Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament: The Verb bara’: To Create or to Separate?

I have found a very interesting post on Dr. Claude Mariottini's website pointing to Dr. Ellen Van Wolde's (her picture is on the right) contention that Genesis 1:1 was incorrectly translated. Here is how Genesis 1:1 is rendered in English

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Here is how Wolde thinks it should be changed:

"in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth"

Her reason for changing it is that she disagrees with the traditional understanding of the word "bara". According to a newspaper article, James White pointed to on his blog, she argues that:

.... the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration.

She said: "It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself."

She writes in her thesis that the new translation fits in with ancient texts.

According to them there used to be an enormous body of water in which monsters were living, covered in darkness, she said.

She said technically "bara" does mean "create" but added: "Something was wrong with the verb.

"God was the subject (God created), followed by two or more objects. Why did God not create just one thing or animal, but always more?"

She concluded that God did not create, he separated: the Earth from the Heaven, the land from the sea, the sea monsters from the birds and the swarming at the ground.

"There was already water," she said.

"There were sea monsters. God did create some things, but not the Heaven and Earth. The usual idea of creating-out-of-nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a big misunderstanding."

See problem? If this article is correct she is practicing eisogesis and reading foreign cultures and ideas into the text that was never meant to be there. Genesis 1:1 refers to the beginning of time and the universe but no details are given. Verse 2 tells us what happens on the earth. Saying that the Bible is actually saying the same thing as the other Mesopotamian creation stories ignores the fact that the rest of Bible clearly refutes the idea of other deities.

This is what the LORD says:
       "The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, ^[b]
       and those tall Sabeans—
       they will come over to you
       and will be yours;
       they will trudge behind you,
       coming over to you in chains.
       They will bow down before you
       and plead with you, saying,
       'Surely God is with you, and there is no other;
       there is no other god.' " - Isaiah 45:14

Some people do not see this as a problem, but I do. Everything follows from Genesis 1:1. If you can accept Genesis 1:1 then everything else in the Bible is possible. and necessarily follows. Wolde's thesis brings up lots of questions. If God did not make the earth, how did it get here? Was it always here? We know that it wasn't always here from current findings in Physics - and that left to itself it will end. Also if you were going to argue that the Genesis account was borrowed from other ancient sources that seem similar like the Sumerian version, why would Moses' version not seem more Egyptian? I would think that Egypt would have had a far greater influence than the Sumerians on Hebrew thought and culture had Moses just been making something up. However, we don't see that.

There is so much pressure in academia to produce something new, that I think Wolde has fallen into that trap. Many heresies start out this way: saying God did not say something that He really did say. This is the trick Eve fell for in the Garden of Evil. We must obey and trust in the word of God. We can show that "bara" really mesans what Jews and Christians  have believed for thousands of years. Could God created everything in the heavens (the universe)  and not created the earth? If he only arranged the matter on the earth, what about the rest of the universe? Sorry, her thesis doesn't make since.


Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament: The Verb bara’: To Create or to Separate?
Dr James  White - Stunningly Silly