Religious Cosmology - Hebrew Bible

Hebrew Bible

Further information: Biblical cosmology and Genesis creation myth

The main Judeo-Christian religious text, the Bible, opens with a story of creation. The first two chapters of the Book of Genesis describe the creation of heaven and earth by God (called both Elohim and Yhvh) in six successive days.

• First day: God creates light ("Let there be light!")—the first divine command. The light is divided from the darkness, and "day" and "night" are named.
• Second day: God creates a firmament ("Let a firmament be...!")—the second command—to divide the waters above from the waters below. The firmament is named "heaven" (shamayim).
• Third day: God commands the waters below to be gathered together in one place, and dry land to appear (the third command). "earth" and "sea" are named. God commands the earth to bring forth grass, plants, and fruit-bearing trees (the fourth command).
• Fourth day: God creates lights in the firmament (the fifth command) to separate light from darkness and to mark days, seasons and years. Two great lights are made and the stars.
• Fifth day: God commands the sea to "teem with living creatures", and birds to fly across the heavens (sixth command) He creates birds and sea creatures, and commands them to be fruitful and multiply.
• Sixth day: God commands the land to bring forth living creatures (seventh command); He makes wild beasts, livestock and "every thing that creepeth upon the earth". He then creates humanity in His "image" and "likeness" (eighth command). They are told to "be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." The totality of creation is described by God as "very good."
• Seventh day: God, having completed the heavens and the earth, rests from His work, and blesses and sanctifies the seventh day.