Gen 1:1

[Gobalopper]

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

רֵאשִׁית - beginning בְּ - in, by, with, from, against

בָּרָא - created

אֱלֹהִים - God

אֵת - sign of definite direct object

שָּׁמַיִם - heaven(s), sky הַ - the (definite article)

אֵת - sign of definite direct object וְ - and, but, then, or

אָרֶץ - earth, land, country הָ - the

The odd thing about all the above is that no where in the original Hebrew text does it say the beginning yet most translations I've seen say, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Gen 1:1.

So was the beginning mentioned in Genesis really *the* beginning or just a beginning of some other sort?

[Caid Ivik]

Wow, from when this thing enables alephbet? ;D

But I think you have there an error. "And" (ve) is wrongly placed. When translated to latin alphabet, it looks like this (with "sh" I mean translation of "shin" sign):

Boere'shijt bara' 'Elohijm 'et ha'shamajim ve'et ha'erec

On beginning God created (<->) the heavens and the earth.

Sign הַ is "ve", hebrew "and".

[Egeides]

Damn...

Caid, where did you lurned all this stuff? School?! If so, I want to go to that school hehe

[nemafakei]

According to my Biblical Hebrew textbook, "A word which has the article prefixed also generally surrenders the הַ, and the preposition then assumes its vowel".

So the preposition absorbs the article.

Incidentally... εστι μοι γραφειν ουτως;

[Apollyon]

I'm going to deliberately not read that, Nema, because I no longer have to study greek! Whoopee! :P

[Gobalopper]

Caid are you saying הַ is "and" and not "the"? I have a textbook on Biblical Hebrew in front of me right now that says differently. :)

Anyway the point of the post was to say that the beginning mentioned Genesis may not have been *the* beginning that so many people believe today.

[Caid Ivik]

You don't need school to know something about alephbet. You need only font and sufficient technical reference (see pages 9-11). But anyway, even israeli anthem Ha'tikva ends with "erec Sijon ve'Jrushlajadim", "land of Sion and Jerusalem".

[Gobalopper]

What does the Israeli anthem have to do with Genesis 1:1?

[Caid Ivik]

Example of gramatics. But ve' is always used as "and". You had to slip it accidentaly before ha'shamayim, you can't say "and heavens earth". Tough it may be some kind of poetical dialect as well.

[Gobalopper]

וְ is "and" though so I didn't have to slip it in.

But that isn't the point of the post. It was to point out that it doesn't explicitly say *the* beginning.

[Caid Ivik]

My fault, I've missed vau for tau. But also, that your weird font confuses me. Why don't you enable rather SIL Ezra font? If we would simplify quadratic system, what is then difference between i.e.gimel, zain and vau?

[Tio_Holtzmann]

well in all the translations i've read it does say that the earth was without form. didnt say that/THE beginning was when god made the earth, just that the beginning the bible speaks of is perhaps when things really started to happen?

i dont know any of these languages so im afraid my contributions will be limited, sorry.....

[Acriku]

Well God is immortal, so he's been here for infinity before our beginning. So, it is our beginning, not "the" beginning, perhaps?

[Caid Ivik]

On the beginning is a first point of time. If we think about time as part of this universe, and God created this universe, then I don't see any problem here. It was beginning, first era of newly existing time. This is rather hard to think about, but you just have to stop to think about time as an absolute.

[Acriku]

Um Caid, perhaps we should start another thread to discuss how in the world a being outside of time can do anything?

[nemafakei]

The problem with fonts is everyone needs to have to font for it to work; this is unicode, which is generic.

א smooth breathing

ב bh/b

ג gh/g

ד dh/d

ה h (weaker

ו w

ז z

ח h (stronger)

ט t

י y

ך final k/kh

כ k/kh

ל l

ם final m

מ m

ן final n

נ n

ס s

ע rough breathing

ף final p/ph

פ p/ph

ץ final ts

צ ts

ק q

ר r

ש s/sh

ת t/th

All unpointed and without the other dots to indicate aspirants.

[Gobalopper]

That is what I have been thinking Acriku. Who knows what happened in the time before the creation mentioned in Genesis. For all we know we aren't the only creation of God.

Oh and Caid:

ז - zayin

ג - gimel

ו - vav

The font is hard to read but as Nema said if you use unicode you don't have to worry about people not having the font.

[sneezer3]

That is what I have been thinking Acriku. Who knows what happened in the time before the creation mentioned in Genesis. For all we know we aren't the only creation of God.

Sorry to throw a wrench in your wheels Gob. but theres two big stumps. In Genesis 3:20 Eve is the mother of all liveing. And in Genesis 7:23 Noah and the people on the ark are the only ones that lived past the flood. You'd have a hard time getting around those verses.

The only logical way around that isn't so logical. the Greek and Hebrew. See Psalms 12:6-7 or 2 Timothy 3:16

It couldn't be God's begining anyway. The Bible says he has no begining in Revelation 1:8. Remember the scripture isn't of any privite interpretation as said in 2 Peter 1:20.

[Gobalopper]

Genesis 3:20 "And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living."

So by this account only humans are living? Or does this simply mean that Eve is the mother of all humans?

Genesis 7:23 "And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained [alive], and they that [were] with him in the ark."

It says, "upon the face of the ground" and "were destroyed from the earth", no where does it mention anything but Earth.

So what isn't logical about the above statements?

I'm not claiming it was God's beginning as that is rather obvious. And I don't think you can use 2 Peter 1:20 for the entire Bible as not all of it is prophecy. Some of it is simply recountings of what has happened and a lot of it could have been changed by early Christians to suit their needs. Remember that no original documents exist of the New Testament.

[Caid Ivik]

That's rather weird translation, for in slovak neovulgate is "mother of all who live". English is too simple language to describe it fully. In fact, Eva wasn't the first female being, don't forget all those animals, as well as Lilith. First in Gen 1,27 He created human as a man and woman, and told them (see Bible He uses plural!) let they rule over the creation. Next part, deeper explanation of Adam's creation, is hardly fitting here, and most possibly added later. Here we can see that Eva was created after Adam - and the woman created in same time with Adam was no one else than "fallen" Lilith. But she was corrupted and ran from Adam without children. Thus Eva was the first human mother.

In part of Noe, don't forget that not whole world was populated, so there was no need to flood whole earth. About that Psalm it is hard to find a flaw, we can say here He will send a Messiah, which will show us, "poor", the way of salvation.

Before you accuse me of heresy, mention that I don't present these explanations as Church's official, and I use primarily cabalistic view on these things. They are simplier...for use in english.

[nemafakei]

"all living"

All what living? That is to ask, masculine, feminine, or neuter? I've not goy myself a Hebrew OT yet.

Edit: Damn! Why do I keep getting confused. Forget this; there's no neuter.

[leo]

lol :)

if any1 has questions about hebrew he can ask me.

[nemafakei]

Do you do biblical hebrew as well as modern? It's just that when one of my friends asked to see a book I've got on it, out of intrest as a natively hebrew speaker, she returned it shortly and exclaimed that it was totally different...

[leo]

Do you do biblical hebrew as well as modern? It's just that when one of my friends asked to see a book I've got on it, out of intrest as a natively hebrew speaker, she returned it shortly and exclaimed that it was totally different...

The modern hebrew is based on the biblical hebrew but for most native speakers the biblical hebrew would be very hard to understand cause it has many words and "rules" that been forgoten. However, in Israel every school is obliged to teach it in all grades, so i study it for 12 years. I understand most of the biblical hebrew.

[Gobalopper]

I'm taking a course on biblical Hebrew right now. From what I can tell one of the biggest differences is that modern Hebrew doesn't have vowel markers everywhere.

Supposedly in one years worth of study we should be able to read the entire bible, with a dictionary to help of course.