Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

James:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:15 AM, James Christian
<jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>wrote:

> > 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.
> >
> > Most creation myths from around the world (so I’ve been told, and a few
> that I have seen) start with pre-existing matter that the gods then form
> into the world. Hence the belief.
>
> However, ראשית R)$YT has the meaning of first, beginning, used also of the
> first fruits of the harvest. There is no mention of pre-existing matter
> Hi Karl,
>
> This comes from R)$ meaning head, right? This is where we get the
> association of a start from, right? We see a similar double meaning (head
> (not in anatomical sense), start) in Greek with ἐν ἀρχῇ, right?
>
> I know Greek well enough to struggle through the New Testament, but not
enough to argue the finer points.


> But where do you get this idea of the first fruits of the harvest from?


Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Leviticus 2:12, 23:10, Numbers 15:20, 21 among many
others.


> I thought this form only occurred once in the Tanakh?


There are five other verses where it has a B- prefix, just as in Genesis
1;1, with the meaning of “in the beginning”.


> Does anybody know of any
> similar forms in cognate languages? How do the targums handle this term?
>
> In favour of an 'In the beginning' translation I see the following points:
>
> 1) Jerome who claimed to have learned Hebrew in Isreal in the 4th century
> translates the term as 'In principio' (the possibility exists that he is
> just following the Greek though)
> 2) The LXX tranlators rendered the term ἐν ἀρχῇ which almost certainly has
> this meaning.
> 3) The author of the Gospel of John began his gospel with ἐν ἀρχῇ. The
> implication seems to be that he is calling readers attention to BR)$YT and
> that his understanding of the term BR)$YT was Greek ἐν ἀρχῇ
> 4) The term BR)$YT is related to R)$ which basically means 'head'. It is
> not
> a massive leap to see the connection to the sense of 'start' or
> 'beginning'.
>
> Lines of evidence we have not yet considered:
>
> 1) Examples from cognates
> 2) The targum rendition of the term
> 3) The traditional Jewish understanding (does the Talmud say anything on
> the
> subject?)
>
> James Christian


This word is used over 40 times in Tanakh, so it is pretty clear what its
meaning is from the contexts.

Karl W. Randolph.