Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tony Prete <tonyp AT waterwheel.net>]

 At 05:16 PM 1/4/99 +0100, you wrote:
>>> Gen 1:1-2
>>>
>>> "In the beginning when God create the heavens and the earth, the world was
>>> without form and void."
>>>
>>> -------------
>>>
>>> Ian
>>
>>Okay, Ian, I'll bite.  What grammatically marks "God create[d] the heavens and 
>>the earth" as anything other than an independent clause?
>>
>>Gen 1:1-2a
>>
>>B:R"'$iYT BfRf' ':eLoHiYM '"T Ha$$fMaYiM W:'"T Hf'fReC
>>
>>W:Hf'fReC HfY:TfH ToHuW WfBoHu W:Xo$eK
>
>Paul,
>
>I'm not able to give a learned response here. The only thing I can say is
>that the understanding of bereshith I received long ago was something like
>
>   in the beginning of
>   in the beginning when
>
>So one often finds the translations
>
>   When God began to create the heavens and the earth...
>      (A Jewish translation)
>
>   In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth...
>      (The NRSV)
>
>I was led to believe that bereshith functioned somewhat as a conjunction not
>as a preposition.
>
>
>Ian

The basic reason, I believe, was already mentioned by someone earlier: R"'$iYT is a construct, so that it might be translated: "the beginning of..." (it's the B: which is the preposition, added to the front of the word "beginning")

But the question remains: Why  a construct? I think that the various translations--and the NJPS (cited earlier by Irene Rienger) seems to have succeeded the best--are efforts to answer that question. I suspect we simply don't have a way of saying in English what the text says in Hebrew.

Tony







Anthony Prete
Haddonfield, NJ USA

Masters Candidate
La Salle University
Philadelphia, Pa.