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  • From: "Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.metalab.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: My understanding of Gen 1:1-3
  • Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 10:02:18 +0200


This is an automatic response. I'm not at home at the
moment.

>a GRAMCORD search of "et hassamayim waet ha'arez" reveals 12
>occurrences outside of Gen 1:1.

It might be worthwhile considering the significance of some
of these in themselves. I have stated often that many
analysts giving their opinions on Gen 1 overlook the text
as a whole, willing to disregard the fact that the creation
took place over six days each commencing with an act of
divine fiat and that day one started with God saying "Let
there be light". What comes before is preamble.

Ex 20:11 expresses the importance of the six day creation:

For six days, the Lord created the heavens and the earth
and the sea and all that which is in them, and rested the
seventh day.

Ex 31:17 expresses the same idea, again tying the six days
to the creation of the heavens and the earth.

The literary form of the Gen 1 creation is clear. Each day
starts with

w'mr 'lhym (and God said,...)

and ends with an indication of which day it was. Day one
starts in v3:

w'mr 'lhym yhy 'wr wyhy 'wr

And God said, let there be light and there was light.

The Exodus understanding was that the creation was over
six days, not that there was a creation and then came six
days of rearrangement of what was created (making the
first stage rather useless, for the all-powerful creator
could simply have created everything in one step, besides
creating chaos -- for the earth was thw wbhw -- doesn't
make much sense in itself).

Here the fundamentalist and the evangelical Christian
says, "but Gen 1:1 says that in the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth", to which Rashi would have
asked, "the beginning of what?", for he says that br'$yt
requires qualification. He says:

if you insist on the simple interpretation, interpret
it thus. At the beginning of the creation of heaven and
earth, when the world was unformed and desolate, G-d
said, "Let there be light." This verse does not intend
to teach the sequence of creation -- that these were
[created] first. For if that was the intention, it
should have written, "At first G-d created the heavens,"
etc. For the word {br'$yt} never appears in Scripture
except when it is annexed to the following word. For
example, "At the beginning of Yehoyakim's reign," [or]
"The beginning of his reign," [or] "The first of your
corn crop." Here, too, you must interpret "In the
beginning El-him created" as if [it were written] "At
the beginning of the creating." [We find] similarly, "
{txlt} ," as if to say, "At the beginning of G-d's
speaking to Hoshea, G-d said to Hoshea,"

The last reference is to Hos 1:2, showing that there the
beginning is qualified, ie the beginning of God's
speaking to Hosea.

Note Rashi's recommended reading:

At the beginning of the creation of heaven and
earth, when the world was unformed and desolate, G-d
said, "Let there be light."

This grammatically makes perfect sense, though he has
simplified v2. I have shown elsewhere that whole
clauses can be governed by phrases like "on the day"
or "at the time", just as "in the beginning" can
subordinate "of God's creation of the heavens and the
earth". I would place all of v2 as starting conditions
for the creation announced in v1 and begun in v3.
There was no creation for the waters nor the darkness:
they were at the beginning, just as God and the wind
were. It was from them that God created the heavens
and the earth. The text tells us that God created the
heavens on the second day with the construction of the
firmament and the earth on the third day with the
separation of the dry land from the waters.

If God created the heavens on day two and the earth on
day three, how could God have already created the
heavens and the earth in v1? The answer is that the
text simply doesn't allow such an interpretation.

In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens
and the earth, when the earth was chaos and empty,
when darkness was on the face of the deep and the
wind of God hovered over the face of the waters,
God said, "Let there be light", and there was light.

God did not create the earth as chaos (Isa 45:18). His
creation brought order (against thw, chaos), for in
the first three days God structured the cosmos, and
content (against bhw), for in the second three days he
populated the cosmos.

I have also pointed out many times the close structural
relationship with the Enuma Elish:

1) there was watery chaos when Marduk/Elohim began
the creation,
2) its name was tiamat/tehom,
3) the wind of Marduk/Elohim was present,
4) the battle which ensued (not found in Gen 1 but
elsewhere in tnk) finished with the beginning
of creation out of tiamat/tehom,
5) Marduk/Elohim separated the waters above and
below,
6) Marduk/Elohim secured the waters above and from
the rest, out of which the creation continued.

The creation began according to the Enuma Elish
when the waters were vanquished. This is consistent
with Gen 1: the waters were already there.

The major difference with the Enuma Elish is that
Gen 1 has an extremely different concept of God.
There is no battle, for God transcends such things.
In most cases it is sufficient for God to speak and
it is so. (The wind, whose role in Gen 1 is unclear,
was the tool which Marduk used to defeat the waters
of chaos.) Nevertheless, the Enuma Elish elucidates
the creation in Gen 1, showing when it began.

The writer of the Wisdom of Solomon talks of God's
hand "which created the world out of formless matter."
This is an ancient reading of Gen 1 which indicates
that God created the cosmos out of raw materials,
which one finds in Gen 1:2.


Ian










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