one (i.e., Amen)] that came into being in the f irst time when no god was [yet] created, when you [Amen-Re] opened your eyes to see with them and everybody became illuminated by means of the glances of your eyes, when the day had not yet come into being.

This is interesting because it states not only that light appeared at the beginning of Creation but that it appeared when the day had not yet come into being, and Genesis makes the same claim. Immediately following the appearance of light, the Bible says:

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. (Gen. 1:4–5)

In both the Theban and Memphite Creation myths, after Ptah appears, he commands the appearance of Atum, the Heliopolitan Creator god who first appears in the form of a flaming serpent, the first light.

In Genesis and Egyptian myth, Creation began when a deity summoned forth the first light by verbal command. This light originally corresponded to Atum, but the Hebrew writers eliminated the direct reference to this deity and simply described the appearance of light.