Myth #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), appearing in the form of Re (the Hermopolitan Creator deity), would have been responsible for the organization of the rest of the creative process, including the appearance of the moon and the stars.

In some Egyptian texts, the sun and moon each form one of the eyes of Horus (a solar deity identified as the son of Re or Osiris), but we have no particularly useful account of the moon’s origin. Egyptians considered stars to be inhabitants of the underworld and, since Osiris (the son of heaven and earth) ruled the underworld, they called the stars “Followers of Osiris.”

While the Theban tradition places the creation of the sun at the same sequential point as Genesis, we have to acknowledge that the thrust of the Genesis narrative for the fourth day does not flow from Egyptian ideas. The sun has a significantly diminished role, placed on a par or slightly more important level with the moon and the stars, a concept inconsistent with the Egyptian view.

However, a passage from a Babylonian Creation text known as Enuma Elish (Tablet V), shows that Babylonian ideas influenced the Genesis description. It describes events that took place almost immediately after the god Marduk had slain the monstrous Tiamat and formed heaven and earth out of her severed parts. In it, there are detailed descriptions of how he created the sun, moon, and stars and their roles in marking out time periods. To quote just one passage that parallels the biblical description,“The moon he caused to shine forth; the night he entrusted (to her). He appointed her, the ornament of the night, to make known the days.”

Compare that with the biblical phrasing: “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.”

The ideas in both passages clearly share common concepts, but the Babylonian phrasing reflects the polytheistic nature of the myths. The Hebrews, as with the Egyptian myths, accepted the Babylonian science but separated out the gods from the functions. Still, we see how closely the Hebrews followed the Babylonian model, eliminating the deities but embracing their roles as rulers of the day and night.