God did not create the world out of nothing

[Dave_Noonan]

Thank you! This is exactly my point. I DO believe God created the world out of nothing, but I do NOT think Genesis says that He did. That was what I was trying to get people to see.

What Genesis DOES say, which is contrary to other cultures at that time period, is that God created a GOOD world and that He is one ONE true God.

Yes, exactly. No polytheistic creation resulting from the chaos of divine warfare, no creating humans to serve as ditch-digging slaves, no irreparably corrupt material world…

 

[LilyM]

Thank you! This is exactly my point. I DO believe God created the world out of nothing, but I do NOT think Genesis says that He did. That was what I was trying to get people to see.

What Genesis DOES say, which is contrary to other cultures at that time period, is that God created a GOOD world and that He is one ONE true God.

I’m sorry but in the title of your thread and everything else you have written right up until this post you gave every possible indication that could be given that you were in full agreement with your professor from Rutgers, who from your posts says that God did NOT create ex nihilo full stop, not merely that Genesis does not indicate that He did.

 

[patrick457]

I don’t really think there is all that much ambiguity in the Hebrew text unless you read against the pointing. It’s: “When God began creating…” and what follows is the state of things at the point creation began: 1) the earth was [wasteland or something] 2) darkness covered the face of the deep 3) the ruach swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 is not very good support for creation ex nihilo and arguably is contrary to it.

I think that the midrash (e.g., Bereshit Rabbah) indicates clearly that the Rabbis were well aware that the text is problematic.

This is the problem. The word bərē’šîṯ is often interpreted to be a construct noun (rē’šîṯ, from the word rô’š ‘head’ + prepositional prefix bə ‘in’). The thing is, this construct noun is followed by a perfect finite verb (bārā’ ‘to fill up’, ‘to fatten’, ‘to shape’). Normally, we would expect another noun to follow the construct noun: for example, the phrase bêṯ sēfer ‘house-of [the] book’ (i.e. school). Bêṯ is the construct form of bayît ‘house’ followed by the noun sēfer ‘book/scroll’. Indeed, in the other four times bərē’šîṯ appears in the OT (Jeremiah 26:1; 27:1; 28:1; 49:34) a noun follows it.

So yes, there have been a proposal just as you expound which proposes that the consonants of bārā’ (which is pointed as a verb in the MT) should be read differently as a noun: “In-[the]-beginning [of the] creation [by] God of the heavens and of the earth…” The medieval Jewish exegete Rashi was an exponent of it.

This verse calls for a midrashic interpretation [because according to its simple interpretation, the vowelization of the word בָּרָא bārā’, should be different, as Rashi explains further]. It teaches us that the sequence of the Creation as written is impossible, [as is written immediately below] as our Rabbis stated (Letters of R. Akiva, letter “beth”; Gen. Rabbah 1:6; Lev. Rabbah 36:4): [God created the world] for the sake of the Torah, which is called (Prov. 8:22): “the beginning of His way,” and for the sake of Israel, who are called (Jer. 2:3) “the first of His grain.” But if you wish to explain it according to its simple meaning, explain it thus: “At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, the earth was astonishing with emptiness, and darkness…and God said, ‘Let there be light.’” But Scripture did not come to teach the sequence of the Creation, to say that these came first, for if it came to teach this, it should have written: “At first (בָּרִאשׁוֹנָה bāri’šônâh) He created the heavens and the earth,” for there is no רֵאשִׁית rē’šîṯ in Scripture that is not connected to the following word, * like (ibid. 27:1): “In the beginning of (בְּרֵאשִית bərē’šîṯ) the reign of Jehoiakim;” (below 10:10) “the beginning of (רֵאשִׁית rē’šîṯ) his reign;” (Deut. 18:4) “the first (רֵאשִׁית rē’šîṯ) of your corn.” Here too, you say בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אלֹהִים bərē’šîṯ bārā’ ’Ĕlōhîm, like בְּרֵאשִׁית בְּרֹא bərē’šîṯ bərô’, in the beginning of creating. And similar to this is,“At the beginning of the Lord’s speaking (דִּבֶּר diber) to Hosea,” (Hos. 1:2), i.e., at the beginning of the speaking (דִּבּוּרוֹ dibûrô) of the Holy One, Blessed be He, to Hosea, “the Lord said to Hosea, etc.” Now if you say that it came to teach that these (i.e., heaven and earth) were created first, and that its meaning is: In the beginning of all, He created these—and that there are elliptical verses that omit one word, like (Job 3:9): “For [He] did not shut the doors of my [mother’s] womb,” and it does not explain who it was who shut [the womb]; and like (Isa. 8:4): “he will carry off the wealth of Damascus,” and it does not explain who will carry it off; and like (Amos 6:12): “or will one plow with cattle,” and it does not explain: “if a man will plow with cattle;” and like (Isa. 46:10): “telling the end from the beginning,” and it does not explain that [it means] telling the end of a matter from the beginning of a matter-if so, [if you say that Scripture indicates the order of creation] be astounded at yourself, for the water preceded, as it is written: “and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the water,” and Scripture did not yet disclose when the creation of water took place! From this you learn that the water preceded the earth. Moreover, the heavens (šāmayim) were created from fire (ʾēš) and water (mayim). Perforce, you must admit that Scripture did not teach us anything about the sequence of the earlier and the later [acts of creation].*

 

[patrick457]

The legend of the seventy-two translators who translated the Torah into Greek (first attested in the pseudepigraphal Letter of Aristeas) as related in the Talmud (Megillah 9a-b) has an interesting twist: there, they are said to have intentionally made a number of changes to the text in the translation in order to prevent misunderstandings or embarrassment to Judaism. Interestingly, out of the fifteen specific unusual translations supposedly made by the translators according to this tale, only two are found in the extant Septuagint.

And in addition to this Boraitha it is stated:

Said R. Jehudah: The sages allowed to write in Greek only the Pentateuch, but not anything else. And this was also allowed only because of what occurred with Ptolemy the king, as follows: It happened to Ptolemy the king that he took seventy-two elders from Jerusalem, and placed them in seventy-two separate chambers, and did not inform them to what purpose he had brought them. And afterward he entered to each of them, and said to them: Translate me the Torah of Moses from memory. And the Holy One, blessed be He, sent into the heart of each of them a counsel, and they all agreed to have one mind, and changed as follows: Instead of “In the beginning God created the world,” they wrote, “God created the world in the beginning”; instead of Gen. i. 26 they wrote, “I will make a man in an image”; instead of Gen. ii. 2 they wrote, “And God finished on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh day”; instead of Gen. v. 2 they wrote, “created him”; instead of Gen. xi. 7 they wrote, “Let me go down”; [xviii. 12]: “And Sarah laughed among her relatives”; instead of xlix. 6, “In their anger they slew an ox, and their self-will lamed a fattened ox.” And instead of Ex. iv. 20, “Set them on a porter (man-carrier)”; instead of ibid. xii. 40, “Dwelt in Egypt and in other lands”; and ibid. xxiv. as ibid., “Against the respectable men of Israel.” Instead of Num. xvi. 15, “Not one precious thing I took away”; and instead of Deut. iv. 19 they wrote, “assigned to light for all nations”; instead of ibid. xvii. 3, “which I have not commanded to worship”; and instead of Lev. xi. 6, “the hare,” which is expressed in the Bible “Arnebeth,” as Ptolemy’s wife was named so they wrote, “and the beast that has small feet.”

Why would they write “God created in the beginning?” The traditional answer to this is because, the translators supposedly were afraid that the words bərē’šîṯ bārā’ ’Ĕlōhîm would be misinterpreted to mean that “a god named Bərē’šîṯ created ’ĕlōhîm” (‘God’ or ‘the gods’). So what they did in translation was reverse the word order: in Hebrew, ’Ĕlōhîm bārā’ bərē’šîṯ “’Ĕlōhîm created bərē’šîṯ.”

 

[thecone137]

According to a course I just took, God did not create the world ex nihilo

"1:1 IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1:2 Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. "

There was an unformed and void earth, with darkness and waters, before God started creating light and so forth. According to this course, evil existed before God created, in the form of darkness and waters and chaos. Therefore, when God created light and said it was good, God actually was creating goodness.

Anyone care to argue about this, and how did the ex nihilo idea originate?

Would it be better to state this positively?

“God created the world out of something”

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I’m sorry but in the title of your thread and everything else you have written right up until this post you gave every possible indication that could be given that you were in full agreement with your professor from Rutgers, who from your posts says that God did NOT create ex nihilo full stop, not merely that Genesis does not indicate that He did.

Sorry if you misread me. I was only talking about Genesis 1. I realize my title is a little shocking!

 

[LilyM]

Sorry if you misread me. I was only talking about Genesis 1. I realize my title is a little shocking!

I did not misread you and it is a matter of much more than just your title. You expressed yourself exactly as I have stated, consistently through the thread up until your last post or two.

If your last few posts indicate your true opinion then I might add you expressed yourself very poorly indeed.

 

[Richca]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Noonan
I don’t really think there is all that much ambiguity in the Hebrew text unless you read against the pointing. It’s: “When God began creating…” and what follows is the state of things at the point creation began: 1) the earth was [wasteland or something] 2) darkness covered the face of the deep 3) the ruach swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1 is not very good support for creation ex nihilo and arguably is contrary to it.

I think that the midrash (e.g., Bereshit Rabbah) indicates clearly that the Rabbis were well aware that the text is problematic.

Thank you! This is exactly my point. I DO believe God created the world out of nothing, but I do NOT think Genesis says that He did. That was what I was trying to get people to see.

What Genesis DOES say, which is contrary to other cultures at that time period, is that God created a GOOD world and that He is one ONE true God.

A couple of things are to be noted here. Firstly, if one interprets Gensis 1 to mean that God created the world out of something then that is a misinterpretation because Genesis 1 doesn’t say that. Similarly, if one interprets Genesis 1 to mean that God **did not **create the world out of nothing then that too is a misinterpretation because Genesis 1 doesn’t say that either. Thirdly, if one interprets Genesis 1 to mean that alongside God there eternally existed some form of chaotic physical matter which God brought order too, then that too is a misinterpretation of Genesis 1 because Genesis 1 doesn’t say that.

According to present day biblical scholarship, Gensis 1-2 can be translated in the traditional way such as " In the beginning…" or " When God began to create…" then follows verse 2 “the earth being formless and void…” It appears that it can be debated which translation may be more correct or accurate.

However, for the present discussion, lets look at the translation “When God began to create” since that seems to be the one Christine’s professor is using. Firstly, it is to be noted that verse 2 “the earth being formless and void” follows verse 1 “When God began to create” not the other way around. How you get the idea that there was some kind of eternal primordial chaos of physical matter from the text: “When God began creating heaven and earth, the earth being then a formless void, with darkness over the deep…” is beyond me.

Again, using the translation "“When God began creating heaven and earth, the earth being then a formless void, with darkness over the deep…” was it the intent of the author of Genesis who was a master theologian to say that alongside God there existed some kind of eternal primordial chaos of matter that God brought order too? This is huge!!! If this is true, please spell it out explicitly!! However, the author of Genesis simply does not say this and to force the text to mean that God brought order to some kind of eternal primordial chaos of physical matter is to grossly force the text beyond the author’s intent.

How did the Israelites of the Old Testament understand Genesis 1. Where in the theology of the Old Testament is it explicitly stated that alongside God there has eternally existed chaotic matter which at some point in time God brought order too? The Israelites have no such theology which is why their theology was unique among their neighbors. Already in Genesis 2:4 it says "This is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens— "

In Isaiah 48:12-13: “Listen to me, Jacob, Israel, whom I called! I, it is I who am the first,
and am I the last. Yes, my hand laid the foundations of the earth; my right hand spread out the heavens. When I summon them, they stand forth at once.” Numerous passages in the Old Testament can be quoted which show that the Israelites believed that God alone created the heavens and the earth and that he alone is the master of his creation.

Although the Israelites may have not had a clear notion of creation out of nothing, that didn’t appear it seems until 2 Maccabees 7:28, that doesn’t mean that they believed in some kind of eternal primordial chaos of matter existing alongside of God. As I mentioned above, they have no such theology . The Israelites could hardly have been expected to have a clear notion of creation out of nothing since, besides 2 Maccabees 7:28, that was a philosophical developement of a later time. However, this doesn’t mean that Genesis 1 doesn’t imply creation out of nothing.

That the creation account in Genesis does mean creation out of nothing can be gathered first of all from our catholic faith. For we certainly believe that God created the world out of nothing because the world had a beginning in time. Consequently, to read anything into the creation account in Genesis contrary to creation out of nothing would simply be not true.