The writer of this story, however, did not have a scientific knowledge of the universe which, religiously and philosophically, he so perfectly related to God. But the religious value of the story is not injured in the least by the author's manifestly crude knowledge of astronomy and geology. In spite of all our advancement in science, since Bible times, our knowledge of the universe is still very crude. To learn _all_ about nature scientifically will require eternity. It was the poetical, philosophical, and religious significance of the universe that the inspired writer discovered; science could abide its time. The writer of Genesis, like his contemporaries, regarded the earth as the center and main bulk of the universe. His universe was the child's universe, the universe of the unaided senses. On a very large scale the world, in his thought, was something like the old-fashioned cheese dish with a glass hemisphere over it. This huge covered dish floated in a universal sea. The glass cover, or firmament, kept the upper sea out except when its windows were opened to let the sea through in the form of rain. The dish, or earth, kept the lower sea out except in time of great floods when, as they supposed, the sea worked its way up through crevices in the earth. The sun, moon, and stars were supposed to be inside the vault.
This ancient conception of the universe pervades the Scriptures. In the twenty-fourth Psalm we read, "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof: for Thou hast founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods." Religiously this is superb, but scientifically it is incorrect; the earth does not rest on a sea. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof:" for Thou hast hurled it into space and lovingly marked out the way that it should go.
The Babylonian bible, which is many centuries older than the Old Testament, says that Apsu and Tiamit first created the gods of order, or light. This corresponds to the first day in Genesis. But our author discards all these gods and goddesses when he tells us that "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Whether light was the first act of creation or not, the best modern philosophy would confirm the statement that light was the result of God's wish. Light energy is a mode of the divine Will.