Why does it say "Let there be light" on the 1st day of creation?

Question

when the sun is not called into being until the fourth day.
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Perhaps it is it is the light of consciousness, which appears to us just after waking but before we open our eyes to admit physical light. We can regard this light of the Creation as a powerful metaphor for us because it is what allows us to comprehend what we see with our eyes and perceive through our other senses. If we understand this first form of light as consciousness, then we understand that from the beginning, creation is conscious and deliberate. As we study these opening lines of the Creation story in the Torah, we recognize that they offer us the grandest vision of possibilities for what the world can be.

Ledbetter: Would you accept metaphor rather than mythology?
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Answer 1

Ramban directly deals with this question in his commentary on Bereishis.

He states that in the beginning, only two things are created from nothing (the "Bara" (create) or its derivatives are only used on day one- the rest of the days the word "Aseh" (make) or its derivatives are used to indicate they are not from nothing).

So, what is created on day one? Ramban calls this Hule (A Greek term)- an undefinable substance which forms the building blocks of everything else and has no set structure of its own - alluded to in the hebrew by "Tohu". One tyoe of Hule formed the building blocks for Shamayim (the spiritual realm) and other for Haaretz (the physical realm)- thus the phrase "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" even though nothing had been created in them yet- but the essential essence from which they would evolve had been created.

The "Or" (light) from the first day was the light from the creation of the hule- the pure bright light of creation (Ramban states that this light was much brighter and purer than the later light of the sun and moon.) But, under this light, the world as we know it could not have existed- thus on day four the firmament is placed between shamayim and aretz- blocking this light from reaching the physical world- and the sun and moon were made to provide light in this world. The light from creation is stored away to be used by the righteous in the world to come (and some state to be used in the time of mashiach).

Answer 2

730 days of those 1000 days ( 73% of the time ) were democratic dominated in the oval office, the house and the senate. Yet still we have a few responding to your question blaming republicans. HEY LIBBIES, you should thank the republicans for stopping it. The near $5 trillion in added debt totally Obama and the dems would be much higher if not for the 2010 election. --- where the dems got a worst any party a$$ whippin in 70 years!!! After losing 60 house seats, 10 senate seats and 680 state level assembly seats. Wake the F up! Guess what.....you think the nation was ticked off then as evidence of the dem party nation wide got a good ol' fashion widening of their sphincter muscle, watch what happens 11 months from now.

Answer 3

Because the sun, moon and stars are not the only sources of light. In the new heaven and earth there will be no more sun because "God will be their light". It is possible for God to have created various sources of light before creating the sun. What happens to atoms when they are energized? They heat up and glow! Thus you are reading about God creating all of the foundations of all of creation. While there is much we don't understand about how God created all things we can still know for a fact that He did indeed create them. If one has an understanding of physics and the other operational sciences then it is somewhat easier to begin to understand how these things can be so.

Answer 4

This is such an interesting question, I feel I want a couple of months to study and think about it, not a couple of days!! I often find that if I meditate on a passage of Torah, read what I can, just let it get into me, then deep psychological meanings can become apparent. The metaphorical truths are sometimes mind-blowing.

But - to get to the point - my initial reaction to this is to think that the key issue in 'let there be light' is that it is the precursor to the separation of light from darkness. So my hunch would be that this is pointing up the need to understand me/not me, this/not this, as the absolute basic necessity for any individual human being to have a sense of self and then to form relationship - with God/spirit/the divine as much as with other human beings. We begin life not being clear about our boundaries and it's by our caregivers handling us (hopefully gently and lovingly) that we begin to get a sense of our skin, our boundary, and we slowly progress to increasing senses of our separateness. One often sees adults whose relationships are all about merger, where they can't bear the other person (partner, child) to be different, and it's absolutely crippling. So - for what it's worth, as an instant reaction - I'd say that the first action in that wonderfully-evoked world ("the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water" [JPS translation]) was the important beginning of selfhood.

Answer 5

Keep in mind that the earth and all things contained in it were not created in literal 24 hour periods. A day to Jehovah is as a thousand years. We know it took millions of years to create the earth. There was light in the sense of the firmament that existed around the earth. Sort of like a filter. Then the sun/moon was created in space behind the firmament. So, to look at the sun/moon would have had a transparent effect.

Answer 6

And how was there a day 1, 2, or 3 before the sun existed? The first Christian theologian, Origen, answered this question almost 2,000 years ago by saying it's obviously a mythological expression of some spiritual truth and reading it literally is intellectually indefensible. Catholicism, Anglicanism, Methodism, etc is perfectly at home in this knowledge.

Answer 7

Because light is the true purpose of existence, bringing to the world God's Light through our study of Torah and doing mitzvot. Even darkness knows it's true purpose is light, and it waits for us to transform it into light by these means. "Let there be light" was the first statement made during the creation, because light is the true purpose of all existence.

Answer 8

Understand first, that in the absence of light it could only be dark and so the God doesn't want to make anything in the dark, since he can't make things so perfect as he made the Adam and the Eve!

Answer 9

Check with the Kabbalists, Sefer ha Yetzirah for example, talks a lot of the stuff happening before Genesis.

Answer 10

Science shows that at the time of the Big Bang, nothing existed but light. All matter formed from this light.

Genesis agrees with modern science on this and many other points.