arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: 05-21-2004
|
|
Message 1 of 2 (410064)
07-13-2007 3:00 AM
|
|
|
in the aggadah of genesis thread, IamJoseph and i were debating what i feel is a rather obvious point of basic reading comprehension, regarding the function of the very first verse in genesis. it's somewhat odd how people can get so hung up on the first verse, but i'd like the chance to discuss it, in depth. among IAJ's many clearly contrived points, he comes up with this idea that "in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth" means that in that single instant, god created everything that ever existed. what he does, then, with the rest of the chapter which describes that creation (taking the course of six days) is still a mystery to me. i got a bit side-tracked by real life recently, and that thread has since closed. re-opening would be somewhat pointless, as our discussion wasn't quite on topic to begin with. so i'd like to continue here, in a fresh new thread -- mostly because of something i read today. the problem is thus:
IamJospeh writes: The sun was not created in V16 but in V1: 'IN THE BEGINNING GD CREATED THE HEAVENS (GALAXIES/STARS/SUN) AND THE EARTH'. Only here the term created ('bara') is used, not in V16, with the galaxies listed before the earth. as one reading the chapter can see, heaven and earth are created on days two and three respectively, so this should be quite obvious that it just doesn't mean this. in the previous thread, i made a case for my preferred translation, the nJPS, which says, "When God began to create..." i made my case thusly:
arachnophilia writes: and anyways, the verse more properly says "when god began creating heaven and earth..." why should it say that, when both are acceptable grammatically for the hebrew? because of course god created heaven and earth in the beginning. that's the definition of "beginning." the other way is less of a "well duh" point, and serves as a better introduction. part of my above argument, you see, is actually incorrect. both are not acceptable grammatically for the hebrew. here, courtesy of iyov's blog, are the notes of the translator responsible for the new rendering, Harry Orlinsky:
quote:
1-3: When God began to create.
For some 2,200 years ” since the Septuagint version of the Torah was made by Jewish translators for the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt ” all official translations of the Bible have rendered Hebrew bereshith bara elokim mechanically, "In the beginning God created." There are several cogent reasons, each independent of the others, for rejecting the traditional rendering as incorrect, and for accepting the temporal ("When...") construction. (a) The first vowel in the first word, be(reshith), as distinct from a form ba(reshith), indicates that the word is in the construct (rather than in the absolute) state, and has the meaning "In the beginning of (God’s creating . . .)" rather than "In the beginning (God created...)." Indeed, it is not even bareshith (the form doesn’t happen to occur in the Bible) but barishona that one would have expected here for “In the beginning (God created...)." (source)
the word used indicates the beginning of an action, which then grammatically follows, not the beginning of time. this was the impression i got from my (incredibly limited) knowledge of hebrew, but this confirms it. here is Rashi's take on the matter: (still the same source on Orlinsky's notes)
quote:
This had already been noted by Rashi, who wrote: "But if you are going to interpret [this passage] in its plain sense, interpret it thus: At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was (or the earth being) unformed and void ... God said, 'Let there be light.' For the passage does not intend to teach the order of creation, to say that these [namely, heaven and earth] came first; because if it had intended to teach this, it would have been necessary to use the form barishona ('In the beginning' or 'At first') He created the heavens,' etc.,
the function of genesis 1:1 is an introduction to the rest of the chapter, not to establish what came first. the "beginning" is the beginning god creating. Rashi notes another example:
quote:
since you have no instance of the form reshith in Scripture which is not in construct to the word following it, as for example 'In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim' (bereshith mamlekheth yehoyaqim, Jer. 27.1).... So here, too, you must say [that the phrase] bereshith bara elokim, etc., is equivalent to 'In the beginning of (God's) '(bereshith bero).
he includes a second example from Hosea as well, but see the link for that.
quote:
So that Rashi was right when he noted that the whole of verse 1 (N.B.: Rashi did not emend bara to bero!) was in construct to verse 3: "In the beginning of God’s creating (or "When God began to create) the heaven and the earth . . . God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light" ” with verse 2 constituting a circumstantial clause, i.e., a clause which describes the circumstances under which the action in verses 1 and 3 took place: 2"... the earth being unformed and void," etc.
so verse 1 is really part of a larger sentance, "when god began creating the heavens and the earth ... god said 'let there be light.'" the middle clause becomes confusing, but this clears it up. the first action of the creation of the heaven and earth is the command for light to exist.
quote:
(b) When the story of creation is resumed later, in 2.4, it is, again, the temporal ("When") construction that is employed: "When the LORD God made earth and heaven" (beyom asoth HASHEM elokim eretz we-shamayim); and note how there also, as in 1.2, verses 5 and 6 constitute a circumstantial clause, with verse 7 being the fulfillment of verse 4 ("When the LORD God made heaven and earth ... the LORD God formed man from the dust of the earth...").
this is a point i commonly bring up: similarity in style to chapter 2. not the strongest point, it makes things look nice.
quote:
(c) The numerous ancient Near Eastern stories of creation nearly all begin with the "When" sentence structure, e.g., the Babylonian Enuma Elish:
When above, the heavens had not been named,
(And) below, the earth had not been called by name.
cross-cultural similarities have to be considered.
quote:
(d) Though verse 2 had traditionally been rendered as a separate sentence, "And the earth was (unformed and void...)," the relative order of the two words, we-ha-aretz hayetha (subject, verb) ” apart from the arguments given above ” points to the rendering "the earth being..."; Trad., "and the earth was" would have been expressed here by the usual order (verb, subject): wa-tehi ha-aretz. See, e.g., at Exod. 1.5 below, on we-yosef haya (as against wayhi yosef).
this is a point i hadn't actually noticed -- modern hebrew, with which i am more familiar, takes the subject-verb order. biblical hebrew does not. i am not sure i agree with this next part:
quote:
The implications of the new translation are clear. The Hebrew text tells us nothing about "creation out of nothing" (creatio ex nihilo), or about the beginning of time. What, then, according to our passage, constituted the first act of creation, if it was not heaven or earth or darkness or deep, etc.? The Hebrew text itself, once again, provides the answer directly, in verse 3: "(When God began to create the heaven and the earth...) God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." In other words ” again as Rashi had already observed ” the first thing that God did when He created the universe, as ancient man knew it, was to create light.
the conclusion i agree with, but i think the proper rendering of "unformed" should connotate nothingness, ie, "the earth did not exist."
quote:
This conclusion is further supported by the fact that light ('or) was the first element to receive a name (that is, official existence) from God: "God called the light Day" (wa-yiqra elokim la-or yom, verse 5); the heaven and the earth, on the other hand, did not receive names until the second and third days respectively (v. 8, "Sky"; v.10, "Earth").
the god of genesis 1 is a god of names. god creates by speaking things into existance, "let there be..." and then stamping them approval by way of naming them. but this is where IamJoseph's reading get's a little... fruity. for him, the earth and sky aren't formed or even named on days two and three, but on day one. he even goes so far as to try to make a distinction between "day one" (literally what the text has in hebrew) and "first day" which would be consistent with the "second day, third day, fourth day," etc, of the rest of the chapter.
IamJoseph writes: it is written as DAY ONE, not FIRST DAY; while the follow-up days are written as SECOND DAY; THIRD DAY, ETC. If there was no distinction between ONE and FIRST, why would it be written so? my reply was such:
arachnophilia writes: i see two things, that are pretty obvious. one: the first day counted, "one day" is part of a definition. evening + morning = 1 day. so that requires slightly different language. two: the authors wanted to keep the basic numeric theme. instead of saying - - — and having "first" break the pattern, it was actually more poetically consistent to say - - —. i'm sorry, i guess this point doesn't make much sense in english, where "day one - day two - day three" and "first day - second day - third day" are more consistent, but in hebrew "day two" could be mistaken as saying "two days" (when it's really one), and so you have to use "second." and "two" and "second" are just forms of the same word, "one" and "first" are not and "first" would stick out like a sore thumb. here is Orlinsky's note:
quote:
5. a first day*. (*Others "one day").
Trad, "one day" is, again, merely a mechanical reproduction of Heb. yom echad. For one thing, it will be noted at once that all the other days of creation are qualified not by the cardinal ("two," "three," "four," etc., "days") but by the ordinal: "a second," "a third," "a fourth," etc., "day" (yom sheni, shelishi, revi’i, etc.). It has, further, been generally overlooked that in enumeration, the cardinal will be employed for "first" and the ordinals for "second," "third," etc. Thus in Gen. 2.11, "(The name of) the first ([river] is Pishon)" is expressed by (shem) ha-echad (not ha-rishon), with the ordinals ha-sheni, ha-shelishi, and ha-revi’i, "the second," "third," "fourth" (vv. 13-14) used thereafter. Finally, it may be observed here that the cardinal be-echad (la-chodesh), not the ordinal ba-rishon, is the regular term for "on the first day (of the month)"; as a matter of fact, the ordinal ba-rishon would have the meaning "in the first month," as in 8:13, ba-rishon be-ehad la-chodesh, "in the first month, on the first (day) of the month." Some of this is discussed in Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar, 2nd English edition by E. Kautzsch-A. E. Cowley (1908), 98a (p. 292), 134p (pp. 435-6).
apparently, it's quite standard biblical hebrew practice. ironically, the modern word for "sunday" is yom raishon and not yom achad. but the point here should be apallingly obvious by now. the first verse serves as introduction to the seven days of creation. the first action of creation, on the first day, is the creation of light, which god calls "day." the darkness the preceded it was "night" and the two make the first day. the other creative actions, described in genesis 1:1's "heaven and earth" (an idiom for "everything"), happen throughout the rest of the chapter. not at some arbitrary "beginning," not instaneously, and not all at the same time. (bible study forum please. realm of discussion should be genesis 1:1 to 2:4a, with emphasis on interpretation of the first verse.)
|
™ Version 4.2