Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Blankinship, Benjamin" <bla26 AT co.henrico.va.us>]

> > God did not create darkness. He created light, and he made 
> > it possible for light to be shaded. We see the absence of
> > light and call it darkness. God did not create cold. He
> > created heat, and he made it possible for heat to be
> > insulated. We see the absence of heat and call
> > it cold. Darkness and cold do not exist; 
> 
> Darkness and cold do not exist????

No. You can't invent a dark-bulb, for example; if you want a room to be
dark, you have to figure out a way to prevent light from entering it. An
air-conditioner does not operate by creating cold (or "coolth," the term
one of my college profs coined to mean the opposite of warmth); it works
by absorbing heat from the air in the room and transfering it outdoors.
I can tell you what light is made of (a stream of photons) and what heat
is made of (simply put, molecules in motion). Can you tell me what dark
and cold are made of?

> This sounds like a 
> metaphysical argument. Yet we see in Genesis 1:2 that
> darkness pre-existed the light and that God 
> separated the light from darkness in Genesis 1:4.  

It would sound awkward to insist that one always say "less light" when
one means "darker," or "less hot" when one means "colder." If a
scientist had written Genesis 1, rather than a prophet, he might have
written, "the earth was formless and void, and there was no light on the
face of the deep."

I like the prophet's version better.

-- 
Ben B