Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2

it's typically used for "special" creations, such as mankind, and for unsubstantial (spiritual, etc) things. but to take from this that it represents creatio ex nihilo is absolutely wrong. rather, one needs only understand the origin of the word. look at the other use, for instance, in joshua 17 (verse 15 and 18):

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וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, אִם-עַם-רַב אַתָּה עֲלֵה לְךָ הַיַּעְרָה, וּבֵרֵאתָ לְךָ שָׁם, בְּאֶרֶץ הַפְּרִזִּי וְהָרְפָאִים: כִּי-אָץ לְךָ, הַר-אֶפְרָיִם

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and

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כִּי הַר יִהְיֶה-לָּךְ, כִּי-יַעַר הוּא, וּבֵרֵאתוֹ, וְהָיָה לְךָ תֹּצְאֹתָיו: כִּי-תוֹרִישׁ אֶת-הַכְּנַעֲנִי, כִּי רֶכֶב בַּרְזֶל לוֹ--כִּי חָזָק, הוּא

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it certainly doesn't mean that they are going to create the forest from nothing. rather, they are going to destroy it. but it doesn't exactly mean "destruction" either. it means division. they are going to separate the trees from the land. בָּרָא means "creation by means of separation". it's related to words for "break" and "scatter" and "cut" and "polish".and examination of genesis 1 will bear this out. god divides the heaven from the earth. the land from seas. he sets up divisions of time with markers in the heavens. he divides male from female. etc. none of these are made from nothing -- rather, the are made by separating one from the other. this idea would be extremely important to the ancient hebrews whose entire concept of piety and holiness was based on separation from the surrounding nations. so, it's bits like this that make me wonder why you appeal to the hebrew, since you're obviously not reading it. it says,

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וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֶת-הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים

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and god created ha-taninm ha-gadolim. "the great serpents". jewish tradition holds that these are leviyatan and his mate. the "whale" bit is actually sort of funny, because leviyatan happens to be the modern hebrew word for "whale". but as we all know, if you read job, that's not a whale. and genesis 1:1! that's a dependent clause,

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בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

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"when god began creating the heavens and the earth..." which happens to describe the rest of the coming chapter, until genesis 2:4a,

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אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, בְּהִבָּרְאָם

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"these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created." they sort of form bookends to the chapter -- notice the similar phrasing. so all that בְדֵּל going on, (verse 4, 6-7, 14, 18, etc) is covered under that initial בָּרָא. as you point out, most of this is just arrangement. the interesting thing is that heaven and earth are both made by division as well, separating raw ingredients that already existed. remember, since verse 1 is a dependent clause, that "unformed and void" earth, and the water, are what existed at the time god began creating. well, god is not currently creating again. but, your phrasing is kind of vague. god is not currently resting, and it is no longer יּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי. it's just that creation is finished. god has since moved onto other tasks.

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אָרַח

the truth is probably somewhere between the two. they are clearly synonyms, and making a strong distinction is a mistake. but not making any distinction is also a mistake. they are different in flavour -- one can be used to describe the other (as the AiG link points out, as have i in previous threads), but they aren't 100% interchangeable either.bara tends to be used in particular special cases -- mostly mankind, and for more spiritual concerns. asah and yatsar tend to be used in more down-to-earth ways. neither implies creatio ex nihilo, though if such a concept had existed in the bible, either could probably have been used to describe it.

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אָרַח

no! it says, "when god began creating the heaven and the earth..." and then continues into verse two, which describes what the earth was like when god began his creation. no! it says, "these are the generations of the heaven and earth, when they were created." period, full stop, begin chapter two, "when yahweh god made earth and heaven..." and continues into verse five, which describes what the earth was like when yahweh first made it.as explained above, 1:1 and 2:4a are the bookends to chapter 1. tradition has broken the chapter in quite the wrong place. notice, for instance, the complete shift in style between the first half of 2:4 and the second. why does 2:4a says הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ but 2:4b say אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם? why the sudden reversal of order, and the dropping of the article? why does 2:3 only say אֱלֹהִים but יְהוָה suddenly appears in 2:4b? yes, and the christian division is exceptionally bad in this case. i suggest finding a hebrew torah, or at least the great jewish translation, the new JPS version.

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אָרַח

it's important to note that there are several usages of yom, and genesis 1 and 2 use three of them. for instance, your statement here is not quite correct, as the word is actually used twice in genesis 1:5, and to mean two different things:

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וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם, וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה

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"day" versus "night", and

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וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם אֶחָד

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a day that includes both the night and day above. colloquially, we have the same two usages in modern english. the third pops up in genesis 2:4b:

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בְּיוֹם, עֲשׂוֹת יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים--אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם

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"in the day that..." which is an idiomatic way of saying "when..." it doesn't mean a day in the literal sense, just that something i taking place when some other condition is satisfied. it's not durationally specific, just temporally specific. if that makes any sense.

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אָרַח

no jar, the earth is created in verse 10 (day three). verse 1 is a dependent clause that describes the rest of the chapter.

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אָרַח

oh, that's classic, and so true. i've studied enough hebrew to know that by and large, translations are pretty good. the exceptions are few and far between, and all touchy little points like where to break chapters, and what's a dependent clause and such.but, to say something so right... and then go so wrong... well, that's just amusing.sadly, regardless of the languages yahweh speaks, the bible was written in hebrew, aramaic, and greek.

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אָרַח

existing, yes. created, no. the "creation" of the earth is in the organization that happens on the third day, where the waters are collected into some places and the land into others.the first verse is not a creation event. at that point, the earth (and heaven) exists as indistinct from the waters.

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אָרַח

thanks! okay, it was unclear from your post what you were going for -- as you seemed to equally support the "standard" ex nihilo definition of bara, and support the idea that the creation account of genesis 1 described a re-shaping of already existing elements. of everything? indeed, and this is sort of the position that genesis takes. there is no beginning of everything, of god, or of the deep. only of god's creation. not especially. for instance, in joshuah 17:15, the prefix is simply a vav ("and") and the suffix is a simple conjugation for number and tense. the word itself is still the same; it's just a different tense and there's more than one subject. er, no. yes, and no. yes, in that their component parts existed, and no in that those parts were indistinguishable from each other. the creation of heaven and earth are described later in the chapter, but it would also be wrong to say that they were made from nothing. i am saying that the land is indistinct from the water. ah, you might be interested to read some jewish thought on the subject. for instance, the qabalists believe that adam was originally a hermaphrodite before chavah was separated from his side. my chumash has a footnote to this effect, actually. this might be going a little too far, but it does specifically note in genesis 1 the distinction between male and female during the creative act. i'm sort of going to ignore the topic of authorship because it's likely somewhat off topic here. however, even in the other books of moses, the point is driven home that the sons of israel are to be separate from the other nations, and that this is what makes them special. the torah is filled with commandments designed specifically to set the israelites apart. the first such commandment comes well before there even was a man named israel, and is given to abraham. yes, but literally, the words are "great serpents." it's the same thing that moses' staff turn into when he casts it in front of pharaoh. i don't. it's what's called an idiomatic translation. it happens to parallel the beginning of genesis 2 (2:4b) much more nicely that way, since "in the day" also idiomatically means "when". "word by word" isn't a particularly great translation method, since, as you point out, the words in hebrew don't actually quite correspond to the words in english, thanks to prefixes, etc. but i'll spell it out for you if you'd like.

בְּ	in-, at-, of- etc
רֵאשִׁית	first of, beginning of, etc
בָּרָא	creating (present tense, singular)
אֱלֹהִים	god, gods (singular in this case, because of the singular verb)
אֵת	(no translation. signifies the direct object of a sentence)
הַשָּׁמַיִם	the skies, the heavens. (article prefixed)
וְאֵת	(no translation. direct object, plus "and" conjunction)
הָאָרֶץ	the land, the country, the ground, the earth (article prefixed)

so, literally, "in the beginning of god creating the heavens and the earth". now, i understand the point of contention here is going to be rashyt. it's frequently translated in genesis 1:1 without the "of" that it implies, making it seem like it begins an independent clause, instead of the dependent clause. but look for example at genesis 10:10:

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וַתְּהִי רֵאשִׁית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ בָּבֶל, וְאֶרֶךְ וְאַכַּד וְכַלְנֵה, בְּאֶרֶץ, שִׁנְעָר

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there, it begins a phrase, "beginning of his reign". there is no prefix on "reign" -- it's just implied because of the phrase. similarly, look at jeremiah 26:1:

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בְּרֵאשִׁית, מַמְלְכוּת יְהוֹיָקִים בֶּן-יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ--מֶלֶךְ יְהוּדָה: הָיָה הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה, מֵאֵת יְהוָה לֵאמֹר

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here we have a verse that begins the exact same way, "in the beginning of the reign of..." and notice that it begins a dependent clause. the independent clause of the verse is "came this word from yahweh".so, where is the independent clause of genesis 1:1? verse 3. "when god began creating... god said, 'let there be light'." this is the first act of creation. it also means that verse 2, a kind of parenthetical aside, describes the initial state of the earth. it indicates, in support of your assertion, that creation was not from nothing.you can find a full argument HERE Technologies | The world's #1 location platform, in a thread i posted more than 3 years ago. you actually participated in this thread at the time, though you never particularly addressed the OP. don't be silly. you spent six years learning biblical hebrew so you wouldn't have to trust what the translators wrote, right? in this case, the hebrew helps greatly. it's not that the translation is wrong, by any means, it's just that you're running too far with what the english says. for instance, genesis 2:2 is parallelism.

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וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה
וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מִכָּל-מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

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note that "finish" and "rest" are paralleled? note also that "rest" in that form has the same consonants as "seven" and "sabbath"? not a coincidence. okay. and that's fine. we're not exactly treated to very many brand new creations after that (except in genesis 2, but that's a different story right?) no. in fact, nothing in the torah was put there moses. and even if it had been, punctuation and spacing wouldn't have been included. which is quite the point -- since the punctuation and spacing had to be inferred by the early translators, and by the more modern of the masoretic editions, there's some possibility of error in this regard. this is one fairly definitive case of error. the grammar and stylistic differences make it pretty clear where the break should be. because, so far, it's the best translation i have ever read. not only does it retain the meaning and poetry of the original hebrew, but it reads very well in english. you will find that it uses something very like the translation i gave you for genesis 1:1. notes on the translator's reasoning can be found in the thread i linked. correct. it might have taken you a lot more than a day to create either. indeed.Edited by arachnophilia, : sub-title mangled by board

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אָרַח

thanks! can't win 'em all, i suppose. personal knowledge. sure. however, as mentioned above, this is not actually a sentence. it is a clause, and a dependent one at that. the subject of the sentence can be found in verse 3. at this point, i'm not too convinced you understand english grammar. there are three nouns in this clause. one is the subject of the clause, elohim, and the other two are the direct objects, shamim and aretz, as signified by the direct object marker, et. correct. perfect happens to correspond to past tense, and imperfect to future tense, though they do not actually denote time frames in biblical hebrew. biblical hebrew lacks the "intermediate" tense of later writing, which would correspond to present tense. the problem is that when translating into english, it's often up to the translator to infer tense based on context. and, since this is part of a dependent clause, present tense happens to make the most sense in english. yeah. i'm actually not going to sit here and walk you through basic hebrew reading, because it's increasingly obvious that you just don't get it. in any case, i have already posted such a thread, where i defer to orlinsky, and rashi. i don't. it's inferred, by almost every bible translator, ever. except, of course, for the nJPS, which renders the clause, "when god began to create..." i personally don't like that, because it turns the verb into an infinitive. "when god began creating" is more technically correct. see the link for why the temporal construct is correct. "of" is inferred. baresheyt is the first of something, or the front of something. do not expect to mechanically render modern english into biblical hebrew. there will be no bet or mem here, just as there is no bet or mem in הַעֵץ, הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע (but notice there's a hey we don't render in english?)look at jeremiah 26:1

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בְּרֵאשִׁית, מַמְלְכוּת יְהוֹיָקִים בֶּן-יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ--מֶלֶךְ יְהוּדָה:

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"in the beginning of the kingdom of yehoyaqim, son of yosheyahu, king of yehuda..."

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seriously. that's 4 "of"s and 2 "the"s that just aren't mechanically in the hebrew. they're all implied, every one of them. note also that i've very wisely chosen a verse that shows specifically why baresheyt implies an "of". hint: look for the vav.

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אָרַח

there is nothing here that actually addresses anything i've written. no, it is not. you are being over-literal, and entirely mechanical, to the point that it makes no sense in english. no hebrew-speaking person would read it that way -- they would read the grammar exactly as i've described because that's how hebrew grammar functions. you cannot just literally paste it into english and expect it to make sense. look, you can either read it in english, or read it in hebrew. you're doing neither, just making a hodge-podge of nonsense. as i posted above,

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בְּרֵאשִׁית, מַמְלְכוּת יְהוֹיָקִים בֶּן-יֹאשִׁיָּהוּ--מֶלֶךְ יְהוּדָה:

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"in the beginning of the kingdom of yehoyaqim, son of yosheyahu, king of yehuda..."

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the "of"s and "the"s are not actually present in the hebrew in form of bet/mem, or hey. and if it were, the clause would be grammatically incorrect. this is because in hebrew you form complex phrases where articles agree. this is often a pair of nouns, one of them proper, such as memalkut yehoyaqim. and when definite, it often involves inserting another article where one wouldn't be found in english. for instance, ha-etz ha-dat. we would write "the tree of knowledge" but in your over-literal reading, it would say "the tree the knowledge". guess which one is actually appropriate?hebrew is not english, and it takes a little bit of work to render it correctly -- and not just represent the words that are there in one language blindly into another. translation does not work that way.and seriously, this is first year hebrew stuff. considering that's a yud and not a vav, no. the alef-bet: also first year hebrew stuff. yes, that is what a conjunction does, when it's used to link two direct objects together. except when it's not.

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וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, אִם-עַם-רַב אַתָּה עֲלֵה לְךָ הַיַּעְרָה, וּבֵרֵאתָ לְךָ שָׁם, בְּאֶרֶץ הַפְּרִזִּי וְהָרְפָאִים: כִּי-אָץ לְךָ, הַר-אֶפְרָיִם

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and

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כִּי הַר יִהְיֶה-לָּךְ, כִּי-יַעַר הוּא, וּבֵרֵאתוֹ, וְהָיָה לְךָ תֹּצְאֹתָיו: כִּי-תוֹרִישׁ אֶת-הַכְּנַעֲנִי, כִּי רֶכֶב בַּרְזֶל לוֹ--כִּי חָזָק, הוּא

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but i've already given these examples in this thread. you just haven't paid attention to them. no. please try to understand sentence structure."when god began creating... god said..."where is the subject of the sentence? in english, since you can't seem to understand dependent clauses in hebrew. except that this is not what it says. dependent clauses frequently have both subjects and verbs (and sometimes objects). the thought is not complete because it begins with a word that tells the reader they are reading a dependent clause. the thought is completed at the end of the verse 3. except that they are created later in the chapter. the independent clause reading makes no sense because it contradicts the rest of the chapter. don't be silly. כי is certainly one way to begin a dependent clause, but is not the only way.

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אָרַח

nothing. but that is not what you are doing. it doesn't. it (generally) has to make sense in hebrew. if you're going to translate hebrew into english, your translation has to make sense. otherwise, you have turned sense into nonsense. if the hebrew is not nonsense, and your english translation is, you've done something terribly wrong. this may come as a surprise, but hebrew was a dead language for approximately 2,000 years. it was falling out of use by the time of christ (only used by the levites for formal purposes), and more or less destroyed with the destruction of the second temple. hebrew as a language was formally revived in the 1940's -- and based almost entirely on biblical hebrew. the differences between biblical and modern hebrew are minute. modern hebrew is generally SVO, and biblical is generally VSO. modern hebrew has some new vocabulary that has been imported from arabic and aramaic. modern hebrew tends to drop possesive suffixes and construct states for prepositions. etc. but, other than those tiny differences, biblical and modern hebrew are damned near identical. if you can read one, you can read the other. (hell, a lot of people who can read biblical hebrew can even understand spoken aramaic)contrast this with english. here is a sample of english, dated approximately 700 AD at the earliest:

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Hwt! We Gardena in geardagum,
eodcyninga, rym gefrunon,
hu a elingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaena reatum,

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monegum mgum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syan rest wear
feasceaft funden, he s frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weormyndum ah,
ot him ghwylc ara ymbsittendra

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ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. t ws god cyning!
m eafera ws fter cenned,
geong in geardum, one god sende
folce to frofre; fyrenearfe ongeat

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e hie r drugon aldorlease
lange hwile. Him s liffrea,
wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf;
Beowulf ws breme (bld wide sprang),
Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.

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my spellchecker is currently freaking out, because only about a dozen of those words still exist in english. that's how much english has changed in only 1300 years.and the date you're look for for genesis 1 is about 700 BC. not 1500 BC. this might come as a surprise to you, but the bible was written in biblical hebrew. you know, by definition. while the originals almost certainly used the paleo-hebrew alef-bet, the language is still what we have represented in biblical hebrew. this is because people are stupid. the KJV is one of the formative works of modern english. and again, this in contrast to the hebrew. you cannot draw an analogy here -- hebrew remained dead and unspoken for close to 2000 years. and when it was restated as the official language of the state of israel, it was specifically constructed with an eye to biblical hebrew.Edited by arachnophilia, : important typo

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אָרַח

they do not. (i've also taken the liberty of making your subject and verb agree in number, above) knowing the words is not enough. this is a child's understanding -- and leads to some creative conspiracy theories such as microsoft windows 3.1 described in the bible.no, you have to understand usage. and context. and grammar. simply looking the words up in a dictionary does not a translation make.for instance, you seem entirely ignorant of the construct state in biblical hebrew. which is really quite puzzling, as it's used significantly more frequently in biblical hebrew than it is in modern hebrew. as i mentioned above, modern hebrew prefers a more mechanical use of prepositions, generally של. and we went over construct states in second year modern hebrew. why aren't you aware of them, with your six years of biblical hebrew study, such that you insist on removing "of"s and "the"s that you claim aren't there? and why have you removed a conjunctive vav that is there? we are at a dead end because, while you may know the first thing about biblical hebrew, you certain do not know the second. tell me, those six years didn't happen to be the same first year course six times, did they? {Topic closed Aug. 13, 2013. There is a new proposed topic that more or less gets into this area. - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Closing note.