Main news for 11 March 2015

Beginning readers of the Bible often ask themselves and others: what light is being spoken of here? And how could light appear before the luminaries, which were created only on the fourth day? Of course, one could discuss at length that light as a physical phenomenon could have existed in the newly appeared universe before the formation of the stars, that there is nothing surprising in this, and bring many similar arguments. But is that needed? If the first chapter of Genesis, this remarkable poem about the creation of the world, were an essay in natural history, such arguments would no doubt be entirely necessary. But the author of the Torah was hardly intending to write a book on natural history. Judging by the content of the Pentateuch, he was interested above all in sacred history, the history of revelation, and everything else was only its background. And in such a context light, in the first place, apparently meant the presence of God: for all biblical theophanies are connected with light in one way or another; the shining presence accompanies the people throughout their history, and the ministry of the Savior Himself is also often accompanied by God-manifestations of the same luminous kind. Then it becomes clearer what the sacred writer had in mind: he is not describing how the world was arranged immediately after creation; he is only saying that creation, down to the last atom, was permeated by the radiance of the presence of God. Such was the world before the fall, before those catastrophes of which, unfortunately, its entire later history was to a large extent composed.