Many Christian, especially the young earth creationists, confess to the doctrine, creation ex nihilo; that is, God created the cosmos out of nothing.
I am not disputing whether or not God is the creator of everything. I want to tell, that the Bible (especially the book of Genesis) does not teach ex nihilo.
Before we start, we should make sure we understand the meaning of inspiration of the scriptures.
The Bible is inspired writing. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors, to produce the Scriptures, so as they completely understood what they wrote, and the text made complete sense to them in their context. In other words, the Holy Spirit did NOT zap their conscience, nor did they get into a trance only to wake up and realise, Oh! I wrote something!
If we agree to this meaning of inspiration, then let us begin.
Genesis 1:1-2:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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.
Genesis 1 clearly states: In the beginning ... the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Water is surely a thing, and according to the author of Genesis, when creation started, water already existed.
Now, think of this for a minute; the concept, 'nothing' is highly evolved. Even now, we cannot completely comprehend it.
The ancients have no idea even about the number 0. If a shepherd lost all his sheep, he would not say, "I have zero sheep!". He'll rather say, "I don't even have one sheep". The ancient author of Genesis, in no way, would have thought about ex nihilo while being in his senses at the same time.
The purpose of Genesis is not to show how God created something out of nothing but to show that YAHWEH (and not some other god) brought order to an unordered cosmos.
People of the Ancient Near East already had a cosmology. Like the way, we have one (I'd encourage you to read Babylonian and Egyptian cosmology, see bottom of the page for a brief overview). Their cosmology assumes that the sun, the moon, the oceans etc. are gods. These gods then create other gods and bring order to the cosmos through battle or sexual unions. The author of Genesis brilliantly uses the same cosmology to teach his readers that YAHWEH is the creator. The sun, the moon and everything else are not gods. They are only a creation of YAHWEH. The author doesn't even use the commonly spoken names for the sun and the moon (since they were the names of various deity) he simply refers to them as the two great lights.
YAHWEH alone is the creator; everything else is His creation. He doesn't have to battle or mate. His words alone can bring order and life into the cosmos. (This itself is a revolutionary claim for that period of history)
The author of Genesis is correcting their theology using the pre-existing cosmology.
When we use Genesis to argue against modern cosmology, we are only making fun of ourselves. The author of Genesis had no such intention (He is writing from his cosmological understanding for a very different purpose than what we are using it for).
By the way, I am not promoting evolution or anything related to it. All I want to say is that this book is not for that debate.
The book of Genesis (especially the creation story) is a masterpiece. Unfortunately, we are blowing it all away for nothing (pun intended). Let us understand the book of Genesis in the correct context. For what its author meant to teach. That YAHWEH is the ultimate creator and the only sustainer. He brings order and life to the cosmos. He is El-Shaddai; he has no equals.
God Bless!
Pic: Ancient cosmology:
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre13.htm
