Amedeo

Gen: In the beginning there was God.
Sc: There never was a beginning.

spin

The Hebrew says, "In the beginning of god's creating the heavens and the earth..." The beginning referred to was of god's acts of forming the world and populating it. The text doesn't imply any absolute beginning. This is a later Greek idea injected into the text.

lee_merrill

Actually, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is a most literal reading. Now it is possible to read this "In God's creating ...", but note the consensus of the various translations, this is not in serious dispute, I gather.

And science does say there was a beginning, this was of course vigorously resisted! Until it became apparent that it was really true, and confirmation continues to be found.

Sauron

I just love watching lee_merrill -- who studies Hebrew from online fundie websites and cereal boxes -- correcting someone as educated as spin.

1. Science is out on this topic.
2. Who are you saying resisted it?

KeithJM

This is like watching a train wreck happen over and over again.

spin

To get people back on track understanding the first verse of the bible, a medieval Jewish thinker asked of that verse "in the beginning of what?" -- what was it the beginning of? The implication was that the grammatical structure required extra information to be complete.

If you remember when two nouns were placed together in Hebrew you had a relationship thus:

noun1 OF noun2.

The verb in the first verse functions analogously to a noun and we have:

in-the-(beginning OF create)

but the verb takes with it the full clause:

in-the-(beginning OF (create god OBJ-the heavens and OBJ-the earth))

BR)$YT BR) )LHYM )T H$MYM w)T H)RC

This doesn't sound too nice that way in English, but you should understand the relationship. This means that the beginning was a beginning of something that the text states, ie god's creating. The closest grammatically acceptable statements of this in English are found in the NRSV:

In the beginning when god created the heavens and the earth...

or the Jewish Publication Society:

When god began to create the heavens and the earth...

They both helpfully give in a footnote "In the beginning god created..." to let you know the preferred significance.

Of course both these translations are done by world class scholars, well-reputed, and responsible generally for accuracy rather than tradition.

One might also add a translation which endeavored to be as literal as possible, Youngs:

In the beginning of god's preparing the heavens and the earth...

The importance of understanding the structure of the first two verses is so that the reader doesn't lose track of the significance of the creation. The first creative act when god began to create the heavens and the earth was to create light by saying "let there be light." To begin the creation god turned on the light. Darkness already existed, as did the waters of the deep.

At the beginning of god's creation of the heavens and the earth (ie the cosmos), when the world was without form and void, with darkness on the deep and the wind of god hovering over the waters, god said, "let there be light."

There was no creative act before the start of that first day when god first spoke. The world was created in six days, each day starting with god stating a creative act.

The old translation simply shows a lack of close understanding of the Hebrew, because of the influence of classical Greek philosophical ideas. There was no creative act before god spoke to turn on the light for his creation.

No, it is not possible.

What is in dispute is the willingness not to translate what the text actually says because of tradition. This why we've had heated discussions about the wrongful translation of (LMAH as "virgin" in Isa 7:14 and a number of other mistranslations for theological purposes. A text should be translated for what it actually says, not for the tradition which developed after the writing.

In the beginning god created the heavens and the earth, is one of the few bits of the Hebrew bible that a lot of people "know". When they find a translation which is different they feel uncomfortable. They "know" how it should go, so people buy bibles with what they know. That doesn't make the translation right. You need to turn to scholarly translations for less desire to sell, but more desire for accuracy.


spin

Amedeo

===> Once again, I was not quoting some science text. I was thinking of the principle of the conservation of matter, which does not mean the conservation (or constant presence) of the components of the world. Bodies are formed (have a beinning) and decay (have an as such-and-such things); there are changes of compressions and expansions in the spatial world, etc. So, certainly there are beginning and endings, but they are not absolute appearences and disappearences. The components of the world are not according to the Elohim; rather, there is always existing ("matter") in many forms, in an eternal process. Science is the science (investigation and knowledge) of the cosmic process.

What is true of individual substances [individuality, motion, birth and death, production of effects on something else, etc.) is not true of the world as a whole. THE World is not a thing that moves toward something else,that causes something on that which is not the world, or that is ever born or ever dies. Some scientists simply think illogically when from the study of certain cosmic processes or from the nature of a tree or an animal or a chemical coumpound they INFER that the world had a beginning (and one of these days will vanish). /The controversy you mention is ultimately about whether certain scientists think logically or illogically. For the scientists AS scientitists, who study processes including large-scale explosions, there is a basic assumption they make, as Parmenides would say: The whole of That-Which-Is is without beginning and without end.


The explanation had to be lengthy, because some scientists believe that anything they say about nature is scientific, whereas even religionists such as popes make a distinction between what they say "ex cathedra" and from their private chairs.
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P.S. My phrasing, "In the beginning..." was after the phraseology in John the evangelist, who wrote, "en arche logos...", that is, "In the beginning [or: at first] there was the Logos [through which God created....] and the Logos was God..... and nothing has been ever created which has not been created through the Logos." [The Logos is the personified word of the Elohim who made something be by speaking it forth, just as the Spirit is the personified breath of Yahweh that made clay alive.] So, in effect the divine Trinity unwittingly incorporates the two Biblical creators: the one who makes something appear through words [like a superhuman Arab magician], and the one who infuses his breath [or some energy!] into something else. Yahweh was a Caucasian sculptor and energiser (by means of the energy known at that time, namely the heat of warm breath). {Of course, when Moses required his people to worship only one god, they made a simple equation: Yah is the male of the Elohim, namely El, and El is Yah. There, there is only one god for Isra-el! Yet, eventually the Kingdom of Israel (Galilee and Samaria) and the kingdom of Yudah became distinct! The true Israelites remained in Palestine after 70 A.D.; the Judeans were the former marchers behind the ark of Yah the Sabaoth, but most of them fled when their temple or headquarter was destroyed in 70 A.D.}