The “knowledge of evil” versus “actual evil”

What's the difference between knowledge of evil versus actual evil? Well, in But I was certain that evil existed, we saw that both good and evil have always been present in our part of God's creation. But if both have always existed, then how come God said, after He created everything, "it was very good"? Did God just say that evil was good?

I'm in the middle of doing a series on the opening verses of Genesis. This particular topic is going to either be replaced or updates, based on that series. However, since it's a work in progress, and since I reference it in one of the early posts in the series, I just want to give you a heads up that it's a work in progress.

If you didn't come here from a link in the series, and would like to check it out, it's at: In The Beginning

The "knowledge of evil" versus "actual evil" is article #2 in the series: Evil in creation. Click button to view titles for entire series

If you haven't read part 1 of this series, I highly recommend reading it now. It helps to make this segment much more clear and more understandable.

God said let there be light

OK, every Christian hopefully knows about The Beginning, in Genesis, when God said, Let there be light.

But then somehow, we get lost.

Actually, somehow isn't the right word. The problem is we get out our English Bibles, we read "light", and we're totally convinced we know what "light" means.

I assume the same is true for other languages as well, like French, German, Italian, Etc.

But not for Hebrew. At least not for Jewish people who know their scriptures and read them in Hebrew, with the knowledge of how those Hebrew words were used thousands of years ago.

God said let there be light - but what is light"

Yes, what is "light"?

A while back, I wrote Why are scientists running away from The Big Bang? In it, we see that light is the purest form of energy. And, if the big bang was a massively huge explosion of energy, what better result could there be but "light"?

But those of us who read our Bibles in something other than Hebrew, who don't check out what the words and the culture have to say about "light" in terms of creation, also don't realize something else is going on.

No, we read, again in English, only because it's my native language, we read:

The Beginning

Ge 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.