Most astronomers accept the idea that stars
form by gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust,
and that this process takes a minimum of 210,000 years.[1]
The consensus is that it was the Big Bang that made all
this possible. There are Christians who assert that the
Bible can be harmonized with the Big Bang and this process
of star formation.[2] Dr. Hugh Ross, an
astronomer and minister, is the most prominent spokesman
for this position. He postulates that the sun was formed
before the earth and that it is wrong to view Genesis 1:14-19
as an account of the actual creation of the sun, moon, and
stars. All God needed to do was to clear the cloudy atmosphere
so that these celestial objects simply "appeared"[3]
or became visible. E. J. Young, a Hebrew scholar, takes
the opposite view: "That the heavenly bodies are made
on the fourth day and that the earth had received light
from a source other than the sun is not a naive conception,
but is a plain and sober statement of the truth."[4]
These interpretations are at odds with each other, so both
cannot be true. At least one of them contradicts what God
said in Genesis 1:14-19 concerning Day 4.

Throughout the Genesis 1 narrative God speaks
and something happens as a result. These commands are characterized
by the wording: "Let there be ___." One such command
appears in verse 3 (light); two in verse 6 (expanse and
divided waters); two in verse 9 (waters gathered and appearance
of dry ground); one in verse 11 (sprouting plants); one
in verse 14 (luminaries); two in verse 20 (sea creatures
and flying animals); one in verse 24 (land animals); and
one in verse 26 (man). All, with the exception of one, are
used in the sense of God speaking to His creation. In the
exception, one gets the sense of one member of the Godhead
speaking to the others: "Let us make man." This
command (i.e.: "Let there be ___") is known as
a jussive.[5] God used this command
consistently in the first six instances to refer to something
brought into existence that did not previously exist. Regardless
of whatever these commands signify, ex nihilo (out
of nothing) or de novo (something new), they represent
a fundamental change in the object that is "created."
One may wonder since no clues in the text suggest another
view, why in the command concerning the luminaries, Dr.
Ross proposes something radically different:

The sun, moon, and stars are mentioned on
the fourth day, and the opening sentence for the fourth
day uses the Hebrew word "hayah"—"let
there appear the sun, moon, and stars." So what the
text is telling us is on the first day, the cloud layer
was transformed from opaque to translucent so light could
come through; on the fourth day, the clouds broke so that
the observer on the surface of the ocean for the first
time, could see the sun, moon, and stars.[6]

If this is truly the correct interpretation,
then this exceptional command on Day 4 would represent the
only non-creative command God issued in Genesis 1. All the
other commands, as even Dr. Ross notes, are a creation of
something that was not in existence before the command.
We should ask: What is so exceptional about this command
that requires such a radically different interpretation?
It would appear, from reading Genesis 1, that each of God's
commands brought something into existence that did not previously
exist!

While the Hebrew language may seem frightening
to some, it really is not. The style of writing of Genesis
1 is historical, using the waw-consecutive to express
consecutive action (waw=and). Biblical historians use this
style to: "express actions, events, or states, which
are to be regarded as the temporal or logical sequence of
actions, events, or states mentioned immediately before."[7]
What this means for Genesis 1 is that God describes a sequence
of events that occur one after the other throughout the
creation week. We see this sequence reflected in the English
as "And God said," "And there was,"
or "And it was," with which each verse in Genesis
1 begins. Each occurrence signifies that some action followed
another in a real time sequence.

This is very important as it relates to the
events of Genesis 1. Francis Andersen observes: "A
string of WP (waw-consecutive) clauses in narrative
prose (historical) stages events as occurring in a time
sequence one after another. It is implied that one is finished
before the next begins, so it is possible to speak of the
verbs as 'perfective' in aspect."[8]
So the events of Genesis 1:14-19 have an opening waw-consecutive
"And God said," and a closing pattern of waw-consecutives
"and it was evening, and it was morning" separating
the 4th day from the previous and subsequent commands God
issued. The point for the interpreter is that each day in
Genesis 1 must be a completed event! So God began
His creation of the sun, moon, and stars on Day 4 and finished
them on that same day. This also rules out the concept that
the days may overlap in some manner.

If the syntax and context suggest that God
created the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14-19, how
do those who maintain that they were created earlier argue
their case? Dr. Ross would suggest that a key word in this
passage is nathan, which appears in Genesis 1:17
translated "set." Here is how he defines this
word: "set; put; place; appoint; bring forth; apply;
ascribe; cause to appear; show."[9]
The word, nathan, does have a broad semantic range,
as Dr. Ross observes. However, its usage falls under three
basic categories: "give, put or set, make or constitute."[10]
In Genesis 1 God is establishing or setting the functions
of these celestial bodies. However one may view the definition
of nathan, it is not used with the signification
"cause to appear."

The second word of importance is hayah.
Dr. Ross defines this as "become; cause to appear
or arise; cause to be made or done; come into existence;
come to pass; make into something."[11]
This word also has a wide semantic range, of which "to
appear" is part. Yet, its basic meaning is one of existence:
"It seems, however, that from the very outset, hayah
was used to refer to 'being' in the sense of 'exist,
be present' and of 'come into being, happen'."[12]
If "to appear," as the sense that Dr. Ross suggests,
is the interpretation of hayah in 1:14, then one
must consistently apply this meaning in 1:3 (let light appear),
and twice in 1:5 (let an expanse appear and let a dividing
appear). These four occurrences must be interpreted in a
consistent manner. But Dr. Ross does not do this. He interprets
the word to mean "appearance" on Day 4, but interprets
it to mean "come into existence" on all the other
days.[13]

Those who believe that the stars were formed
before Day 4 make a point from Hebrew syntax. Hebrew does
not have a specific way of communicating a pluperfect tense.
A pluperfect is: that which denotes that an action or event
was completed before a given time. So, in Genesis 1:16,
some would translate the first portion of the verse "now
God had made the two great luminaries." The
argument is that God made the stars before He created the
earth, and now simply describes their function for the earth.
Note Dr. Ross's explanation:

Now you'd also see in the fourth day it
uses the word asah for the sun, moon, and stars,
but it's in the past tense. God made—past tense—and
it's in a parenthetical context after the nathan usage.
Which means that it could have been made any time before....
There is only one past tense in the Hebrew, you can't
tell if it's pluperfect or whatever.[14]

The point is that if "made" is
pluperfect (i.e., had made) in verse 16, then
it must be referring back to an earlier "making,"
but how much earlier? Some have proposed the events of verse
1 or verse 3, but it could just as well be simply referring
back to verse 14.

The word "made" occurs two
other times in Genesis 1. Each one could possibly be translated
as a pluperfect, so if verse 16 is pluperfect, we would
expect the others to be pluperfect also. But how does this
effect our understanding of Genesis 1?

The first occurrence is on the second day
(verse 6), when God said "let there be an expanse."
Then we see in verse 7, "and God made the expanse."
This should then be translated "and God had made the
expanse." But this seems unnatural and contradictory.
The other occurrence is on Day 6 (verse 24), when God said,
"let the earth bring forth living creatures."
Then we see in verse 25 "and God made (or had made)
the beasts of the earth." Yet even if we accept
the pluperfect tense in these instances, they are simply
pluperfect to the previous command. The uses of "made"
function as a description of what was accomplished as
a result of His command. We can see this kind of function
with other verbs in Genesis 1 that could be translated as
pluperfects (verses 12, 21, and 27 are results of verses
11, 20, and 26). So what God made in verse 16 is
clearly intended to be the same as that which God spoke
into existence in verse 14. To conclude that the pluperfect
refers to a long-ago, unrelated event, introduces meaninglessness
into Scripture, and introduces a concept totally foreign
to what God is telling us!

It would be useful to gain some insight from
an early church father, Theophilus. He differs greatly from
the views of Dr. Ross and the modern cosmologists as he
says:

On the fourth day the luminaries came into
existence. Since God has foreknowledge, he understood
the nonsense of the foolish philosophers who were going
to say that the things produced on earth come from the
stars, so that they might set God aside. In order therefore
that the truth might be demonstrated, plants and seeds
came into existence before stars. For what comes into
existence later cannot cause what is prior to it.[15]

It appears that Theophilus clearly understood
the significance of this passage and would dispute current
theories. We realize that when all the facts are discovered
and rightly interpreted, science and Scripture will be in
full agreement. Until that time, we must "take every
thought captive" (II Corinthians 10:5) and make it
obedient to Christ. The Bible is to be the standard for
all thought! This means that we must not seek to insert
foreign ideas into the Biblical text.

In the beginning of this article, we drew
attention to two vastly different interpretations of Genesis
1:14-19. If current theories of the origin of the universe
and star formation are correct, then the Bible is wrong.
God did not say exactly how He created the stars, so we
should attempt to build scientific models describing His
actions, which utilize the best scientific data and that
are consistent with Biblical revelation. The purpose of
this article was to examine the Biblical data and determine
what the Bible says about the creation of the stars. This
article should be thought of as establishing a Biblical
foundation upon which a scientific model can be built.

[1] R. Kippenhahn, Stellar
Structure and Evolution (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1990), p. 260.

[2] One can examine any of Hugh Ross's
books to substantiate this point: Genesis One: A Scientifc
Perspective, revised edition (Sierra Madre, CA: Wiseman
Productions, 1983); The Fingerprint of God, 2nd
edition (Orange, CA: Promise Publishing Co., 1991), The
Creator and the Cosmos (Colorado Springs: NavPress,
1993); Creation in Time (Colorado Springs, CO:
NavPress, 1994).

[3] Hugh Ross, Genesis One, p. 10.

[4] E. J. Young, Studies in Genesis
One (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing
Co., 1964), p. 95.

[5] Bruce Waltke & M. O'Connor, An
Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 568. See E. Kautzsch, Genesius'
Hebrew Grammar, 2nd edition revised by A. E. Cowley
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), p. 320.

[6] Hugh Ross, Resolving The Timescale
Issues, Creation/Evolution audio tape (Pasadena, CA:
Reasons to Believe), 1990.

[7] Kautzsch, Genesius' Hebrew Grammar,
p. 326.

[8] Francis Andersen, The Sentence
in Biblical Hebrew (The Hague: Mouton Publishers,
1980), p. 87. See also Thomas J. Finley, "The WAW-Consecutive
with 'Imperfect' in Biblical Hebrew," in Tradition
and Testament, ed. by J. Feinberg (Chicago: Moody
Press, 1981), pp. 241-262.

[9] Hugh Ross, Word Studies in Genesis
One (Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1983), p. [3].
This is the same response he gave at a lecture: Genesis
One: An Ancient Earth—Recent Man Interpretation
(audio tape), 1989. He says that: "according
to the lexicons nathan has 36 definitions so it's
not that well-defined a word. But you will see 'to set,
to allow to appear' at the top of the list."

[10] Theological Wordbook of the
Old Testament, s.v. "Nãtãn"
by Milton C. Fisher, 2:608.

[11] Ross, Word Studies, p. [2].

[12] Theological Dictionary of the
Old Testament, s.v. "Hãyãh"
by K. H. Bernhardt, 3:372.

[13] Ross,Genesis One, p. 7.

[14] Ross, Genesis One. An Ancient
Earth—Recent Man Interpretation, 1989 (tape
2).

[15] Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.4,
Oxford Early Christian Texts, as cited in Louis Lavallee,
"The Early Church Defended Creation Science,"
Impact 160 ICR Acts & Facts (October 1986):
ii.

* James Stambaugh, M.L.S., M.Div., is Librarian
for the Institute for Creation Research.