Talk:Genesis 1:1

From Category talk:Hebrew Bible verses: How might we consistently arrange this category?

See Category talk:Hebrew Bible verses as the notes below relate to here first. IZAK 00:12, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

This category could end up with many useful, fun and controversial pages!

old queen mary said "Probably we can start debating now about ordering and numbering the verses in light of different canons -- do we use the Jewish Study Bible (Oxford) or the (Christian) New Oxford Annotated Bible, etc ?! Or maybe a POV filter for readers who only want to see their religion's ordering and verse analysis!"

How about proposing a default template or ideal/potential organization for each new verse or group of verses? For instance:

Introduction) Open w/an overview statement and Biblical context (previous and succeeding verses), fun/catchy points/trivia 1) Text -- see examples Gen 1:1-2--

(a) Hebrew text with

(b) Various translations -- I would recommend also Everett Fox's poetic/literal and an Aramaic Targum (either text itself or relevant points from targum) and Septuagint (text or relevant points). Maybe RSV. Probably drop some less important/novel choices.

(c) Technical/linguistic notes on the tex:. Eg (a) grammatical, lexical info (b) concordance info; (c) accents, masora, variant readings/spellings, special marks, and other critical apparatus items; (d) misc tech/linguistic info....

2) Analysis, commentary and intepretation of the verse

(a) Academic "neutral" analysis, eg, (a) higher/lower text critical analysis,(b) archaeological, (c) sociohistorical, (d) political, feminist, etc. etc. I put this first partly due to NPOV and partly because it will be catchier for most readers.

(b) Inter-biblical interpretation (e.g., Fishbane's data in Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel), e.g. Psalms on Exodus verses

(c) Classical religious exegesis, maybe arranged chronologically by author/source, or typologically by Jewish, Christian, Moslem, etc., e.g., Qumranic, Philo, NT, Mishnah, Church Fathers, Midrash, Quranic, Medieval, etc. etc. [Maybe best to do it chronologically by source within ~5 major groupings: Ancient, Samaritan, Rabbinic, Karaitic, Pre-Reformation Christian, Moslem, Catholic, Protestant, [non-Abrahamic religions?!] etc.

(I don't think this can be divided by genre, eg allegorical - legal - midrashic etc, without constant nitpicking)

(d) Misc. literary, polemical and other exegesis

3) Usage of the verse, e.g.,

(a) Interesting popular and historical uses -- maybe put this at front of article, esp if catchy / noteworthy /fun

(b) Liturgical, again arranged by source or by religion/denomination

(c) Normative uses for religious law (e.g. halakha) and ethics (e.g. Catholic social teachings)

(d) Theological and philosophical

4) References, external links, etc

Yikes, this is way too ambitious for any given verse. Sorry if I've wasted our time/space. It could be an ideal arrangement.

Maybe do: For each verse, do the (1) text, as above. For groups of verses: do (2) Analysis, (3) Usage. It would be fine to have overlap in groupings because different exegeses/analyses cover different groupings. That's how the bibliographic databases handle the problem (e.g., ATLA Religion database).

Kudos for naming this "Hebrew Bible" and not a more POV term! Take care. --HG 05:18, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see some of the more modern/readable translations used as well. I've been involved in adding God's Word, Holman Christian Standard Bible, New King James Version, and The Message to the various bible verse articles. It would be very nice if somone could find an online version of the Artscroll translation of the Tanakh, so that we could have a second jewish translation. Klonimus 02:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

About more than creationism

Do we need to have a 'Creationism' topic menu on this article. Its presence here hardly seems NPOV - and I for one rather resent it.

I agree, this is a bible verse, not an article about creationism. Klonimus 02:51, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please don't clobber the additional translations

I'm trying to add some more modern translations to all the bible verse articles.

• Holman Christian Standard Bible
• God's Word (bible translation)
• The Message
• New King James Version

These translations are quite popular in the US among the evangelical community, and the HCSB and God's Word translations are both schlarly and very readable.

If you are interested in parralell translations I recomend http://bible.crosswalk.com] as a good source.Klonimus 00:30, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Hey buddy who the heck are you? Don't know about the ~~~~ tildes, 'eh? That is point one. Point two is, who the heck do you think you are suggesting an outright clear POV from "the evangelical community" yet? Point three is, just how many translations from Christianity's POV does Wikipedia need here? 5? 10? 15? How about three or four only? Sound reasonable to you, whoever the heck you are? And the final point is: Stay tuned for some authentic Jewish translations because, hey bud, guess what, the Hebrew Bible was written in Hebrew (that's right!) and the good things about Judaism's translations of the Bible into other languages is that they remain faithful to the original because they know where-of they speak, unlike the 10, 15, or 20 wannabe translations, get what I mean, man? So do you really get the drift man, we gonna have some Wikipedia-style variety here man, and include a couple of Jewish published translations when we can, ok? Have a good day, whatever the heck your name is man... IZAK 11:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Sup, I'm trying to have a comprehensive set of bible translations included in all the bible verse articles. That includes popular translations into english. There is no need to get nasty. Klonimus 00:30, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"the good things about Judaism's translations of the Bible into other languages is that they remain faithful to the original because they know where-of they speak" - The Jewish (or rather Rabbinical) interpretations also have their biases. For example, they refuse to acknowledge the possible plural interpretation of Elohim, since it doesn't fit with their theology.--MacRùsgail (talk) 18:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

• The vast majority of the "translations" at [1] are not actually translations, rather they are repetitions or minor rewordings of the text as found in the KJV and older versions, which base their translations of Gen 1:1 on the Vulgate, rather than from the original Hebrew or even the Septuagint. There are a few notable exceptions, of course, but for the most part they are equally unauthentic when it comes to other passages. (Gen. 1:1 is a verse whose translation, as poetic as its common form sounds, is well-known among Bible-scholars to be incorrect. Unlike passages like that surrounding Isaiah 7:14, accurately translating Gen. 1:1 doesn't undermine Christological mistranslation and misinterpretation of the original.) Eventhough "The Complete Jewish Bible" correctly translates `alma there (in Isaiah 7:14), it too falls back on the English translation of the Vulgate for Gen.1:1, rather than going with a more accurate translation from the Hebrew, in a way revealing the fact that "The Complete Jewish Bible" is actually a Christian Bible masquerading as something it's not. To wit:

The Complete Jewish Bible - Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. Distributed by Messianic Jewish Resources Int'l.. All rights reserved. Used by permission. [2] [3]

Not that that's going to affect any POV-pushers... Tomer ^TALK 13:14, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

• If we are wanting to keep the list of translations short, is there some reason we need two copies of the KJV? I saw in the edit history that the duplicate was removed and then edited back in. GBeeley 08:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• Regarding the 'vast majority ... are repetitions or minor rewordings' issue, the preface to the NIV claims "completely new translation ... for the Old Testament the standard Hebrew text, the Masoretic Text ... was used throughout". The preface to the NASB claims "new translation project ... BIBLIA HEBRAICA has been employed ...". GBeeley 08:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Over the years, this table has become far too confusing. I've reorganized it along lines similar to the John 3:16 article, in order to include a representative sample of translations while imparting some notion of their significance. AndrewNJ (talk) 04:29, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Useful links for authorship

• [4]--Neutrality^talk 14:34, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

In reference to the following portion of this article:

In the Masoretic text: Unvocalized: בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ Vocalized and punctuated: בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ Transliterated: Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz. Word-by-word literal equivalent: (In the) beginning filled God the heavens and the earth. Note: The word et (אֵת) is a Hebrew particle that points to the direct object that it comes in front of. The particle has not been included in the literal equivalent above. The word ha (preceding shamayim and aretz) is a definite article equivalent to the English definite the.

It would seem that the particle *was* included i th literal equivalent above since the word "the" is included in the literal for both "heavans" and "earth." As such, the following statement should be removed from the page: "The particle has not been included in the literal equivalent above." I'm going to try to comment it out so that it can be easily added back.

-Brett

Word-by-word literal equivalent

The literal traslation of ברא is not "filled", it is more like "create" or "cause to exist". It's a verb found almost solely in connection with God as the act of bringing things into existance. As it is rare to see it in other contexts it is hard to understand it's meaning beyond "whatever it is God does that makes things exist". God is often called בורא עולם (Bore Olam) in Hebrew, Olam meaning "the world", and the whole title meaning "the creator of the World".

In any case, it's clear that ברא does not mean "to fill".DuckeJ 14:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I too think it should be translated as "created". I can't see why it would be "filled".

Some edits

I made some substantial edits - namely I deleted the large table giving many bible-translations of the first phrase of Gen.1 - so I'll explain why. First, this is just the first few words - it seems very disproportionate to give so much attention to these words and ignore the rest of Genesis 1. Second, the list of possible translations is potentially infinite - as it is, two of the translations in the table differed only by the addition of a comma. Far better would be to discuss what biblical scholars have said, and why the various translations differ.PiCo (talk) 23:06, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Redirect

Reasons for redirect:

1. This page is already covered at Genesis creation narrative#The beginning
2. This page does not give proper references being mostly WP:OR in nature.
3. The POV has wp:weight that is already covered at: Bereishit (parsha)

Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 23:20, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

I think this article has potential. The different translations offered are very significant (i.e. much has been written about them) and an explanation fits better here than at Genesis creation narrative. So why redirect? Why not put a main tag and summary at Genesis creation narrative? StAnselm (talk) 07:14, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Delete

This article was proposed for deletion in 2005 at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genesis 1:1. Please reconsider this article for deletion based on my comments above under redirect. Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 07:25, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I accept the 2012 consensus to keep the page, and will find a way to improve it. Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 21:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Article improvement

Re: User:Lquilter's comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genesis 1:1 (2nd nomination)

"Keep and trim the parent article - If the content is entirely redundant, then I would probably propose editing down the main Genesis article and including a "see ..." reference for the Genesis 1:1. In its English-language version, this is one of the most familiar passages in the entire Christian Bible, and has, as User:Nyttend observes, been the subject of massive amounts of scholarly scrutiny dedicated to this passage alone. --Lquilter (talk) 14:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

In an effort to improve this article, I'm going to take User:Lquilter up on slightly trimming the Genesis creation narrative article to build this page. Thanks,   — Jasonasosa 21:40, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Translation

The lead says: Genesis 1:1 reads: In the beginning, GOD created the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew transliteration reads: Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz.

This is confused. The Hebrew is the original - in other words, Genesis 1:1 does NOT read "In the beginning, GOD created the heavens and the earth", it reads "Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz", and the English is a translation of that. PiCo (talk) 12:13, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed!   — Jasonasosa 15:31, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

::Just a note about transliteration... the text would read something like: In the beginning | he creates | God | (as) the heavens and (as) the earth.   — Jasonasosa 16:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

"Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz" is not, in fact, Hebrew, but transliterated Hebrew. The lede was correct as it stood. -- 202.124.72.63 (talk) 02:08, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

What's there now is correct - I don't know if what you saw is what I see. I have a problem with this confident assertion that the translation is "In the beginning God created...." - the translation is notoriously difficult, and most authorities today opt for the alternative. What's needed is a very brief explanation of the difficulty. PiCo (talk) 06:32, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The lede should probably identify the particular English translation used (what we have is, I think, the Jewish Bible, but it's identical to the KJV). After Masoretic text, there should be a section on translation issues. -- 202.124.88.253 (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

And it's not correct -- "ve'et ha'aretz" is a modern Hebrew transliteration, not an ancient one; the ancient Hebrew would be "we'et". What today is called "vav" was three millennia ago a "waw". Dismalscholar (talk) 04:43, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

NPOV: What about other religions?

This focusses exclusively on the Jewish, or rather Rabbinical, interpretation. What about intepretation by other religions? Yes, I'm well aware that it was originally written in Hebrew (although the vowels and translation are possibly partly lost, and certain Jewish interpreters have their own agenda). However, it is also a sacred scripture to Christians, Karaites, Samaritans, Bahais etc, and was perhaps known to the founders of Islam.--MacRùsgail (talk) 18:13, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The Interpretations section has been deleted, and the article now concentrates on grammar and original meaning.PiCo (talk) 07:55, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Biased tone

The Priestly authors of Genesis 1, writing around 500-400 BCE, had been concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into the habitable cosmos), but with the fixing of destinies.

This assumes that Genesis 1 was written by the Priestly authors (JEPD hypothesis). There is also the traditional view that Genesis was written by Moses.

Justinrleung (talk) 04:03, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ - Seven words/28 letters

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ - Seven words/28 letters. This is important to those who practice Kabbalah. - The Messenger 50.153.105.13 (talk) 10:46, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

English translation

'Genesis 1:1-2 can be translated into English in at least three ways: [...] By the 2nd century CE the first translation had become the dominant one' -- What does this mean? The English language wasn't around in the 2nd century CE.... --jftsang 11:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Your second sentence isn't in the article, and you've taken sections from two distinct paragraphs and run them together.PiCo (talk) 00:26, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Genesis 1:1 in its original Hebrew is 7 words and 28 letters

I tweaked the following... Unvocalized: בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ‎ (7 words and 28 letters) 2601:589:4705:C7C0:99F8:B4AA:5E87:8EA6 (talk) 10:46, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I moved the "7 words and 28 letters" to the introductory sentence because I could not fix the bad formatting. I also removed the commas from the vocalized text. They are not in standard editions that I consulted and appear to be part of someones interpretation.--agr (talk) 14:29, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: English 102 Section 5

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): K3tur8h (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Toniesledz, Jblackman11, Sdwelbornz, Jweat24, Nazier jones.

— Assignment last updated by DoctorBeee (talk) 20:35, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Error in "Text" section

This statement is made:

" a peculiarity of this verb is that it used only of God."

This is definitely incorrect; I can think of three verses offhand where בָּרָא is used of others than God, in Exodus, Joshua, and 1 Samuel. I am aware that several scholars have made this claim but anyone who can read Hebrew can easily find that it is just not so.

see Exodus 34:10, Joshua 17: 15, 18, 1 Samuel 2:29.

This line should be removed. Dismalscholar (talk) 04:51, 15 July 2024 (UTC)