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CHAPTER TWO
IN THE BEGINNING, GOD
CREATED
THE FIRST DAY
The first three words of the Holy Bible, "In the beginning," reveal an origin - a
beginning to our universe and to time itself. Examine the first chapter of Genesis on your
own. In it, you will find no mention of the age of the universe and the Earth, nor the time
and date when God created them. It tells us only that at some point there was a beginning,
and at that beginning, God created the universe.
This Biblical proclamation appears to be an irrelevant claim for our modern society.
Today, the scientific community widely embraces the notion that the universe had a beginning.
Yet, at the time of its writing this Biblical declaration was neither known nor intuitive.
Some ancient societies believed that time was eternal and that the universe had always
existed (this is called the Steady State Theory). Others believed that the current universe
was one of many that existed and then ended in an eternal cycle. But what the ancient people
could not have known is common knowledge today.
Our universe was born between ten and twenty billion years ago in a primeval
explosion called the Big Bang. At that moment, the entire universe burst into existence
from a single point of origin, of infinite space-time density (such a point is known as
a "singularity"). Before this momentous event there was nothing. Matter, energy, and
even space and time, did not yet exist.
TRANSLATING THE FIRST VERSE
To gain a better understanding of this verse, let us now closely examine the
original Hebrew text for this passage. This is not something that needs to be done for
every verse of the Creation Story, but I feel it is necessary to include it here to
display how the original Hebrew was translated. In Hebrew, Genesis 1:1 reads:
Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets5
Bereshit - Translated as "In the beginning."6
bara - Translated here as "created."7 What is being conveyed here is not the
customary definition of the word "create." In the true sense of the word, mankind does
not actually "create" - we merely manipulate matter that already exists. Buildings,
bridges, homes, automobiles, computers, and every other physical "creation" of man are
all produced from preexisting materials.
Only God can create (bara) that from which there was nothing. No other being,
including man, possesses this ability.8 It is this particular usage that is being
expressed here to the Biblical reader - that of creating something from nothing. Before
the Big Bang, matter, energy, and time did not yet exist. After the Big Bang, the entire
universe appeared and time began to move forward. Such a creation from nothing is
referred to as "Creation Ex Nihilo."
NOTES:
5. Torah Portions, World Ort Union, "Navigating the Bible", 1996, April 16, 1997
6. Harry M. Orlinsky, ed., Notes on the New Translation of The Torah
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969), p.49
7. Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Holy Bible, One-Volume Edition, Abridged from original
six-volume work by Ralph Earl (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1967), p.16
8. Charles M. Laymon, ed., The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible
(New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, and Nashville:
Parthenon Press, printed and bound, 1971), p.3
(These are selected paragraphs within this chapter. This is not the entire chapter.)
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