Genesis 1 cont.

Part two. Day two and three.

Day two is here. God begins his creative work by ... well ... OK, making an atmosphere. There are a couple of things: first, 'firmament' — we know it is not firm at all; arguably, the sky is the least firm thing we have on this planet. Luckily, this word can be easily translated as 'expanse', so it sounds better and not so embarrassingly silly as to think that either God himself or his chosen scribe think that the sky is somehow solid. Then there is the issue of water sandwiching our 'expanse' from the top and bottom. It is not a current feature of our planet, but if we run ahead a bit and think of the Flood, we realize that having lots of water above the atmosphere is not necessarily a crazy idea. We shall discuss it in more details later.

The naming ceremony, where this new expanse is called 'Heaven' brings the second day to its conclusion.

Day three begins with an action that more or less allows us to keep a straight face when we say the name of our planet — 'Earth'. Comparing to most heavenly bodies found in the Solar System, our planet has two very peculiar characteristics: one — the overabundance of water, the second one — life itself. Logically, our planet should bear the name 'Ocean', especially considering what it looked like before Day three. In any case, God speaks the creative words and the dry appears. God speaks again, and the earth yields vegetation. As we carefully read the words, two things jump out from the page: one, we see strong allusions to what people have known for centuries "like begets like" and we call it 'genetics' nowadays; two (it becomes glaringly obvious as we continue reading), there is no Sun. Think about it, third day is about to finish, there are all those plants springing from land, but there still is no sun.