Commenting on the primordial elements in the Genesis creation and how it supports, not creation ex nihilo but ex materia, Howard Schwartz wrote:
James Patrick Holding refuted on Creation Ex Nihilo
Blake T. Ostler, Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought
The Primordial Elements
God drew upon six elements in creating the world: light, darkness, chaos, void, wind (or spirit), and water. But when were these elements created? Some say these elements pre-existed, and that God drew upon them in the Creation. Others say there were created in an earlier creation. Still others say that they too were created on the first day, along with heaven and earth.
The very existence of pre-existing elements, such as light, darkness, chaos, void, water, wind, and the deep, raise doubts about the singularity of God’s accomplishment. Yet there is no explicit mention of the creation of these elements in the account of Creation.
To demonstrate that God did indeed create these elements. Rabbi Gamaliel in Genesis Rabbah provides prooftexts to show that all seven were created, such as in Isaiah 45:7, where God says, “I form light and create darkness.” However, this proof raises as many questions as it resolves. The use of the verb “form” (yotzer) for the creation of light and “create” (boret) for the creation of darkness is significant. Something that is formed already exists, while something that is created is brought into being. This seems to hint that light pre-existed.
Sources:
Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 3. (Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 73)
Further Reading