While scholars like John H. Walton[1] handle the Hebrew term ברא/brʾ in Gen 1:1, I wish to save my discussion later when it appears in this chapter. I did write about it in my dissertation, and while it remains significant, I want to explore the other side of the coin we discussed in part 1 in the last blog instead. “In the beginning, God…” is how the Hebrew Bible opens in most English translations. This rendering mainly follows deference to popular English tradition behind the KJV being passed down to most adherents as the correct way to read this.
There are great arguments already mentioned in previous blogs as better candidates for rendering this phrase. Last time, we left off with the Bible’s opening of God and God alone, but obviously, there is so much more that follows of import. This phrase should answer in short what the Bible teaches about origins. Before anything, there was God, and for the Christian, this easily is understood as the Trinity, which later gets hashed out over centuries of dialogue to clarify what the believer understands about God as revealed in the Scriptures.
Much debate remains on how best to construe the debate’s finer points. God in his complexity cannot be so easily understood that unless one wishes to wade deeply into the discussions, one cannot speak much to its intricacies without much error on both sides of any given argument. Thus, in brief, the Bible begins with God and offers him as the beginning of anything we can ever hope to know about our reality. That should settle most debates or, at least, clear up what can be said before we proceed in our forays into the narrative as we have received it. To do otherwise goes beyond the current scope of this blog.
There is another side to this coin yet to be seen. Scholarship has understood the following phrase as a merism whereby the extremes of something define the complete set being depicted. “In the beginning,” there was God. Then there was something else.
First, there was God and God alone. Next, that God ברא/brʾ something else into existence. We are not told where or how God comes into existence. We are not ever given any explanation.
It would seem a part of his nature that such could never be expected to be forthcoming. It just is the fact. He is. It is what his name as the Great I AM implies. He always just is. YHWH is the supreme reality in the only “is” that is above any other.
The phrase is אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ/ʾēṯ haššāmayim wĕʾēṯ hāʾāreṣ in the Hebrew.[2] It is often rendered as the ESV does in “the heavens and the earth.”[3] This phrase acts as a single unit literarily. It is meant to cover the entirety of everything we, the reader, know aside from God, who is the opposite side of this coin in the reality of all we know.
Some scholars describe Gen 1:1 only as a title or introduction of all that is to follow. Others see creation taking place in this first verse. As I argued in my dissertation, Scott B. Noegel has connected the Hebrew word for earth (אֶ֫רֶץ/ʾereṣ) to include what at first the reader may not see to include the earth that will later remain submerged in the waters of 1:2 called Sheol (שְׁאוֹל/šĕʾôl; in the Greek, Hades [ᾅδης/hadēs]).[4] This is based upon the terms usage throughout the Hebrew Bible. Here in 1:2, the earth (already) is as 1:1 makes clear, which then the LXX renders rightly, “[b]ut the earth was unseen and unprepared.”[5]
It is there already, just as 1:1 said it was when God created it. The whole earth is created in 1:1 along with the heavens. This reading is one valid way of understanding the text while not taken by every scholar. It is not an attempt to concord modern science.
That is not the intention here in this blog while it may be for some holding this position. One should also note its parallel that opens Gen 2. The point is not concordism as much as comprehension. Subsequently, much of what we know as earth will emerge.
It arises (akin to Christian baptism) from the waters, yet like believers will one day die a mortal death, a part of it remains in the netherly regions of the world below that is off the scale and quite the opposite to the reality we all experience this side of the sod. Thus, Genesis opens with everything. It covers that which is beyond us in God and that which is a part of human knowledge, existence, and experience in one merism that encompasses the entirety of the spectrum of life and death and all reality in a top to bottom approach from the heavens and to the earth and even that which is under the earth (cf. Phil 2:10). There is God, and then there is everything else as a result of God.
God stands apart or remains separate from everything else as unique. This logic is what I believe 1:1 is doing in a juxtaposition right at the outset. The focus then shifts away from God and even the heavens to primarily emphasize what the ancients most needed to know in the terrestrial, even as they embraced the celestial in ways post-Enlightenment Westerners cannot. Earthlings will come from the earth (Gen 2:7).[6] By nature, all future discussions will mainly revolve around the earth. However, the unseen realm[7] will always be lurking in the background as a key cultural component that cannot be ignored lest one fails to comprehend the message as given initially to the first audience.
[1] John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), iii.
[2] The Lexham Hebrew Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Ge 1:1.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 1:1.
[4] Scott B. Noegel, “God of Heaven and Sheol: The ‘Unearthing’ of Creation,” HS 58 (2017): 119–144.
[5] The Lexham English Septuagint, Second Edition. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), Ge 1:2.
[6] Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17, NICOT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 156.
[7] Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, First Edition. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015).
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