Which came first: the Earth or the Sun?

1.1
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep...
1.9
And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gather together into one place and let the dry land appear." ...
1.14
And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth."...
1.16 God made the two great lights - the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night - and the stars.

I am curious, which came first, the Earth or the Sun and the stars?

What rules the night when the Moon is in the daytime?

Are the stars created as even lesser lights than the Moon?

>1 richardbsmith: Are you serious, Richard, or are you just baiting the creationists? If you are serious, is it just idle curiosity, or is there a reason behind it?

The topic was prompted by fuzzi's repetition of the phrase Bible believing Christians. I think the questions in the OP will help define what is involved in believing the Bible.

No baiting intended. I have my own answers to those questions raised in the OP, based on my understandings about things, but the questions are intended to be serious.

>3 richardbsmith: Bible believing Christians

Interesting phrase. I would argue that all Christians are "Bible believing Christians", but the word "believing" has to be unpacked. "Bible believing" does not necessarily mean bible literalism.

St. Augustine offers some useful thoughts on these questions in The Literal Meaning of Genesis:

(In reference to verses 1-4): Although this work of God was done in an instant, did the light remain, without night coming on, until the time of one day was complete; and did the night, following upon the daylight, continue while the hours of the nighttime passed by until the morning of the following day dawned, one day, the first one, being them compete? But if I make such a statement, I fear I shall be laughed at both by those who have scientific knowledge of these matters and by those who can easily recognize the facts of the case. At the time when night is with us, the sun is illuminating with its presence those parts of the world through which it returns from the place of its setting to that of its rising. Hence it is that for the whole twenty-four hours of the sun's circuit there is always day in one place and night in another. (...) If we are then to assume that it was a corporeal light, it is difficult to discover any solution to propose for this problem. Perhaps one might say that God gave the name "darkness" to the mass of the earth and water which were still not separated from the other (a thing which is said to have happened on the third day), in view of the dense bodily mass of the earth and water, which light could not have penetrated, or in view of dark shade of the huge bulk. Now there must be such shade on one side of a body if there is light on the other. Where part of a body cannot be reached by light, because the mass of the body obstructs it, in that part there is shade. (...) If this shade, because of the size of the massive body, is large enough to cover a space of the earth equal to that covered by daylight on the other side, it is then called "night." Not all darkness is night (e.g. caves). (...) This word we reserve for the darkness that comes to that part of the earth from which day has departed. Similarly, not all light is called "day" (e.g. moon, stars, lamps, lightning, etc.). But that light is called "day" which precedes the night and withdraws when night comes on. (From Chs. 12-13)

Augustine concludes here that, although there was not yet a sun, yet the light that was made shone on only half the unformed globe of water-and-earth at a time, thus allowing the cycle of night and day without heavenly bodies. Augustine's solution to most of the apparent contradictions is to distinguish between spiritual and material creation and between unformed and formed matter.

(Why did I waste so much space with a long quote? Because I thought it would be fun, especially to poke in the eyes of the Flat Earth Society. And because of the bolded sentence.)

>5 nathanielcampbell: I've been looking for that quote for some time, as I have seen it before but lost it. Must bookmark it or something. Somewhere else (perhaps the same place?) Augustine goes on and specifically says that the bible must be interpreted according to common sense, or words to that effect. If you have that quote, I'd be interested to see it. It undermines the assertion of some bible literalists that Christians always took the bible literally until modern biblical exegetes came along and went against God's Word; it seems more likely that Christians always interpreted the bible, a la Augustine, and that bible literalism is the modern aberration.

I've also been holding onto these nuggets from chs. 18 and 19 Augustine's The Literal Meaning of Genesis, which seem apropos to so many things:

In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should no rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

Let us suppose that in explaining the words, And God said, "Let there be light," and light was made, one man thinks that it was material light that was made, and another that it was spiritual. As to the actual existence of spiritual light in a spiritual creature, our faith leaves no doubt; as to the existence of material light, celestial or supercelestial, even existing before the heavens, a light which could have been followed by night, there will be nothing in such a supposition contrary to the faith until unerring truth gives the lie to it. And if that should happen, this teaching was never in Holy Scripture but was an opinion proposed by man in his ignorance. On the other hand, if reason should prove that this opinion is unquestionably true, it will still be uncertain whether this sense was intended by the sacred writer when he used the words quoted above, or whether he meant something else no less true. And if the general drift of the passage shows that the sacred writer did not intend this teaching, the other, which he did intend, will not thereby be false; indeed, it will be true and more worth knowing. On the other hand, if the tenor of the words of Scripture does not militate against our taking this teaching as the mind of the writer, we shall still have to enquire whether he could not have meant something else besides. And if we find that he could have meant something else also, it will not be clear which of the two meanings he intended. And there is no difficulty if he is thought to have wished both interpretations if both are supported by clear indications in the context.

Non-Christians know something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge they hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a nonbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehood on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion (I Timothy 1:7).

>6 John5918:: I'm guessing that the clearest expression of what you're looking for isn't in De Genesi ad Litteram but is instead to be found in De Doctrina Christiana. I will see if I can look it up this weekend.

>7 nathanielcampbell: Thanks, Nathaniel. The parts you have highlighted in bold are the ones I was thinking of. Stirring stuff for the conversation between bible literalists and normal Christians! And I've just discovered the "Add to favourites" function, which I wish I had discovered several years ago!

Both the sun and the moon are within you, you can answer this question.

Not therealsunandmoon.

That very same (star)dust or clay--Brother Sun and Sister Moon, as St. Francis would have it. :)

Joni is right, "We are stardust."

(Not to take anything away from Joni, but, strictly speaking, the idea that "We are made of star-stuff" was first said by astronomer Harlow Shapley back in the 1920s....)

>14 AsYouKnow_Bob:: "(Not to take anything away from Joni, but, strictly speaking, the idea that "We are made of star-stuff" was first said by astronomer Harlow Shapley back in the 1920s....)"

If I had the time, I'm pretty sure I could dig up all kinds of examples from ancient and premodern literature of this very same idea. Just because an astronomer said it in the 1920's doesn't mean that he invented the idea. (Heck, depending on how you interpret ancient and Neo-Platonic ideas about the stars and planets representing higher levels of being, then humans, as microcosms of the macrocosmic universe, do contain within themselves the stuff of stars.)

And so? It's not that Shapley invented the "idea", ideas are cheap - it's that by the twentieth century, we finally learned that all the heavier nucleons in the world had been cooked up/fused in the hearts of earlier stars. ("We are stardust. Billion year old carbon....") I was pointing out that Joni was riffing on Shapley's specific formulation, not some general neo-Platonic ideas about the universe.

For a couple millennia, the opposite idea had held sway - that the heavens were not the same form of matter as the mundane.

Harlow could not have said it better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrWNTqbLFFE

Oh, I dunno... "star dust" is an improvement on "star stuff", but

Mankind is made of star stuff, ruled by universal laws. The thread of cosmic evolution runs through his history, as through all phases of the universe — the microcosmos of atomic structures, molecular forms, and microscopic organisms, and the macrocosmos of higher organisms, of planets, stars, and galaxies. Evolution is still proceeding in galaxies and man — to what end, we can only vaguely surmise.

isn't too shabby.

edited to add: (One of the nice things about it is that Shapley started talking up the idea back in the '20s, before Bethe figured out how the sun worked.)

I had thought about that same idea. How much was learned about the stars before the fussion operations were understood. Especially the amazing results from spectral analysis. Though Eddington had the idea early, just not the important details.

It is powerful to learn the processes of fussion, how tunneling enables and paces the process, how the process relates to all of physics and chemistry.

It is inspiring to read the names and stories of those who made the discoveries.

It is enlightening to understand that evolution is an overguiding principle, and it applies to everything. What it typically understood as evolution is biological evolution, a very special case of one of the pervasive principles of operation in the universe.

Agreed: the sun is not earth dust, then? :)

I think our sun and the planets are formed of the same dust. As you said in #12.