Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

(my university email account doesn't seem to be able to send anything other
than ASCII, I made a gmail account and tried again. Sorry for the double
posting and any confusion caused)

Hi all,

the first pe separated paragraph of Genesis (as you all know) is Genesis
1:1-5

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ והארץ היתה תהו ובהו וחשך על פני תהום ורוח
אלהים מרחפת על פני המים ויאמר אלהים יהי אור ויהי אור וירא אלהים את האור כי
טוב ויבדל אלהים בין האור ובין החשך  ויקרא אלהים לאור יום ולחשך קרא לילה ויהי
ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד

Even such a simple section has many points worthy of discussion. The  form
brwyt has traditionally been translated as 'In the beginning' following the
Greek ἐν ἀρχῇ and the Latin 'In principio'. It has been suggested (does
anybody have the reference for this?) that this is a mistranslation and that
the sense is not of an ultimate beginning but merely of a declaration of the
initial state of things before Elohim set about creating stuff.

BR) has traditionally been understood as a synonym of 'make' but
used exclusively with God and therefore an act of creation from nothing
(ex nihilo). This view has also been challenged. It has been proposed,
if memory serves correctly, to be a derivative of a root meaning of cutting
the shape as a sculptor chisels a piece of wood (again, does anybody have
the exact reference for this?).

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ has traditionally been translated as 'In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'. This translation I
challenge as a misrepresentation of what the original Hebrew actually said.
The terms שמים and ארץ are most commonly used with the sense of 'sky' and
'land' from the human perspective of what is generally above and below and I
think this was the sense of the original Hebrew.

והארץ היתה תהו ובהו This phrase we have discussed many times with respect to
the traditional understanding of the earth being formless and waste in its
initial state of creation.

וחשך על פני תהום ורוח 'And it was dark on the surface of Tehom'. This phrase
is often used as argument that the creation account is an adaptation of the
Babylonian creation myth involving Tiamat. While such a vain discussion can
have much comical value it seems clear to me that 'Tehom' was the proper
name of the universal ocean that covered the land in its initial creation
state.

ורוח אלהים מרחפת על פני המים This phrase is interesting. How best
to translate רוח Literally, it means breath and traditionally the phrase רוח
אלהים has been translated as 'God's spirit'. It has been suggested (does
anybody have the reference?) that this is an idiomatic phrase meaning
something like 'great wind', 'really strong wind' or 'gale force wind'.
מרחפת is a difficult form to analyse occurring only once in the corpus.
Traditional translations include 'hovering', 'moving back and forth'. If we
were to go with the 'great wind' translation perhaps we could theorise a
'and a great wind was blowing on the surface of the waters' translation.

In any case, it would seem that the general picture being built up is of an
initial land and sky in total darkness. The land being covered with a vast
ocean and either God's breathe or a great wind active in some way on the
surface of the water (do we imagine this being visible by disturbance on the
surface of the water?).

ויאמר אלהים יהי אור Traditionally we translate this as 'And God said "Let
there be light"'. The 'let there be light' idiom we owe to William Tyndale
who coined the phrase structure 'let there be...'. Personally, I don't think
this is particularly good English (at least not in our modern world). I see
this as a direct command 'Make light!'. The Greek of the LXX agrees with the
thought of a direct command using the verb 'to make' but uses the passive
version 'καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός γενηθήτω φῶς'. In English, we get the awkward
translation of 'light be made' which can be made more palatable by a return
to the 'let...' structure 'let light be made'.

We then go on to see that light was made and Elohim said that it was good ויהי
אור וירא אלהים את האור כי טוב.

ויבדל אלהים בין האור ובין החשך We are told that Elohim 'made a division'
between the light and the darkness. I'm not sure of this translation. What
does it mean to 'make a division'? I feel that this may be an idiomatic
phrase but I'm not sure. Could it mean that Elohim 'defined' light and
darkness?

ויהי ערב ויהי בקר 'And there was evening and there was morning'. This phrase
provokes many questions especially seeing that the Sun had not yet been
made. What exactly does this phrase mean? We know that the Hebrew day began
and ended with sunset and went from the evening of one day to the next. Does
this phrase really suggest a literal sunset and sunrise when there was yet
no Sun? Did the Hebrews not even associate the phenomenon of daylight as
originating with the Sun? Or is this just a poetic way of marking the
beginning and end of one of Elohim's workloads?

יום אחד Unlike following sections this section ends with a cardinal number
rather than an ordinal number. Literally 'day one' rather than 'the first
day'. I've never really been sure why. Any suggestions?

ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד Finally, could this be a construct form? That is
to say could this be 'And there was sunset and sunrise of day one?'

James Christian