Which day did God make the sun moon and stars according to the Book of Genesis?

Answer 1

Depends on how you look at it. Genesis says God "made" the sun and moon on day four, but the stars... that's debated. The first verse of Genesis says God made the "heavens" (stars, universe) and the "earth" in the "beginning." Some believe this to be a summary of the creation story which follows, while others believe that God created the universe as a whole, and the earth as a planet, before the story officially begins in Genesis. In other words, some people believe the universe and the earth are very old because they existed for a long time before God decided to create things as we now know them, while others believe the universe and the earth are younger because the stuff in Genesis happened all at once. The next sentence describes the earth as being covered by darkness and covered by water -a lifeless state. And from there God begins to change all of that by creating the earth as we now know it. Some believe the story is being told from the perspective of someone on the earth itself, so perhaps the sun and moon and stars already existed, but simply could not be seen. Others believe we should take the story more straightforwardly and that the sun and moon were not created until day four. Verses 14-19 describe what God did on the "fourth day," and it's here on the fourth day that Genesis says God "made" the sun and moon. Again, some believe the story is being told from the perspective of someone on earth so in reality, the sun, moon and stars merely became visible on day four and the sentence in Genesis refers back to God creating them previously. Others believe God literally "made" the sun and moon on day four. It is debatable whether or not it says God "made" the stars on day four. The Hebrew word for "made" is not applied directly to the stars. Some English versions of The Bible will put the words "He made" in italics to indicate they were added by the English translators but were not present in the original Hebrew. So while some believe God made the stars on day four, others believe God made the stars (universe) and earth in the beginning before the Genesis story takes place. There are other, more specific ideas concerning how Genesis should be interpreted, but those are some basic viewpoints at least.