Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Michael Hildenbrand <hildenbr AT Haas.Berkeley.EDU>]

Bill,
        This is another whole can of wiggly things.  There are three
opinions on this one is "yes" and the other is "no."  8-)  Really, the
question is extremely comples.  The only positive support for the second
reading you cite is that the same construction is found regularly in
Ugaritic and once in Amos.  The first *far* removed geographically from
Canaan, as well as linguistically removed.  As far as Amos, that is a
point in question, but I believe it is the exception that makes this whole
issue stand out.  If there is only *one* other instance of the
construction in all of Hebrew, and there are many other instances where
the same construction *could* have been used, I am greatly reluctant to go
with your second reading.  Wenham in his commentary on Genesis has a fine
and pithy presentation of the four positions regarding this issue.

Back to work.

Michael

 On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Bill Ross wrote:

> <Bill>
> Is the reading "In the beginning God created" really supposed to be "When
> God began to create"? Or "In the beginning, when God was creating"?
> 
> Bill Ross
> 
> 
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to b-hebrew as: hildenbr AT Haas.Berkeley.EDU
> To unsubscribe, forward this message to $subst('Email.Unsub')
> To subscribe, send an email to join-b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu.
> 
>