The leading scientific explanation with respect to the creation of the universe is the Big Bang Theory. In looking closer at this theory and the Biblical account of creation, it is incredibly uncanny how the two theories are similar. A recurring question is, how did Moses know about things that science, thanks to modern sophisticated tools, is just recently discovering? The answer? Well you know my opinion.
In the Biblical account of the creation the Bible starts off with the statement: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and that the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”. Genesis 1:1 – 3. Basically it is saying there was nothing! The earth was without form and void. There was only darkness.
Now keeping in mind that the Big Bang Theory is just that, only a theory with many unanswered questions, let us look at what this theory says about the creation of our universe. It says that the universe was created at the time of the Big Bang. Before that there was most likely nothing, not even time or space. At this juncture it is important to note that contrary to popular belief, the Big Bang was not literally an explosion, nor a bang. It was more of an extremely rapid expansion or inflation. This will become important in the next study, which concerns the creation of the firmament on the second day of creation.
According to the Big Bang theory, the whole universe began in a void as a speck densely packed matter, no bigger than a pinhead. I believe the name for this is a “singularity”. At the start of the Big Bang there was a rapid expansion/inflation of the universe, outward in all directions. It is still believed to be expanding today. To make the concept of this expansion somewhat more clear, imagine an uninflated, flat balloon, lying on a table. There is nothing between the two flat sides of the balloon. Now imagine air being blown into the balloon and the sites moving away from each other, as the balloon fills up. The air inside the balloon is a universe, and the balloon around it, are the edges of the universe. This is basically what the Big Bang theory says about the creation of the universe.
Now this expansion/inflation was extremely rapid, at a speed that is greater than the speed of light. During this initial stage the universe was extremely hot. So hot that ordinary atoms could not even exist in it. During this stage, electrons caused very small packets of light called photons to scatter continuously and light was actually linked to the particles, causing the whole universe to glow. So, it seems to me that even according to science, light was the first thing that was created. Just as the Bible says.
Scientists like to call this stage the primordial soup, because the universe looked like a plasma ”soup” of protons, electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, photons, etc. see http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/tutorial/bigbang.html . This seems to support the statement in Genesis 1:2 that light was the first thing that existed in our universe where the the earth was without form… And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
How could Moses, who is believed to be the author of the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible, including Genesis), know what the universe looked like at the beginning, and that light was the first thing created? Remember that science only relatively recently has come to this same conclusion, using sophisticated tools such as the Hubble telescope, and computer technology.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light”. Genesis 1:1 – 3.