Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew.
She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.
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She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb “bara”, which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate”. The first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth.”
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She writes in her thesis that the new translation fits in with ancient texts.[...]“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.”
#160–qb==if you make it back here and care to answer: in your opinion, is the bible/god then really a carry on development of an earlier mythos that had THE VERY SAME GOD contesting with other gods in an already formed universe?
Seems what little comparative religion and history of religion I have dabbled in started after this issue got entangled in the modern/hebrew? bible.
Fascinating if the Holy Trinity and subduing the oceans and what not is FAIRLY SPEAKING revealing of that apotheosis?
#156
Frankly, no one can say with certainty whether the Church deliberately set the date for Christmas. There is insufficient evidence to implicate or exonerate. Most of the customs of the festival definitely derive from non-Catholic sources and what information we do have about his birth, presuming it is accurate would argue against a winter birth but that is not enough to argue a deliberate decision whereby the Church leaders knew his birth to be on a different day but chose December 25th. There is some evidence to suggest that the date was picked to coincide with the Natalis Invicti (solar feast) which would make Mithraism the source of the date but again, there isn’t enough to say for certain.
Alfred rocks!
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this makes no sense…if it is as you say…the God(Elohim) is not an eternal God…by you saying that you are basically contradicting the bible on His omnipresence….because heaven and earth where already there…..so answer this where did God come from..and why do all other verse in psalms and Isaiah say “he created” and “he will create”….