Grice and God on Light

by JLS
for the GC

God said, "There will be light".

Grice glosses: "Perhaps He meant it intentionally, rather than factually, if not both".

As we discuss those verbs, vis a vis

Grice

there will-F be light (future-factual)
there will-I be light (future-intentional)

I read at

_http://www.indepthbible.org/commentaries/genesis/genesis1.doc_
(http://www.indepthbible.org/commentaries/genesis/genesis1.doc)

of the original utterance that Grice is analysing:

"God might have uttered the second sentence while engaged in the
Creation."

i.e. There will-I (rather than will-F) be light.

He was not predicting. He was deciding.

From that link then:

"`rAa-yhiy>w: rAa yhiy> ~yhil{a/ rm,aYOw"

"And God said, Gegenetho phos There will be light. --- Grice: there will-F
be light.
----------- there will-I be light. Let light be! Fiat (sit) lux.


-Wenham comments: "The universe and everything in it can be understood only
in the light of a Divine plan. Later philosophies are more intellectual.
In those later philosophies, the universe is the product of no guiding Will
at all, but only of mechanical chance; or, if a Will is back of it, it is
the Will of a blind weaver.

Hamilton notes, “It is the Latin Vulgate’s mistranslation of verse 3,
"fiat lux," rathe than "sit lux" ‘Let there be light,’ that has given birth to
the phrase ‘creation by fiat.’ The [ten-fold] emphasis is on creation by
speech as command."

Sarna comments: “The Divine word shatters the primal cosmic silence and
signals the birth of a new cosmic order. Divine fiat is the first of the
several modalities of creativity employed in this account. It implies
effortlessness and absolute sovereignty over nature."

"In modern physics, we are constantly hearing of the “Big Bang” theory of
the universe’s coming into existence suddenly, instantaneously and
inexplicably, from out of mysterious darkness (the “black hole”) -- which can be
seen as corresponding to God speaking and it instantaneously happening --
the universe coming into existence “out of nothing.”

"The phrase "rAa yhiy>, yehi )or" -- "let light be" -- "sit lux" --
"genetheto phos", "fiat lux" should best be translated as mere future

“Light WILL be.”
"Light SHALL be"

[but cfr. 'there is no future tense in English', Grice -- hence the modal
periphasis --. [I suppose there WAS perhaps a future tense in Anglo-Saxon.
There was one in Indo-European]. The Hebrew phrase was translated in Greek
as "Genetheto phos".

This the third person singular aorist imperative verb, with 'phos' being
the subject.

“Let light become.”

"Whereas the Hebrew verb is ambiguous, the Greek verb is more definite.

Bereishis 1, p. 39, writes: “The Hebrew verb indicates effortless
activity, as a king who utters commands to his subjects."

Midrash Tehilim 18:26 writes: "An artist can make nothing except by hard
work, but God makes things by the mere breath of a word”

"It is obvious that light is being described by this text as something
created by the command of God, thereby “demythologizing” or taking away the
Divine status attributed to light by much of the thought world of the ancient
Near East. " Westermann thus notes the great contrast between Genesis
1:3-5 and the cosmologies of Egypt and Persia, where light is treated as Divine
and eternal. “Light is created, it is not Divine like Re who shines over
the primeval chaos. When light is equated with God then it can no longer be
a creature of God. Persian religion on the other hand teaches the Divinity
and eternity of light. ‘In Persian cosmogony light, as the sphere in which
Mazda dwells, is uncreated and eternal".

Simpson comments that “Light was [according to Genesis] created before even
the sun– one of the features of the story which renders impossible all
attempts to bring it into line with modern scientific knowledge".

Fretheim notes that it is the Divine word that causes light to be. He
states that “God as speaker is another key metaphor for God’s creative
activity. The centrality of the word means that the creation is not an accident,
but a deliberate act of the Divine will; it expresses what God intends. The
word personalizes the activity; God enters into the creative deed. The
word bespeaks transcendence, expressing the separateness of God from the
created order, which is not a Divine emanation or birth. At the same time, God’s
speech reveals Divine vulnerability, for God’s speaking does not occur in
isolation or function as command."

"The use of the JUSSIVE

-- let there be --

leaves room for creaturely response (verses 11, 24), whereas the
COHORTATIVE

‘let Us make’

leaves room for consultation. The Divine speaking often involves a speaking
with whatever is already created (verses 11, 20, 22, 24, 28) in such a way
that the receptor of the word helps to shape the result. Light came into
existence by the Divine command, according to the Genesis story, and then
became the subject of Divine ordering. As Sarna puts it, in this biblical
story, the ancient Divinities are being “emptied of sanctity”-¬Genesis 1 is
engaged in a powerful statement of the “de-sanctification” of the Gods of
the ancient world, and an emphatic repudiation of astrology. God’s
commanding utterance possesses the inherent power of self-realization and is
unchallengeable. The sevenfold repetition of the execution formula, ‘and there
was,’ emphasizes the distinction between the tension, resistance, and
strife that are characteristic of ancient Near Eastern cosmologies and the
fullness of Divine power that we find here.”

Talk of God's Implicature!