736. As for Noah, or the member of this new Church, he was such that he believed with simplicity those things which he had come to possess from the Most Ancient Church. These were items of doctrine that had been gathered together and converted into a kind of doctrinal form by those called Enoch. The disposition of the people meant by Noah however was entirely different from those before the Flood who perished, called the Nephilim. For they immersed doctrinal matters concerning faith in their own filthy desires and in this way strove after dreadful persuasions from which they were unwilling to draw back even though they were taught by others and were shown that these were falsities. This dual genius or disposition also exists among people today. The former can be regenerated easily, but the latter with difficulty.

In the Word, “light” in the highest sense represents Divine Truth: knowledge, ideas, understanding that come to us from the Lord. In lesser degrees -- the light of a lamp, the light of the moon and so forth -- it represents lower levels of truth, ideas and understanding drawn from more earthly sources. Also, the sun in the Word represents the Lord, with its heat representing the divine love and its light representing the divine wisdom. That wisdom flows into our minds and enters our lives in the form of truth -- things we can know and ponder that lead us and help us to be good people. This connection between light and thought is one of many spiritual/natural relationships that's embedded in our common language. People “see the light” when they understand something; we try to “shed some light” by bringing new thoughts to a difficult question; people are “enlightened” when they get new information or a more complete understanding of something. And a light bulb in a cartoon represents an idea!