Genesis 1:1 - “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

It is commonly thought that Genesis 1:1 is merely a summary of Genesis chapter 1. One reason is because the earth is thought by some to be created on Day 3 (v. 9) and the Heavens (i.e., the sun, moon, and stars) are throught to be created on Day 4 (v. 14-15). However, to conclude that the earth, sun, moon, and stars did not yet exist overlooks other things that Genesis 1 says.

Genesis 1:2 says that before there was light, there was the deep, and God was hovering over it. Furthermore, Genesis 1:6 clearly says there was an atmosphere largely of water. Clearly God created the deep and the waters, yet their creation is not recorded. But isn't it?

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

If we suppose that God created the earth in verse 1, then God was hovering over its ocean in verse 2. That accounts for the earth. What of the heavens?

According to mainstream scientists, there was a time 3.9-4.4 Ga (billion years ago) when the earth existed precisely as the scripture implies: an earth under water with a watery atmosphere. They call it the hydrosphere, and its ancient oceans are believed to have been created from a process called out-gassing, where the hot primordial earth released massive amounts of steam, which cooled into water... enough to cover the globe.

Read more about how scientists discovered the earth was covered in water 4.4 Ga

A key to this theory is the crators on the moon. They suggest a time of frequent meteor bombardment. Based on the size and depth of these craters, such meteors would have decimated the ancient ocean, forcing it into the atmosphere. It would then rain tumultuosly until things either settled or another impact ocurred. The time following such an impact is a perfect description of the conditions prescribed by scripture... world-wide ocean, no land, watery atmosphere. But, the moon? Explaining the conditions before Day 1? Isn't scripture clear that there was no moon yet? Not exactly. Scripture does not actually say that the moon was created on Day 4. To understand this, we need to look back at Day 2.

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate

water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated

the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.

8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening,

and there was morning—the second day.

To summarize, God separated the waters below from the waters above. Between them was created a vault, the top of which is the sky. This matches the ancient Egytpian Creation Myth that Moses would have grown up with. They record that the blue sky was the bottom of the waters suspended over the vault, and that the gods (or just God, as Moses clarified) eventually placed the sun, moon, and stars within the surface of the sky, below the waters above it. Well, no one today believes that is true, which suggests we look for an explanation that has the appearance of what Moses wrote.

If we consider the earth's transition from its dark watery atmosphere of Day 1 to the bright clear atmosphere of Day 4, it suggests that over that time, the atmospheric waters fell to the earth (Days 1 and 2), land appeared (Day 3), plants started growing on the land (Day 3), and their Oxygen cleared up whatever haziness in the atmosphere remained (Day 4). If the moon was blocked from view on Day 1, it was certainly visible on Day 4... as were the sun and the stars. Whatever Moses meant, mainstream science explains the mechanisms behind what he described. But, more than that, science tells us that before the dark rainy hydrosphere, there were the heavens and the earth. It is what scripture has been telling us all along.