Page 175 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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154 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

exactly light) and “river” appears once in the Bible, in the book of Daniel: “A fiery
stream issued and came forth from before him” (Dan. 7:10).
Why should the Hebrew language, by a bizarre coincidence, combine in a sin-
gle root such disparate concepts as “river” and “light”? How could “light,” about
which nothing was known in ancient times (not even its wavelike behavior), be
equated with “river”?

11.2 Darkness

Darkness appears in the Bible numerous times. It makes first appearance already
in the second sentence of Genesis: “and darkness was on the face of the deep”
(Gen. 1:2). Only later was light created: “And God said, Let there be light: and
there was light” (Gen. 1:3).
Genesis description of this sequence of events is interestingly consistent with
how the formation of light, and darkness, with the gradual cooling down of the

universe, is described according to the big bang model. The following description
is largely based on Singh (2004) and Aczel (1999).
At the moment of creation, the universe was so hot that matter existed only in
the form of plasma. This state implies that atoms could not exist, because atom
nuclei could not hold on to their electrons. There were no atoms as we know
them today. The universe was a plasma soup of simple nuclei and free electrons.
However, there was one additional ingredient in the universe: there was a sea of
light. But the light was not visible. Light interacted with charged particles, like
electrons, and then scattered off in all directions. Since there were electrons but no
atoms, the universe looked like fog; nothing specific could be seen. The universe

was opaque, not transparent.
If lack of light, as we know it today, could be described as “darkness,” then
darkness permeated the universe. In other words, “darkness was on the face of the
deep.” Only about 380,000 years after the big bang , the expansion of the universe
caused it to cool down to 3,000 degrees (Kaku 2005, 58), at which temperature
electrons could be attached to nuclei and form stable neutral atoms of hydrogen
and helium. A transition from plasma to atoms took place. In cosmology, this
transition is called “recombination.” Only at that epoch could light start to be

seen. As Singh (2004) describes this, “recombination dramatically changed the
behavior of the light that filled the universe” … “the moment of recombination

was the first time in the history of the universe that rays of light could start to

sail through space unhindered. It was as though the cosmic fog had suddenly
lifted” … “the light that was present at the moment of recombination should still
be beaming its way around the universe today” … “creating the cosmic microwave