The Issue

When reading Genesis casually, it is not immediately obvious when the first day of creation begins.  

Many editions in various translations lead you to the assumption that verse 3 begins day one by there placing a heading "The First Day." (KJV, BSB, CEV, ASV)

I find three reasons to count verses 1 and 2 as day one:

1. The very phrase "the first day," 

2. Inner-textual commentary on creation

3. The paragraph structure of the chapter.

Arguments

"The First Day"

This basic argument was shown to me by the Rev. Michael McGee of Trinity RCUS, Sioux Falls.

The first reason is based on a straightforward definition of the term "first." In syllogism format:

• 1: No days precede the first day in a sequence. 

• 2: By the close of the first day, Genesis describes the existence of the heavens, the formless earth, the waters, darkness, and light.

• C: Therefore, the creation of the heavens and the earth occurred on the first day.

In an even pithier statement, "nothing is before the first." It seems reasonable to take "the first day" as exhaustive, the first day ever, rather than simply the first in a set of days with some days prior.

This argument is, I think, still compatible with a view that something shifts in the structure of the chapter with verse 3, maybe the Cosmic Temple view of John Walton. However, there are reasons to think that even the literary structure assumes day 1 as beginning in verse 1 (below).

Inner-Textual Commentary

I first read this point in Jeremy D. Lyon's paper Genesis 1:1-3 and the Literary Boundary of Day One (JETS 62.2).

This reason is also very simple. The same author of the Pentateuch, writing in the inspiration of the same infallible God, refers to the creation of "heavens and earth" as within the six days of the Genesis creation account.

• Exodus 20:11 (ESV)

  • For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

• Exodus 31:17 (ESV)

  • It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.

If the heavens and the earth were created within the six days of creation, and before the creation of light, then they were created on the first day.

Paragraph Structure

This argument is taken up by Lyon.

Biblical Hebrew scribes used spacing to divide texts into paragraphs or other sections, like we do in English. Qumran and Masoretic manuscripts consistently place breaks between the days of creation. The first break follows verse 5, implying that these scribal traditions did not consider verse 3 to begin the first day. Verses 1 through 5 are logically all counted as day one.

The full paper is available on the website for the Creation Theology Society, where Lyon serves as president.

Conclusions

Gap Theory

If we have certainty that day one begins with verse 1, then gap theory is untenable. Gap theory usually involves shoving the Darwinian system somewhere between verses 1 and 3. 

A milder kind of "gap" is also outlawed by the above arguments, the kind that a casual reader of his KJV heading might assume, involving an extended gap wherein only waters and earth exist. If verse 1 describes day one, then the earth with waters were created before light and on the very same day.

This mild gap seems encouraged by the NIV:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep ...

To my ears, this rings like a folk tale, as if Uncle Remus is starting a story with "In the old days ..." A strict view of day 1 beginning with verse 1 does not allow the reader to imagine that the story picks up after some earlier creation, but that creation begins at this moment.

Enuma Elish

I find that these reasons also refute the move to re-translate v. 1 following the Enuma elish. Consider this summary of that issue:

Gen. 1:1—“When God began to create the heavens and the earth”—is the equivalent of the first two lines of Enuma elish: “When above, the heaven had not been named (and) below, the earth had not been called by name.”

Several of the more recent translations of the Bible have accepted this rendering: NEB, NAB, NJPS, RSV, and AB, but only in a footnote. Others, however, have retained the traditional translation; among them, NASB, NKJV, NIV, and JB.

The issue between these two options—“In the beginning when” and “In the beginning”—is not esoteric quibbling or an exercise in micrometry. The larger concern is this: Does Gen. 1:1 teach an absolute beginning of creation as a direct act of God? Or does it affirm the existence of matter before creation of the heavens and the earth?
(Victor P. Hamilton, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Genesis)

This change is naturally alarming for a conservative church. Genesis and the Enuma elish are either independent or one is derivative of the other. Hamilton describes one reconciliation:

In order to avoid this conclusion, several scholars (e.g., Westermann) have opted for the traditional translation, not on the basis of objective linguistic grounds—for they believe the Hebrew word itself to be ambiguous in form—but on the grounds of the wider context of the chapter. It is claimed, for instance, that the Creation story of Gen. 1 is a deliberate repudiation and demythologizing of a pagan cosmogony such as is found in Enuma elish. (ibid)

If Genesis is considered to be stylistically derivative of the Enuma elish, then the above reasons to count verse 1 as day 1 would seem to support the claim that the Hebrew author is deliberately claiming the superiority of our God above Babylon's.