Genesis 1.3, Light, and Inflation
While reading Genesis 1 have you noticed that light does not show up until verse 3? Depending on how you read it, there is quite a bit of creation and matter long before light shows up.
I have inserted tabs at the beginning of clauses. What the tabs show is varying degrees of primacy in the text – i.e., mainline clause and supporting clauses. The clauses without tabs are the mainline clauses as shown by the specific Hebrew verb form. Clausal forms and elements are the grammatical clues to the hierarchy of the clauses in their relationship to each other and to the overall text. In this text we have a mainline narrative text and a mainline hortatory (imperatival) clause (3a, 3c); a background action clause (1), a background activities clause (2c) and three setting clauses (2a, 2b, 3c).
In evaluating a text, I normally remove the verse markers to get rid of any influence of the versifier and evaluate the text as a literary block. When done this way it can be seen how the text was meant to be read.
The grammatical markers (clausal structure mainly) are the indicators that the author used to show how he wanted the text to flow and what the main point was and what was backgrounding and support structures. I find it useful to think of a stage or a movie scene. You have the background or setting of the stage or scene. Then you have the background activities-things movie around giving more contextual information. Then you have background action – things happening closer to the front of the stage but not quite the main action. Then, closest to the audience and in focus you have the main action. The author of a text sets the stage and demonstrates the action by his clausal elements and structures.
The creation at the beginning (1) sets up what is to follow but did it in such a way as to provide background action to the main action – the creation of light. 2a-c gives the state of the creation prior to the creation of light; it provides the setting and background activity to the stage structure before the main action.
The main action is God speaking light into existence. It is very distinct in the Hebrew text by virtue of the verb form and the fact that that form is always found at the front of the clause.
1-2 is all background and setting. Structured the way it is it can take up any amount of time – microseconds to billions of years. The grammar of the text allows that. Day 1 does not begin until 3a. If you look at the rest of Gen 1 each day begins the same – and God said . . . ; and ends the same – there was evening, there was morning, day umptifratz.
So, in the text we have the Initial Creation with a description of the state of the universe (heavens and earth) prior to the creation of light. Notice that it is a distinct event separated from the initial creation. When I started paying attention to what I was seeing I thought it odd; I have a background in explosives and usually associate Bangs with Light!
When you look at the theory of the Big Bang and the illustrations of it you find that there is an initial period when the initial universe was too hot for the existence or travel of photons. It is call by some theorists the Cosmic Dark Ages and how long it lasted varies depending on the theorist. Wikipedia’s article on “The Chronology of the Universe” notes, “The Dark Ages and large-scale structure emergence – From 370,000 years until about 1 billion years. After recombination and decoupling, the universe was transparent but the clouds of hydrogen only collapsed very slowly to form stars and galaxies, so there were no new sources of light. The only photons (electromagnetic radiation, or “light”) in the universe were those released during decoupling (visible today as the cosmic microwave background) and 21 cm radio emissions occasionally emitted by hydrogen atoms. The decoupled photons would have filled the universe with a brilliant pale orange glow at first, gradually redshifting to non-visible wavelengths after about 3 million years, leaving it without visible light. This period is known as the cosmic Dark Ages. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe)
So here we have an observation from the Text and an observation from Telescopes pointed to the furthest reaches of the observable Creation that show a pause of some value between the initial creation and the creation and emergeance of light. It seems that grammar and science agree.
Not unexpected when we remember that both have the same Author. Who is also an Engineer who designs on the Sub-Atomic (sub-Plank?!) level. And, Who knows Your Name.
The Text and the Telescope 