Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT cantva.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Peter Kirk wrote:-

>In the earlier thread I argued on the basis of Hebrew grammar and 
>Hebrew grammar alone for the "traditional" translation of Genesis 1:1. 
>The fact that many generations of Christian (and Jewish) scholars have 
>understood the verse in that way does not make it wrong! Any of the 
>other proposed translations involve finding in this verse a 
>syntactical structure which (as far as I know, and no-one has offered 
>counter-examples) occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible: a 
>prepositional temporal phrase forming a complete clause in itself, 
>with no preceding verb and separated from the following clause by a 
>WAW which is not part of a WAYYIQTOL verb form. If anyone can provide 
>any other examples of this construction in the Hebrew Bible, please 
>let me know.

I went over to our library to read Rashi's comments on Gen 1:1 again.
He says that Hosea 1:2 has the same grammatical contruction. He
also uses a number of other verses including Gen 10:10, Deaut 18:4 and
Jer 26:1 to bolster his point that "The text does not intend to point
out the order of the acts of creation - to state that these (heaven and
earth) were created first, for it if intended to point this out, 
it should have written barashonah bara eth hashamayim" (I put the
vowels in the unpointed text.)

Commenting on Wisdom (Miss, Mrs or Ms) Peter wrote:-

>So there was not 
>much there when God started, not even the chaotic deep of Genesis 1:2. 
>Sounds like creation ex nihilo to me, with wisdom being the first 
>created thing, followed by the things mentioned in Genesis 1:1-2.

You shouldn't go on ignoring important Jewish interpretors like
Rashi simply because Christian scholars understand the verse 
differently. Rashi at one points says that if you want to believe
the verse speaks about creation ex nihilo then "you should be 
astonished at yourself", because the water is present without
ever having been created. 

I would urge you to read this important commentator before you 
continue to insist the text is describing creation ex nihilo.

Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of Canterbury  \_ 
E-Mail b dot rea at its dot canterbury dot ac dot nz                 </   New 
Phone   64-3-364-2331, Fax     64-3-364-2332                        /)  
Zealand 
Unix Systems Administrator                                         (/' 





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