Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

The linguistic and traditional understanding of Genesis 1:1 is that God
created the primeval realm of water, that before that creation, there was
total nothingness (as far as the physical universe is concerned). This whole
argument claiming that there was pre-existing matter is an attempt to
shoehorn Babylonian and other ANE myths into Genesis.

Further, your claim that "Tahom" is an allusion to Babylonian myth could
just as well be understood that the Babylonian myth was an allusion to a
Hebrew original, one that was not written on pottery, clay, stone or other
durable materials, but was written just the same.

No, I and other Hebrew language scholars are not convinced.

Yitzhak: as for that site you linked to below, how often do I have to answer
that Genesis 1 is not poetry, nor a hymn, rather it is prose that lists day
by day the activities that were accomplished each day? As such, it resembles
more a ship's log than poetry. That site violates basic rules of exegesis.
Rather it does a lot of eisegesis.

Karl W. Randolph.

QUOTE
In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth, there was not
a state of total nothingness or nihilum: there was a primeval realm of water
to be resolved into the reality of sea and sky we see today. The word tehōm,
meaning "abyss", is an allusion to an ancient, pre-Biblical Babylonian myth.
According to Babylonian mythology, the god Marduk fought the water-goddess
Tiamat (=tehōm), slew her and cut her into two: the sea and the sky.
END QUOTE

Convinced?


James C. Read
UK


On 7/7/06, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> ... but
> the following essay probably better explains Genesis in the background of
> the
> cultural understanding of its time.
>
> http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/2005/11/why-i-am-not-creationist.html
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
> http://toldot.blogspot.com