Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Peter,

> > > > > "When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then 
> > > > > was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath 
> > > > > hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be light'. And 
> > > > > there was light."
> > HH: "When God began to create the earth, and the earth then was 
> > welter and waste, with darkness over the deep and God's breath 
> > hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be be light." And 
> > there was light."
> That is considerably better, except that presumably you omitted 
> "heaven and" accidentally, although I still don't like "welter".

Hh: Yes, I omitted it accidentally. No, I don't like welter either. 
It sounds stilted to me, but if Alter was simply trying to reproduce 
the flavor of the Hebrew, perhaps one could accept it. My visceral 
reaction when I first read these verses by Alter was the same as 
yours.

>  Also "then" seems strange if this part is intended to be governed by "when".

HH: Yes, it bothered me, too, but I left it because I wanted to deal 
with the main grammatical issue. I think  Alter was trying to bring 
out the fact that verse 2 is a circumstantial clause (an offline 
comment), but in English the "when" is extraneous and does not really 
match something in Hebrew anyway.

>  But why didn't Alter write this? Was it because of the 
> hyper-literalism that the vav prefix must always be translated 
> "and"? No, because he has omitted completely the vav prefix at the 
> start of v.3 - which for me is a good reason to reject also Alter's 
> exegesis by which vv.1-2 is a complex subordinate clause and prefer 
> the traditional "In the beginning God created..."

HH: I agree that the traditional rendering is better, even if Herman 
likes what Alter did. Some do like that "when God began to create" 
idea, but I found reason to retain the traditional rendering when I 
studied the issue some years ago (the possible parallel at the start 
of John 1:1 is not a grammatical reason but may carry some weight). I 
think Alter left the verbs out because they are understood in Hebrew, 
but English does not regularly use understand verbs, and I don't 
think they work here. That was my main point of grammatical 
disagreement with Alter.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard