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3) ALTERNATE INTERPRETATION AND TRANSLATIONS OF PASSAGES FOR SCRIPTURE
Though religionists tend to get their views from similar sacred texts, they often come away with different interpretations of what is meant, and thus, with different beliefs regarding what they read.
FOR EXAMPLE GENESIS 1:1-2
Frank Cross (of DDS) concludes that it was the ex nihilo creation tradition itself which prompted the 1600's era translation of Gen. 1:1 found in the King James and similar versions. Other versions of the Bible have noticed the forcing within the translation and have NOT followed the wording of the King James. For example, according to The Interpreter's Bible, the Hebrew bere' sit would more properly be rendered "In the beginning OF" creation rather than simply "In the beginning."
Many other scholars agree in this. E.A. Speiser translates Gen 1:1 "When God set about to create heaven and earth, the world being then a formless waste. ." or, as Cross renders it "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, then God said, 'Let there be light.'" Thus the traditional translation of Gen. 1:1 as an independent statement, implying that God first created matter out of nothing, and then (verse 2.) proceeded to fashion the world from that raw material, is now widely questioned, and several recent translations have adopted the approach advocated by Speiser and Cross.
Spieser, who translated Gen 1:1 as above, then adds: "The question, however, is not the ultimate truth about cosmogony, but only the exact meaning of the Genesis passages which deal with the subject.. . . At all events, the text should be allowed to speak for itself."
Other modern versions which incorporate this usage include The New Jewish Version : "When God began to create the heaven and the earth, the earth being unformed and void. . . ."; similarly The Bible, An American Translation (1931); The Westminster Study Edition of the Holy Bible (1948); Moffat's translation (1935); and the Revised Standard Version (RSV), alternate reading, Stones Chumash (a midrashich distillation) follows the new wording, etc, etc.
The translation of the word "created" is under equal scrutiny. The Hebrew verb bara' of the opening verse "In the beginning God created ..." is, here translated "created", and in ex-nihilo tradition is usually reserved in the Old Testament for God's activity in forming the world and all things in it. However, synonymous terms and phrases scattered throughout the Hebrew scriptures exclude this word as evidence that only an ex nihilo creation is being described in Gen. 1. The most common of these synonyms are yasar, (to shape or form), fn and 'asah, (to make or produce).
In a study of the Hebrew conception of the created order, Luis Stadelmann insists that both bara', and yasar carry the anthropomorphic sense of fashioning, while 'asah connotes a more general idea of production. Throughout the Old Testament the image of creation is that of the craftsman fashioning a work of art and skill, the potter shaping the vessel out of clay, or the weaver at his loom. The heavens and the earth are "the work of God's hand." Thus to translate bara' as "to organize", or "to shape" or "to mold" etc are as valid as "to create", and none of these implies ex nihilo creation.
For example: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." and later he creates again "God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Gen. i: 27.
In both passages the Greek verb for "created" is identical, and if it’s usage in the first verse is not synonymous with it’s usage in the twenty-seventh, Moses fails to make this distinction. Violence is done to language when we affirm that the same word when used in expressing a continuous act of creation, signifies in the beginning of the act a creation out of nothing, (i.e. the earth) later on in the process then mean a simple molding of elements (i.e. Adam out of dust or clay).
In all these texts the word "figure" or "mold" may rightly be substituted for "formed" or "created." But we have already seen that "create" should have synonymous meaning when used in relation to the creation of the world, that it certainly has when the formation of a body for Adam is spoken of. As thus used, it is equivalent to the English word, "figure," and it is apparent that Genesis i: I, should be translated, "In the beginning the Gods shaped, fashioned or molded the heavens and the earth."
"Create", in different usages may signify to settle, found, build, create, generally to make, render, etc. In the following passages of the Bible the word is translated "create." "Create in me a clean heart." Psalms. li: 10. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." Eph. ii: 10. "Neither was the man created for the woman. I Cor. xi: 9. "Commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created," etc. I Tim. iv: 3. "For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." Rev. iv. II. None of these passages afford any foundation for the idea of a creation out of nothing.
The "creation" of a new heart is the "regeneration" of the old one. Our "creation" in Christ Jesus involves a "purification", and a "consecration" of powers to new purposes. God took a portion of the dust of the earth elements already in existence and out of this "created" man. Meats are "created" out of pre-existent substance.
The Harper's Bible Commentary reads: “As most modern translations recognize, the P creation account (1:1-2:4a) begins with a temporal clause ("When, in the beginning, God created"); such a translation puts Gen. 1:1 in agreement with the opening of the J account (2:4b) and with other ancient, Near Eastern creation myths. . . . The description of the precreation state in v.2 probably is meant to suggest a storm-tossed sea: darkness, a great wind, the water abyss . . . chaotic forces.
The KJT of Gen. 1:2, which renders the Hebrew as "void," has been used to support to the creation ex nihilo theory, whereas actually this word always occurs in the Old Testament in tandem with tohu ("formless"), describing a "formless waste," or the "chaos" common to most Near Eastern creation mythology The earth was tohu wabohu: "without form and void," as the Authorized (King James) Version renders it, "and darkness was upon the face of the deep (tehom)," i.e., the watery chaos (cf. 2 Pet. 3:5). This hardly signifies absolute nonexistence; rather it speaks of the formless primeval chaotic matter, the Urstoff out of which the Creator fashioned the world. If one DOES associate Gen. 1 with the ubiquitous creation stories of antiquity, it would more strongly support ruling out creation ex nihilo as the idea behind the biblical text.
"'Tohu wabohu' means the formless; the primeval waters over which darkness was superimposed characterizes the chaos materially as a watery primeval element, but at the same time gives a dimensional association: "tehom ('sea of chaos') is the cosmic abyss. . . . This declaration, then, belongs completely to the description of chaos and does not yet lead into the creative activity. . . ." Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford - Clarendon Press -, p. 26. Cf. von Rad, Genesis , p. 49) However, the Septuagint's rendition of the Hebrew tohu wabohu in Gen. 1:2 as aoratos kai akataskeuastos (unseen and unfurnished) "probably meant to suggest the creation of the visible world out of preexistent invisible elements" (Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks, p. 111).
Just as elsewhere in the Old Testament, when the Lord God "laid the foundations of the earth," his command brought response from the elements rather than effecting existence as such (Ps. 104:5-9; cf. Isa. 48:13), so also, admits von Rad (who DOES embrace ex nihilo), in Gen. 1 "the actual concern of this entire report of creation is to give prominence, form and order to the creation out of chaos," ( i.e., unorganized, chaotic matter). Accordingly, Speiser's extensive analysis of the Hebrew in the first verses of Genesis forces him (also an ex-nihilist), to concede "To be sure my interpretation precludes the view that the creation accounts say nothing about coexistent matter."( This is a strangely worded and reluctant admission...)[/i]
Often people will offer generic passages such as Heb 11:3 to support the idea of creation from nothing. For example, in the common English version the text is as follows: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made out of things that do appear." However, just as the translation in Genesis does not clearly support ex nihilo, all scriptures rendering the word "CREATE" such as used in Hebrews 11:3 is just as easily interpreted to refer to pre-existing matter.
As scholars consider words of the Greek text, one important word would be the word which is translated "framed" in this text. To show the word "Framed" supports ex nihilo, it must be shown that the term signifies to actually CREATE ex nihilo. But this cannot be done without forcing the text since the word is so often used in the sense of to "repair", to "restore" from breach or decay, to "mend", to "put in order", to "reform", to "appoint"; "perfect"; "adjust", or to "train" rather than to "create [i"ex nihilo").
Nowhere can we find the claim advanced that this Greek term, signifies "to create out of nothing". Our dictionary gives no such definition. If "framed" was, in this instance, taken out of a normal context and placed into a specific context to support creation out of nothing, the writer could have paused and clarified that in this instance the Greek for "framed" meant something different than the normal ussage of "to adjust, adapt, knit together, restore, or put in joint,". But this he does not do, but rather he leaves the sense of the sentence to the sense that is common for his readers.
The next words requiring special attention are which are translated "the worlds." Such, however, is not their real meaning at all. The latter is compounded of two words the first signifying "always," and the other "being" The Greek terms used to express forever, forever and forever, everlasting, eternal and eternity, are all derived from this same source, and thus it is more likely that the writer, by metonomy, used "the eternities" for "the worlds." This fact is very important, since the metonomy requires that which is signified by any certain term must bear some distinct relation or resemblance to that thing it signifies. If "the eternities" mean "the worlds,", then something about the latter must be eternal
Scriptures such as Heb. 11: 3, do not teach the creation of all things, "out of nothing" but rather it implies that God, by the power of faith, applied order and harmony upon pre-existing elements of the world; and that these visible creations were not made by material agencies which are seen (such as tools of men), but rather they are created by the power of an invisible faith which is not seen, or, does not appear.
Furthermore, in Rom. 9:20-23 Paul himself employs the "potter-vessel image" of Isa. 29:16, while 2 Pet. 3:5 reminds us that the earth "was formed out of water" (RSV)–the primeval chaos, or "deep" of Gen. 1:2 Such considerations coordinate New Testament writers with those of the Old when they referred to the creation. What this means for the present discussion is that no one in authority had yet taught of a creation "out of nothing."
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