Re: Genesis 1:1-3
Feel free to visit the video on YouTube because it is slow and careful, designed to address those who have never encountered the idea that most English translations get this passage wrong. It has to do with recognizing in Hebrew the difference between a dependent and independent clause.
A dependent clause is incomplete, indicating that something more is coming. An independent clause is what we would call a “sentence” because it is a complete thought that stands on its own. Genesis 1:1, 2 and 3 in Hebrew grammar are dependent clauses, not sentences.
We understand that ancient Hebrew was written without vowels and you were supposed to simply know which vowels should be read into the text. The difference between the common reading and the correct reading is the difference in one vowel. When the vowel script was finally developed in about 800 AD, the scribes who kept the Hebrew OT manuscripts started adding them. Thus, the Dead Sea scrolls don’t show vowels because they are older than the vowel script system. Every collection of manuscripts we still have today presents a different reading than is indicated in common English translations.
Thus, the text of Genesis 1:1-3 should read:
When God began to create the heavens and the earth — now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters — then God said, “let there be light”, and there was light.
This is strict Hebrew syntax. It is not a chronological order for verses 1, 2 and 3. It is not the earth in a formless state because of God’s action in verse 1. And verse 3 does not sequentially follow verse 2. Rather, verse 2 describes the situation for God to begin His work in verse 3. In other words, something already existed when light was called forth.
Hellenized minds ask, “Where did that pre-existing matter come from?” Hebrew minds would never ask that question; it was of no interest to them. The term “created” (Hebrew bara) does not necessarily mean ex nihilo (from nothing). You might associate that meaning based on some grammatical contexts, but it is clearly not so in this case.
Genesis 1:26-27 also features the Hebrew word bara. Was it from nothing? Obviously not; the Lord formed mankind from dust (Genesis 2:7). Further, we find in Exodus 20:11 where God made things in six days, using a different Hebrew word for “made” (asa).
Nor can we deduce from Hebrew syntax that it was seven 24-hour days based on the word for “day” (yom). In Genesis 2:4 we have yom mentioned: “in the day the Lord God made the heavens and the earth”. Did He get it done all in one day? Chasing down the meaning of yom will show you that it most often means “daylight”. Putting it with a number value does not make any difference. Laban pursued Jacob over seven periods of daylight, not day and night/24 hours for a whole week.
We need to recognize that the Hebrew text of Genesis is more about a competing claim against the broad ANE literature about pagan deities than it was trying to nail down Hellenized questions. Imposing a scientific meaning on a doctrinal statement is about as bogus as it gets. The issue is not how God generated matter from scratch, but how He shaped the world as we experience it, and more to the point, our duty to Him as Creator.
Read Genesis 1 as God giving shape to something He already had. A sequence is not possible because the story is told from an eternal viewpoint, where space and time are both adjustable variables.
