Creation of plants BEFORE our sun

Originally Posted by Mallon

If you're willing to accept that God magically poofed plants into existence, why aren't you willing to accept that He magically sustained them until He made the sun?

I think your idea is, in fact, explicitly said in Gen 2:5. Good thinking.

According to Mallon's idea, those plants may not be fully grown plants. They may just be "potential" plants.

I'm saying that the first thing created was light. Later the light is separated into the sun and moon, but the light came first. That's the Genesis narrative. The Genesis narrative can be understood as the process of God creating order out of chaos. I believe the author of the creation account in Gen. 1 probably saw the creation of plants as a creation of order from the creation of earth rather than seeing it as the kind of creation of life that came with the animal kingdom and the creation of people.

I personally am not hung up on the sequence of creation in Genesis making a whole lot of scientific sense because there are 2 creation stories that have different sequences altogether. The commonality it has with evolution is that complexity emerges from simpler things.

I don't see that in the text, because they are seed-bearing plants.

Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

In Gen. 2, however, plants are created after Adam is.

Actually Gen 2:5 contradicts Mallon's suggestion. God does not magically sustain plants when the conditions for life were missing. Instead he met these needs and provided what was missing. It does not mention sun light, but it does say the plants were not there because there wasn't any rain and there wasn't a gardener. Until he provided the necessary conditions, the plants could not exist.

Except Genesis 1 does not describe potential plants, but fully mature plants with seeds and trees complete with fruit. Gen 1:12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Well, if we ironed my question out, then there would be no need for the second genesis interpretation.

How about that in Gen. 2, the plants "appeared" after Adam? But plants are "created" before Adam? An analogy for that is that the earth had microscopic plants all over the place BEFORE Silurian time. But grass or tree on land only appeared after that.

Yes, they are seed-bearing plants. But could we work a little bit on the meaning of "seed"? Could a cell be a seed too?

I would argue that the plants did exist, but has not grown. We may think they existed in the state of seeds.

We may also interpret Gen 1:12 this way: The earth brought forth the seeds of vegetation, plants they will yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees will bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

Plant does not work like animal. A seed, or even a cell, will be enough to make it grow into a full plant.

We may also interpret Gen 1:12 this way: The earth brought forth the seeds of vegetation, plants they will yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees will bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

Just want to throw an idea into this discussion....

If there is no sun there is also no heat so you're looking at God creating plants on a planet that's pretty close to absolute 0 K; The atmosphere would be frozen.

You left out the And God saw that it was good. He saw all the plant he created, plants bearing seed, and trees yielding fruit with seed in them. Unless you want to say this is a prophetic vision rather than God actually looking at what he created. That brings you into the 'days of proclamation' interpetation Glenn Morton is keen on. The proclamation took place over six days before the universe was created. After God spoke these words the actual working out of the creation could take as many billion years as science tells us.

I did not think you could play with Hebrew grammar that way. It says the earth brought forth vegetation, not the earth brought forth seeds of vegetation. The first part of the sentence is the classic
............ verb ...-.. subject. -. object ....vconstruction of Hebrew grammar.
and brought forth ..the earth ..vegetation.
This construction is found all through Genesis 1
And called God the light 'day'
And made God a firmament
And made God two lights

Then you have to take the word seed from its position as object of the second clause plants yielding seeds and make it the object of the main clause. So instead of the two separate clauses, the earth brought forth the vegetation, and the sub clause plants bearing seeds, you make seeds the main object, 'the earth brought forth the seeds of vegetation'. It is in the wrong place.

But do you? Where do you get that word seeds from? You attempt to shove both reference to seeds in the actual Hebrew into the future

plants they will yielding seed according to their own kinds,
and trees will bearing fruit in which is their seed

The verb in these two clauses are both participles which are best expressed the way our English translations put it, as a continuous action that was going on at the time 'yielding' and 'bearing', not 'will yielding' and 'will bearing'.

But if you are going to place the only two references to seed in the verse into the future, where do you get the seed you put into the first clause 'the earth brought forth the seeds of vegetation'?

You are right that I "add" words to the scripture and I only meant to interpret it, not to change it.

God creates plants. And
God creates (something which will grow into) plants.

To me, either one of the above two situations is true to what could actually happen on Day 3.

God can see how would "those things" grow at later time. So He says: Good.

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What I really want to get to is that the plants are created BEFORE the sun. Explicitly, the question is that if the plants could not grow before the sun (or before the rain), why would God want to create it one step ahead of the sequence? I am not trying to read God's mind. I am trying to read it from the viewpoint of science.