Originally posted by vistesd
The Bible speaks of the re-creation that followed a chaos, but it also informs us that prior to the chaos, God spoke everything into existence from nothing. (My italics.)
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Umm… Actually, it doesn’t say that—at least not in the creation account in Genesis. There is nothing (except God) in ...[text shortened]... t clearly the necessary reading; certainly it has not been so for Jewish exegetes.[/b]
Umm… Actually, it [b]doesn’t say that—at least not in the creation account in Genesis. There is nothing (except God) in the Genesis account before
tohu v’bohu: “shapeless and formless” in Richard Elliot Friedman’s translation of the Torah—and by “nothing”, I do not mean some kind of “nothingness”.[/b]
The account doesn't say it, but you just did!
... There is no suggestion here that God made the world out of nothing, which is a much later conception.”
I'd have to read the couching of the commentary's take on this, but I'd have to say that instead of it being a 'later conception,' that it was actually an
earlier conception... as in 'the sentence earlier than this one!' The first part of verse two of the first chapter transliterated:
"and.the.earth she-became chaos and.vacancy... "
That transliterated 'she-became' is from
eithe which is defined as "to exist, i.e., be or become, come to pass (always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary)."
This phraseology follows in the remaining narrative of becoming, is becoming and so forth... a natural progressive account of building, which begins in verse one.
"in.beginning he-created Elohim the.heavens and the.earth"
Since descriptive verse two follows verse one, there is nothing (ha-ha) to suggest anything
other than Him creating out of nothing.
It is my suggestion that verse two happened an undetermined amount of time following verse one. By that, I mean that God created heaven and earth and at some point later, whatever was initially created became chaos, vacancy and darkness. From that point, the re-creation that follows from the latter part of verse two onward.
The main point, however, is that the first three words of the account tell the story as fully as is necessary to to get the picture, i.e., in beginning, God created. The remaining narrative speaks of God forming, letting, causing, building and so forth, apparently from material of things in existence, with each instance using words describing those acts. Only in two places is the word
bara used: in the first verse when it's just Him, and then later when He creates the essence of man. Note that this term is
not used when describing how He formed man's physical body from the dirt; instead it is used when making man in His image, i.e., what orthodox doctrine holds to be the Triune nature of Him reflected in the initial creation of man.