Texts in Conversation
4 Ezra describes a special light created on the first day, shining before the sun, moon, and stars existed. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Chagigah echoes this idea by separating this first light from the later light made by the sun, moon, and stars.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
4 Ezra 6:40
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
38 I said, “O Lord, truly you spoke at the beginning of the creation, on the first day, and said this: ‘Let heaven and earth be made,’ and your word perfected the work. 39 Then the spirit was hovering, and darkness and silence were on every side. The sound of man’s voice was not yet there. 40 Then you commanded a ray of light to be brought out of your treasuries, that your works might then appear. 41 “On the second day, again you made the spirit of the firmament and commanded it to divide and to separate the waters, that the one part might go up, and the other remain beneath.
Chagigah 12a
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
The Gemara poses a question: And was light created on the first day? But isn’t it written: “And God set them in the firmament of the heaven” (Genesis 1:17), and it is also written: “And there was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day” (Genesis 1:19), indicating that light was created on the fourth day. The Gemara answers: This should be understood in accordance with Rabbi Elazar, as Rabbi Elazar said: The light that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created on the first day was not that of the sun but a different kind of light, through which man could observe from one end of the world to the other. But when the Holy One, Blessed be He, looked upon the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion and saw that their ways were corrupt and that they might misuse this light for evil, He arose and concealed it from them, as it is stated: “And from the wicked their light is withheld” (Job 38:15).
Date: 450–550 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... God says on the first day, 'Let there be light' (Genesis 1:3). But the light created on the first day could not have been sunlight or the light of the moon or stars, since these heavenly bodies were not created until the fourth day. Many ancient writers therefore said that it was a special light that enabled God to see as He created the world ... If so, then perhaps it was a light unlike any other, one that illuminated all of creation at once ... Another possibility was that the light that was later to come from heavenly bodies was created, or conceived, on the first day, even though the heavenly bodies themselves were not created until the fourth ..."
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