Q&A: The Creation of the World
The Creation of the World
Question
How is it possible that the Torah tells us that God first created the heavens and the earth (on the first day), and only later, on the fourth day, created the sun, the moon, and the stars, when we know from radiometric dating that the sun, and many other stars (entire galaxies, in fact), were created long before the earth? The first galaxies existed from 1–2 billion years after the Big Bang, while the earth was formed only 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
Is the creation story a parable, as it were?
Answer
Apparently this is not a historical description. Beyond that, when you speak about creation in terms of days, then they were not created together.
Discussion on Answer
The earth and the stars. It depends what we’re talking about (which stars). The differences of a few days are meaningless when the real scale is billions of years.
But in no way does the story line up with reality. If the stars were created first, that contradicts the plain meaning, and nobody said that. If the stars were created later, that contradicts reality.
?
Why do I need to repeat what I already wrote? This story looks like an instructive myth, not a factual description. Therefore it should be discussed conceptually, not historically-scientifically.
What was not created together? The days and the created things?