God Is Not The Creator Claims Academic

[Furrowed Brow]

God is not the Creator claims academic

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth" (Telegraph March 16 2010)

Why is Prof Van Wolde wrong?

[Miles]

Why are you assuming she is?

[Jrosemary]

Much of the first creation story in Genesis seems to be G-d separating; the Jewish Study Bible has good commentaries on that.

Meanwhile, we have a thread in the Judaism section that touches on this. I'll quote directly from it:

But "the beginning" of what?

I find it interesting that the opening lines of Genesis are typically rendered differently in Judaic and Christian scripture. The result, at the very least, is to leave creation ex nihilo as an open question so far as the Torah is concerned.

Any thoughts?

This is a fascinating question--and it's one of those translation issues that made me realize I'd have to buckle down and really learn Hebrew if I wanted to appreciate the richness of the Torah. (I'm working on that.)

Here's the issue: the first couple of verses of B'reishit (Genesis) can be translated one of two ways. Most Christian translations prefer:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. . .

However, many Jewish translations prefer:

When God began to create heaven and earth--the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water . . .

As Jayhawker Soule points out, the first translation conveys the idea of creation ex nihilo: creation from nothing. The second implies that God brought order out of chaos. (The word for deep--t'hom--is related to the word for the mideastern chaos-goddess Tiamat.)

Here's a commentary from the Etz Chayim Torah and Commentary (the Torah translation and commentary favored by Conservative Judaism):

The Hebrew stem of the word translated as 'create' [bet-resh-aleph] is used in the Bible only for divine creativity. It signifies that the created object is unique, depends soley on God for it's coming into existence, and is beyond the ability of humans to reproduce. The verb never means to create out of nothing . . .

The Hebrew [for the phrase "unformed and void"], tohu va-vohu, means "desert waste." The point of the narrative is the idea of order that results from divine intent. There is no suggestion here that God made the world out of nothing, which is a much later conception . . .

The Hebrew word ruach means "wind, breath, spirit." "Wind" is the prevalent understanding of the word here in ancient and medieval Jewish souces. As a physical phenomenon, wind conforms to the picture of primal chaos evoked by this verse.

That said, some Jewish sages--including Maimonides--have endorsed the idea of creation ex-nihilo. This has been and remains a much-discussed topic in Judaism, with most of Jewish scholarship now leaning against creation-ex-nihilo and toward the notion of God bringing divine order out of a primal chaos.

With my limited Hebrew, I lean toward the meaning of 'divine order out of a primal chaos.' But either way, one important Jewish concept remains: Creation is unfinished. It waits for humans to become partners-in-creation with God--it waits for humans to help perfect the world.

[Furrowed Brow]

Why are you assuming she is?

I'm not, though I do like the thrust of the argument I speak no Hebrew and I am not qualified or educated to a suffcient level in this area to draw a meaningful conclusion. So I was hoping to see what kinds of arguments critics of the Professor might muster.

[faith]

God is not the Creator claims academic

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.

She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb "bara", which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate".

The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth" (Telegraph March 16 2010)

Why is Prof Van Wolde wrong?

Because I think Hebrew speaking people of the old tongue would have known if what was written, was wrong.
The woman is studying the writing. What she cannot over-ride is the factual evidence that God taught Moses that all Jews must learn the word off by heart.
So the bible cannot be wrong or read wrong because every Jew knew it meant what it did in their hearts as has always been the case.
Deuteronomy 30:14.
14.But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

There could be no mistake because Moses taught the children of Israel who taught their children and so on and so forth.
I think this fact shows the woman is really ignoring what is known to support something the evidence shows wrong.

Love Faith.xx

Psalm 12:6-8.
6.The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

7.Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

8.The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.

[Miles]

The woman is studying the writing. What she cannot over-ride is the factual evidence that God taught Moses that all Jews must learn the word off [?] by heart.

What is this factual evidence?

[Slopeshoulder]

Yes, but I don't think that's new. It's been kicking around for years IIRC. I like it.

[JoeyKnothead]

Now I see why God wants the womenfolk to hush up.