If this is a simple minded question, please forgive me, but I'm not Jewish and so most of my information is via naive study and second hand.
I've been told by a Jewish friend in my physics class that the Torah teaches that G-d created only two things: light and a very small point. Everything else in creation that followed from this was forming and arrangement of the original created matter and light. As 'light' is radiation (depending on what kind of light) and a 'very small point' is a great non-technical way to describe an exotic state of matter, this (if it really is part of Jewish canon) implies that something pretty close to the standard conception of the beginning of the universe was known thousands of years ago.
He said that his Dad (a Rabbi) told him this before he died and that it inspired him to study physics. However, he couldn't tell me exactly where I could verify this. I have asked people, but I'm assuming that if this is true, it's not a major part of Jewish teaching and the people I've asked say that they doesn't know. Can anyone point me in the right direction or debunk this outright?