Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50
BERE'SHIT בראשית
The Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
1:1 BERE'SHIT BARA ELOHIM ET HA SHAMAYIM VE ET HA ARETS
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
KJ (King James translation): In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
In 2 Samuel 23 and Job 26 the skies are represented as a firmament spread out like a vault over the globe, supported on columns and foundations. Psalm 78:23 gives it doors and Psalm 78:24 has it producing corn. According to Genesis 28:17 it is entered through a gate. All these reflect Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology, and may be very late additions to Yisra-Eli cosmology.
1:2 VE HA ARETS HAYETAH TOHU VA VOHU VE CHOSHECH AL PENEY TEHOM VE RU'ACH ELOHIM MERACHEPHET AL PENEY HA MAYIM.
BN (BibleNet translation): At the beginning of all beginnings, Elohim created the skies and the Earth.
BERE'SHIT (בראשית): Not simply "in the beginning", but "at the beginning of all beginnings". "In the beginning" would normally be BE HATCHALAH (בהתחלה); with the sense of HA'ITA PA'AM (היתה פעם) – "once upon a time". This has more the sense of original beginning, "at the fountainhead, the primal source", the first beat of the first pulse. This, that is to say, is not just the beginning, but the absolute beginning of all beginnings: the nanosecond before the Big Bang. The root word is ROSH (ראש), "a head"; used also to mean "the source of a river" (Genesis 2:10). Where did the Big Bang originate? How were neutrons and primordial gases formed? Who created Elohim? And if the universe is truly LE OLAM, "infinite", then surely it must be infinite in all directions, and so it can no more have had a beginning than it will an end. In that end, as in that beginning, we have only a metaphor for an answer, which explains everything and nothing.
Ask anyone "What was the first thing that Elohim created?" and the likely answer will be "Light", because it is the first thing to be named. But actually the text is quite explicit: "In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the Earth" - substance before light. And yet, if one looks at the text really closely, even this answer is incorrect. The first word is BERE'SHIT (בראשית), which establishes the beginning of all beginnings. The first thing Elohim created is in fact Time.
And even that may not be correct. Because all Creation takes place by wording: "let there be", the DAVAR of the gods, the Cosmos as the Word made manifest: the Logos. So perhaps the very first thing that Elohim created was language. (And yes, but which one? Certainly not Yehudit - that came very much later.)
The concept of a Big Bang is held to belong to the 20th century, though Fred Hoyle, who coined the term, meant it as a kind of mockery. Yet look at the work of the 16th century Cabbalist Isaac Luria, and the theory is not quite so recent as might be imagined.
BARA (ברא): Why is it not "Va Yivra Elohim" (ויברא אלהים), which is the grammatical form used everywhere else in the Tanach? BARA = literally "to cut, carve out, form by cutting", as in sculpture; or to "make smooth, polish", as in the fashioning of stones for masonry or jewels. The word would be used for the making of a stone or wooden idol. The term implies some already existing substance which Elohim simply reshaped into Creation; this substance was probably anarchic rather than actual nothingness, as the description of the void in the next sentence confirms.
Ask anyone "What was the first thing that Elohim created?" and the likely answer will be "Light", because it is the first thing to be named. But actually the text is quite explicit: "In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the Earth" - substance before light. And yet, if one looks at the text really closely, even this answer is incorrect. The first word is BERE'SHIT (בראשית), which establishes the beginning of all beginnings. The first thing Elohim created is in fact Time.
And even that may not be correct. Because all Creation takes place by wording: "let there be", the DAVAR of the gods, the Cosmos as the Word made manifest: the Logos. So perhaps the very first thing that Elohim created was language. (And yes, but which one? Certainly not Yehudit - that came very much later.)
Other terms connected to the root are "to eat, feed, grow fat", from the cutting of wheat and fruit etc for food; "to beget", whence the Aramaic BAR (בר) = "a son"; "chosen, beloved, clear, pure, empty"; the term BARI (ברי) was used to mean "fattened", as in Yoseph (Joseph) and the fatted calves (Genesis 41), whence the Yiddish and modern Ivrit (Hebrew) use of the word to mean "healthy".
From what did the gods cut to make the Earth? From Nothingness? From the flesh of Tahamat? There is a concealed and paradoxical inference of something which was nothing preceding the Nothing...
Hertz points out that BARA (ברא) is only ever used for YHVH or Elohim, different verbs for "making" or "forming" being used when Man is the creator; I am not certain this is true, but good scholarship is about following such suggestions through. So we shall see. Which verbs does he mean anyway? A good project for a student here, Middle School or higher.
ELOHIM (אלהים): The noun is in the multiple plural, not the ordinary plural - that would be Elim (אלים) - but verbs which accompany Elohim are always in the first person singular = the "Royal We" that is standard for compound nouns. The original intention of Elohim was clearly a composite noun for the pantheon of gods, and only becomes One after the covenant at Sinai at the earliest, and actually at least a thousand years later. Here, the Elohim already exist before their decision to enact Creation. "El" (אל) as force implies that something already exists in essence and in potensis, which is then cut or fashioned into the Universe. The act of Creation is thus an act of substantiation, remoulding the elements into material form. Thus Elohim is Himself-Themselves Creation, a unity of all gods, i.e. all primal forces - abstract rather than anthropomorphic (God = Gott = Gutt = Goodness; as opposed to Evil; Dieu = Deus = Zeus = Theos - two concepts entirely alien to the Genesis Creation stories). Elohim: the great polytheon of primal gods and goddesses whom the Jews would later recognise as One - each one discernible as a god in his or her own right. God as verb, not noun. The E of E=MC².
Note that the gods here are always Elohim (אלהים); there is no mention of YHVH (יהוה) at all in this version of Creation.
ET (את): A grammatical form noting that a direct object follows; frequently with an accusative pronoun suffixed to it, as in OTAM (אתם) in verse 22. It occurs throughout the text, and normally it will not be commented on, except where it has an unusual usage.
HA (ה): The definite article. Yehudit (Hebrew) has no explicit indefinite article.
SHAMAYIM (שמים): "The sky, skies, heavens." The notion of "Heaven" does not exist in the religion of the Beney Yisra-El. The basic root is SHAM (שם) = "there". SHAMAH (שמה), the immediate root, means "to be high", but is unused, as is the singular noun SHAMAI (שמי). Some confusion exists between this and SHAMAH (שמה), meaning "waste or desolation"; from which comes the name Shamai (שמי) in 1 Chronicles 2:28, 2:44 and 4:17. SHAMAH (שמה) in that text is a corruption of a different root-word, SHAMAM (שמם), and has no connection.
From what did the gods cut to make the Earth? From Nothingness? From the flesh of Tahamat? There is a concealed and paradoxical inference of something which was nothing preceding the Nothing...
Hertz points out that BARA (ברא) is only ever used for YHVH or Elohim, different verbs for "making" or "forming" being used when Man is the creator; I am not certain this is true, but good scholarship is about following such suggestions through. So we shall see. Which verbs does he mean anyway? A good project for a student here, Middle School or higher.
ELOHIM (אלהים): The noun is in the multiple plural, not the ordinary plural - that would be Elim (אלים) - but verbs which accompany Elohim are always in the first person singular = the "Royal We" that is standard for compound nouns. The original intention of Elohim was clearly a composite noun for the pantheon of gods, and only becomes One after the covenant at Sinai at the earliest, and actually at least a thousand years later. Here, the Elohim already exist before their decision to enact Creation. "El" (אל) as force implies that something already exists in essence and in potensis, which is then cut or fashioned into the Universe. The act of Creation is thus an act of substantiation, remoulding the elements into material form. Thus Elohim is Himself-Themselves Creation, a unity of all gods, i.e. all primal forces - abstract rather than anthropomorphic (God = Gott = Gutt = Goodness; as opposed to Evil; Dieu = Deus = Zeus = Theos - two concepts entirely alien to the Genesis Creation stories). Elohim: the great polytheon of primal gods and goddesses whom the Jews would later recognise as One - each one discernible as a god in his or her own right. God as verb, not noun. The E of E=MC².
Note that the gods here are always Elohim (אלהים); there is no mention of YHVH (יהוה) at all in this version of Creation.
ET (את): A grammatical form noting that a direct object follows; frequently with an accusative pronoun suffixed to it, as in OTAM (אתם) in verse 22. It occurs throughout the text, and normally it will not be commented on, except where it has an unusual usage.
HA (ה): The definite article. Yehudit (Hebrew) has no explicit indefinite article.
SHAMAYIM (שמים): "The sky, skies, heavens." The notion of "Heaven" does not exist in the religion of the Beney Yisra-El. The basic root is SHAM (שם) = "there". SHAMAH (שמה), the immediate root, means "to be high", but is unused, as is the singular noun SHAMAI (שמי). Some confusion exists between this and SHAMAH (שמה), meaning "waste or desolation"; from which comes the name Shamai (שמי) in 1 Chronicles 2:28, 2:44 and 4:17. SHAMAH (שמה) in that text is a corruption of a different root-word, SHAMAM (שמם), and has no connection.
An alternative explanation of the term is also given. The root MAYIM (מיים), meaning "water" or "elements", prefixed by the letter SHEEN (ש), which always has the sense of intensification when used as a prefix. In this case it would be the place of origin of all waters or elements. Cf vv 6-10, where the RAKIY'A (רקיע) or firmament is created to divide MAYIM (מים) from SHAMAYIM (שמים). But the concept of "Heaven", where lives the old man with the white beard and a cloak designed by Coca-Cola, who judges human souls and descends to Earth on December 25th with a herd of reindeer and a bag of gifts for Brumalia, does not exist in Judaism.
VE (ו): meaning "and". Before certain letters it is softened into U or read as VA. Prefixed to verbs in the future tense, it is often – but not always – a formula for describing the past: this is known as the Vav Consecutive (e.g. VA YEDABER YHVH EL MOSHEH – and YHVH spoke to Mosheh; but literally "and YHVH will speak to Mosheh").
ET HA ARETS (את הארץ): "And the Earth". Yehudit makes a distinction between Earth (erets - ארץ) and earth (adamah - אדמה) – the planet or a section thereof, as opposed to the soil: throughout these commentaries the upper case will be used for the former, the lower case for the latter.
Earth is usually though not always feminine, whereas skies are always masculine and always used in the plural. The variations depend on the meaning intended, which range from the planet as a whole to the habitable ground – as in ERETS YISRA-EL = "the land of Yisra-El". The insemination of female Earth by male sky is the cornerstone of Creation in both versions.
HOWEVER: Given the comments, there is an alternative translation available to us. We have seen that the Elohim represent the Energies that exist in the cosmos, the kinetic and dynamic impulses of physics, chemistry and biology. We have witnessed the establishment of space (the heavens) and matter (the Earth), and will shortly add to these the creation of Light, though light is of course a sub-division of Space, and we shall witness that sub-division repeatedly as well. All of the above are the manifestations of Elohim. So we can say that E does not yet =MC², but only MC; the only difference between the author here, and Einstein later, is that the ancients did not know that their equation needed to be squared.
Which allows us a final reading, already given above: At the beginning of all beginnings, Elohim created the skies and the Earth.
HOWEVER: Given the comments, there is an alternative translation available to us. We have seen that the Elohim represent the Energies that exist in the cosmos, the kinetic and dynamic impulses of physics, chemistry and biology. We have witnessed the establishment of space (the heavens) and matter (the Earth), and will shortly add to these the creation of Light, though light is of course a sub-division of Space, and we shall witness that sub-division repeatedly as well. All of the above are the manifestations of Elohim. So we can say that E does not yet =MC², but only MC; the only difference between the author here, and Einstein later, is that the ancients did not know that their equation needed to be squared.
1:2 VE HA ARETS HAYETAH TOHU VA VOHU VE CHOSHECH AL PENEY TEHOM VE RU'ACH ELOHIM MERACHEPHET AL PENEY HA MAYIM.
וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם
KJ: And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
BN: See after the commentary on this verse, below; it may surprise you.
The verse in which, more than any other in the entire Tanach (Tanach is the normal Yehudit name for the Jewish Holy Scriptures; an abbreviation of Torah = Law, Neviyim = Prophets and Ketuvim = Writings, the three component parts of the Yehudit Bible), we can see how the later "abstract monotheism" of the Jews transformed the earlier "pantheistic anthropomorphism" of the Beney Yisra-El: for each god has become simply an intellectual concept, and then absorbed into the Omnideity. The traditional translation, given above, reflects the latter, but consciously expurgates the former.
Before Creation there is Tohu (תהו) = Chaos, Bohu (בהו) = Nothingness, Choshech (חשך) = Darkness, and Tehom (תהום) = the deep, which last is probably a repetition by another name of Tohu, and elsewhere in the Middle East would be treated as the goddess Tiamat or Tahamat, usually represented as or with a serpent.
VE HA ARETS HAYETAH (והארץ היתה): And the Earth was. Note again that Earth is feminine.
TOHU VA VOHU (תהו ובהו): "Barren and infertile" in the Yehudit reading (cf Jeremiah 4:23 and Isaiah 34:11). However, these were the gods of uncreation in Babylonian mythology, and therefore the gods who had, of necessity, to be overcome for Creation to be possible; Tohu is linked to Tahamat (תהמת) and Bohu to Behemot (בהמת), the sea-serpent and the land-serpent respectively. Probably one or both of these - or we can read the two as being parts of the same - were the serpent of Eden, though in fact, the serpents being oracular, there were probably seven serpents, one for each day of the week (compare the Abgal and Anunna and Apkallū of Babylonian mythology). The tales of the White Dragon and the Red Dragon in the Arthurian legends are almost certainly a late variation of this; there are also traditional Chinese and Japanese equivalents.
But in the religion of the Beney Yisra-El they become mere epithets, "waste and desolation" the one, the "void of uncreation" the other. By pluralising and feminising both names, the primordial beasts Tahamat - the sea-monster - and Behemot - the land monster - are retrieved from cosmological sanitisation. The world was void and desolate, not simply because it was uncreated, but because the demoniacal beasts of sea and land had so rendered it.
VE CHOSHECH (וחשך): "And darkness". Choshech likewise was formerly a god, the spirit or power of darkness. The concept of a god to the Beney Yisra-El was very different from ours, and the term "spirit" is not really appropriate; better terms are "force" or "power", the "life source within". But Choshech really was the Prince of Darkness, long before he became Mephistopheles.
AL PENEY (על-פני): "On the surface of the deep". AL PENEY also has the sense of "in the presence of", from PANIM (פנים) = "a face"; this will become significant in Genesis 32:25-33, when Ya'akov (Jacob) wrestles with a man, perhaps one of the Lilim, at the shrine known both as Penu-El (פְּנוּאֵל) and Peni-El (פְּנִיאֵל).
TEHOM (תהום): the waters, ocean, sea; also a gulf, abyss; also a wave. Tehom was originally Tahamat the Sumerian goddess, who later became Tahima, the Greek serpent-god who ruled the depths of the sea. Thus "CHOSHECH AL PENEY TEHOM" could mean "the Prince of Darkness stood in the presence of the Lady of the Sea", PENAY being linked to PANIM = "a face", as noted above; though whether the one stood in the other's presence as minister or as servant or as prisoner is not made clear. In creating the god Light, Elohim had first to destroy, or at least to overpower, the god Darkness. Tahamat remained to be defeated and would resurface later as Liv-Yatan (Leviathan) in Job 3:8, Amos 9:3, Psalms 74 and 104, and Isaiah 27.
RU'ACH (רוח) = "to blow", "breathe" (through the nostrils), also "to smell" (N.B. Elohim's love of incense and the smell of the sacrifice, known as RE'ACH NIYCHO'ACH; RE'ACH is connected to the same root as RU'ACH). As a noun Ru'ach is always feminine (though usable in both genders) = "spirit", "breath", "breeze". The root also connects to REVACH (רוח) = "a quarter"; whence it also refers to a quarter of the heavens (the four winds making the whole, as in a mandala).
The verse in which, more than any other in the entire Tanach (Tanach is the normal Yehudit name for the Jewish Holy Scriptures; an abbreviation of Torah = Law, Neviyim = Prophets and Ketuvim = Writings, the three component parts of the Yehudit Bible), we can see how the later "abstract monotheism" of the Jews transformed the earlier "pantheistic anthropomorphism" of the Beney Yisra-El: for each god has become simply an intellectual concept, and then absorbed into the Omnideity. The traditional translation, given above, reflects the latter, but consciously expurgates the former.
Before Creation there is Tohu (תהו) = Chaos, Bohu (בהו) = Nothingness, Choshech (חשך) = Darkness, and Tehom (תהום) = the deep, which last is probably a repetition by another name of Tohu, and elsewhere in the Middle East would be treated as the goddess Tiamat or Tahamat, usually represented as or with a serpent.
VE HA ARETS HAYETAH (והארץ היתה): And the Earth was. Note again that Earth is feminine.
TOHU VA VOHU (תהו ובהו): "Barren and infertile" in the Yehudit reading (cf Jeremiah 4:23 and Isaiah 34:11). However, these were the gods of uncreation in Babylonian mythology, and therefore the gods who had, of necessity, to be overcome for Creation to be possible; Tohu is linked to Tahamat (תהמת) and Bohu to Behemot (בהמת), the sea-serpent and the land-serpent respectively. Probably one or both of these - or we can read the two as being parts of the same - were the serpent of Eden, though in fact, the serpents being oracular, there were probably seven serpents, one for each day of the week (compare the Abgal and Anunna and Apkallū of Babylonian mythology). The tales of the White Dragon and the Red Dragon in the Arthurian legends are almost certainly a late variation of this; there are also traditional Chinese and Japanese equivalents.
But in the religion of the Beney Yisra-El they become mere epithets, "waste and desolation" the one, the "void of uncreation" the other. By pluralising and feminising both names, the primordial beasts Tahamat - the sea-monster - and Behemot - the land monster - are retrieved from cosmological sanitisation. The world was void and desolate, not simply because it was uncreated, but because the demoniacal beasts of sea and land had so rendered it.
VE CHOSHECH (וחשך): "And darkness". Choshech likewise was formerly a god, the spirit or power of darkness. The concept of a god to the Beney Yisra-El was very different from ours, and the term "spirit" is not really appropriate; better terms are "force" or "power", the "life source within". But Choshech really was the Prince of Darkness, long before he became Mephistopheles.
AL PENEY (על-פני): "On the surface of the deep". AL PENEY also has the sense of "in the presence of", from PANIM (פנים) = "a face"; this will become significant in Genesis 32:25-33, when Ya'akov (Jacob) wrestles with a man, perhaps one of the Lilim, at the shrine known both as Penu-El (פְּנוּאֵל) and Peni-El (פְּנִיאֵל).
TEHOM (תהום): the waters, ocean, sea; also a gulf, abyss; also a wave. Tehom was originally Tahamat the Sumerian goddess, who later became Tahima, the Greek serpent-god who ruled the depths of the sea. Thus "CHOSHECH AL PENEY TEHOM" could mean "the Prince of Darkness stood in the presence of the Lady of the Sea", PENAY being linked to PANIM = "a face", as noted above; though whether the one stood in the other's presence as minister or as servant or as prisoner is not made clear. In creating the god Light, Elohim had first to destroy, or at least to overpower, the god Darkness. Tahamat remained to be defeated and would resurface later as Liv-Yatan (Leviathan) in Job 3:8, Amos 9:3, Psalms 74 and 104, and Isaiah 27.
Which allows us a final reading of the first half of this verse as:
"The Earth was a space of utter emptiness, a primal void, darkness on the face of nothingness."
VE RU'ACH ELOHIM (ורוח אלהים): "And the spirit of Elohim." Worth looking at the Egyptian concepts of Ka and Ba, meaning the physical and spiritual aspects of the divinity.
VE RU'ACH ELOHIM (ורוח אלהים): "And the spirit of Elohim." Worth looking at the Egyptian concepts of Ka and Ba, meaning the physical and spiritual aspects of the divinity.
But RU'ACH ELOHIM specifically means the wind, or the human spirit (the élan vital, in Bergson's phrase) - the spirit is the seat of the senses, affections and emotions - the heart controls the ratiocinative faculties! Will, intellect, reasoning and thought are situated in the spirit.
RU'ACH ELOHIM also suggests the Wind or Spirit which the Christians would name the Holy Ghost, the tangible yet intangible, visible yet invisible, beating pulse which some anthropomorphise metaphorically as God; not quite the same as the Beney Yisra-El concept of Shechinah, but very similar.
In this sense the wind is linked to the sun, as water is linked to the moon. In one Phoenician version the primary chaos was acted upon by the Wind, which became enamoured of its own elements. In another, Baou (a variant of Bohu?) the female principle, is impregnated by the wind-god, her husband Colpia, identified with the Greek goddess Nyx = Night who in the Genesis version becomes Choshech = Darkness. According to Hesiod, Nyx was "the mother of all things", the same epithet as Chavah (Eve) and most other mother-goddesses. To the Hellenic Greeks Nyx was Eurynome, who took the serpent Ophion for her lover (cf the Eden version for the significance of the serpent).
In Genesis the wind does not impregnate, but merely hovers. Deuteronomy 32.11 describes the spirit of god (Ru'ach Elohim) as being like "an eagle hovering over her young". Ru'ach thus means both wind and spirit. From which direction did it blow? Leviticus 1.11 describes sacrifices taking place on the north side of the altar, as at Athens. The suggestion is that the Great Mother rose from Chaos, the Wind became a serpent and impregnated her; she then became a bird (dove or eagle) and laid the world egg; the serpent coiled about the egg and hatched it (in many parallel versions the sky-god first has to slice the serpent in half, to enable the egg to hatch; in modern Christian versions the encovering serpent has been replaced by chocolate). This needs to be kept in mind when reading the Eden story in Genesis 3.
In Genesis the wind does not impregnate, but merely hovers. Deuteronomy 32.11 describes the spirit of god (Ru'ach Elohim) as being like "an eagle hovering over her young". Ru'ach thus means both wind and spirit. From which direction did it blow? Leviticus 1.11 describes sacrifices taking place on the north side of the altar, as at Athens. The suggestion is that the Great Mother rose from Chaos, the Wind became a serpent and impregnated her; she then became a bird (dove or eagle) and laid the world egg; the serpent coiled about the egg and hatched it (in many parallel versions the sky-god first has to slice the serpent in half, to enable the egg to hatch; in modern Christian versions the encovering serpent has been replaced by chocolate). This needs to be kept in mind when reading the Eden story in Genesis 3.
MERACHEPHET (מרחפת): "Moves". Note the use of the present tense here, where the rest of the text is in the past tense. RACHAF (רחף) means "to cherish", or "to brood" (as with hens). This gives the sense of the Shechinah (שכינה), the female spirit of Elohim, or the feminine principle of the Universe, brooding like a hen on the unborn egg of the Earth. But the term is usually translated as "hovered", giving the sense of a winged-fowl and not an Earth-bound one such as the hen. (And of course, because this is the wind, what is "hovering" may very well just be an explanation of the clouds!)
AL PENEY HA MAYIM (על פני המים): "On the surface of the seas". "Upon the face of the waters", which is the usual translation, actually has no meaning, even poetically. Verses 9 and 10 make it clear that the waters in question are the worlds oceans, though elements may also be understood. MAYIM, like SHAMAYIM, is always used in the masculine plural; the word is similar to the Chaldean MO, which is the likely root of MO-AV (מואב), the land of the Beney Mo-Av (Moabites). MAYIM can also refer to the 92 elements. Robert Graves suggests that Mayim may be the dual but not the plural form, and this is difficult to dispute. He notes that there are always two floods, two oceans, two deeps etc; i.e that water always appears in dual patterns, usually having a female and a male part. This is also the case in Ugaritic mythology, such as the story of the building of the rain-god Ba'al's house by Kothar Wa-Khasis (one of the sources of No'ach's Ark); he was forbidden to open any window through which the amorous Yam (the sea) might catch sight of the god's two wives, Padriya = the flashing one, daughter of Ar = Light (Or in Yehudit), and Talliya = Death, the daughter of Rabb = distillation (who appears in Beney Yisra-Eli mythology as Rahab or Rachav. The house walls were clouds, as in the celestial pavilion – a connection to the sky-god.
FINAL VERSION, somewhat extended to convey its full meaning:
BN: "Until then the Earth had been ruled by Tohu, and by his twin brother Bohu, the gods of barrenness and infertility; and Choshech, the prince of darkness, ruled in the name of Tahamat, the serpent-god of the abyss; while the Shechinah, the divine radiance, the female spirit, brooded hen-like over the surface of the seas."
Note also the structure of the verse, divided into three clauses, with two pairs of gods or goddesses in each, with the verbal interconnection of TOHU and TEHOM, and with AL PENEY HA MAYIM balancing AL PENEY TEHOM. This reflects the form of writing known as parallelism, developed around the time of David, and mostly found in the Psalms; this allows us to date the writing of this final version of the myth as no earlier than the 10th century BCE, and may also explain why the Phoenician predominates over the Babylonian in this recounting of the Creation, the Phoenician being the source at that time of both alphabet and the style of hymning.
1:3 VA YOMER ELOHIM YEHI OR VA YEHI OR
1:3 VA YOMER ELOHIM YEHI OR VA YEHI OR
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי אוֹר
KJ: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
BN: And Elohim said, "It shall be light", and light came into being.
VA YOMER ELOHIM (ויאמר אלהים): "And Elohim said". The grammatical structure used here is one of the most notable features of the Tanach. The Jewish notion of time is not based on the present, as in all modern conceptions and constructions, which look at the world from a starting-point of "now" and move either backwards or forwards in varying gradations. Jewish time looks at the world from the starting-point of Creation; everything that will ever happen was already established then, so it is merely a question of whether actions are yet complete or remain to be completed. The action is thus more important than the person who carries it out, and this too is reflected in the grammar (where European languages place great emphasis on personal pronouns, Yehudit merely suffixes them, and frequently leaves them out altogether). VA YOMER in fact means "and he will speak", but the use of the prefictual conjunction turns the word into an equivalent of our past tense, by a process of reversal. This form is known grammatically as "the inverted past" or the "Vav Consecutive", or sometimes the "Vav Conversive".
VA YOMER: Traditional belief holds that the first thing created in the Universe was light; as noted above, the first stated creation was the heavens and the Earth, and the form of the text infers the creation of Time before that. In fact this answer is not correct either; as this phrase implies, Elohim has to create language first in order to be able to use it as an "abracadabra" for creation.
YEHI OR (יהי אור): "It shall be light". "Let there be" is a softening. This is vocative, a command.
VA YEHI OR (ויהי אור): "And it became light". Note (and I shall be returning to this theme throughout TheBibleNet) that the verb "to be", LEHIYOT, is derived from the root HAYAH, as is the word YHVH. This is different from the verb "to exist", LECHIYOT, which is derived from the root CHAYAH, as is the word CHAVAH (Eve). And where YHVH is described as "the father of all living things", Chavah's epithet is Em Kol Chai (Chai, not Hai!), "the mother of all living things". An interesting linguistic marriage.
Psalm 33:6 has: "by the word of YHVH (יְהוָה) were the heavens made". This implies the Logos or divine will, a term not in existence before Hellenic times. Ancient Babylonian stories are more about an anthropomorphic deity who literally issues a command, like any king. The world comes into existence through the very process of naming: as Adam will later name the animals (Genesis 2:20).
1:4 VA YAR ELOHIM ET HA OR KI TOV VA YAVDEL ELOHIM BEIN HA OR U VEYN HA CHOSHECH
YEHI OR (יהי אור): "It shall be light". "Let there be" is a softening. This is vocative, a command.
VA YEHI OR (ויהי אור): "And it became light". Note (and I shall be returning to this theme throughout TheBibleNet) that the verb "to be", LEHIYOT, is derived from the root HAYAH, as is the word YHVH. This is different from the verb "to exist", LECHIYOT, which is derived from the root CHAYAH, as is the word CHAVAH (Eve). And where YHVH is described as "the father of all living things", Chavah's epithet is Em Kol Chai (Chai, not Hai!), "the mother of all living things". An interesting linguistic marriage.
Through the creation of light on the first day, Elohim is associated with Shamas(h) (שמש) the sun-god, who appears elsewhere in the Tanach as Shimshon (Samson) and as Tammuz. But the creation of light, by way of the sun itself, plus the moon and stars, does not in fact happen until the fourth day of creation. Sun-day is still the first day of the Jewish week.
Psalm 33:6 has: "by the word of YHVH (יְהוָה) were the heavens made". This implies the Logos or divine will, a term not in existence before Hellenic times. Ancient Babylonian stories are more about an anthropomorphic deity who literally issues a command, like any king. The world comes into existence through the very process of naming: as Adam will later name the animals (Genesis 2:20).
1:4 VA YAR ELOHIM ET HA OR KI TOV VA YAVDEL ELOHIM BEIN HA OR U VEYN HA CHOSHECH
וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת הָאוֹר כִּי טוֹב וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ
KJ: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
BN: And Elohim saw that the light was good; and Elohim divided the light from the darkness.
VA YAR (וירא): "And he saw." The root of the verb is OR (אור), which is not the same as the root for "light", and yet remarkably similar in both lettering and sound - clearly a deliberate choice of language by the author, and the first of the word-games which we will see are a cotinuous feature of the writing throughout the Tanach. The effect of the word-play is to make seeing a function of the light, even for Elohim! Elohim himself could not see until he created the light!
If Choshech was once a deity, presumably Or must have been too - or simply, as with the multitudes of "minor gods" among the Egyptians and Mesopotamians a manifestation of one of the "forms" of the Elohim. The first great achievement of the religion of the Beney Yisra-El, then, was to reverse the process of eternal bifurcation, to make abstract what had previously been anthropomorphic, to rediscover the single Unity, to get back from Pantheism, not to the God-Devil Dualism of most cults, but to Monism, and eventually to Monotheism. In this sense we can describe Judaism as a philosophical attempt to restore the Primal Unity, to establish the Universal Principle as One. And as such, this is in fundamental conflict with the notion of Good versus and Evil and is the reason why, at least in TheBibleNet, the deity of the Beney Yisra-El, as of the Jews today, is named YHVH, Elohim, and many other names, but never God.
1:5 VA YIKRA ELOHIM LA OR YOM VE LA CHOSHECH KARA LAILAH VA YEHI EREV VA YEHI VOKER YOM ECHAD
VA YAVDEL (ויבדל): The process of division is constant throughout this text: light from dark, day from night, water from water, between genders, species, nations. Elohim is One but his creation is endlessly bifurcated, like Tiamat herself; endlessly diversified out of its harmonious, single, original root. In a most primordial sense, we are witnessing a paradigm for the explanation of cell division.
The root is BADAL (בדל) = "to separate", "distinguish", "divide". Life on Earth, in plants as well as mammals, in every organism indeed, and in the cycles of the seasons, even of the days, everything depends upon divisions, cell divisions, gender divisions, inclinational divisions (the Yetser ha Tov versus the Yetser ha Ra), land and sea divisions, national borders, city-walls. But the end-goal of life on Earth, in the theology of the Tanac, is the end of divisions, the ultimate unification, Oneness.
Note again that the multiple plural Elohim still takes the singular verb form, a consequence of monotheism.
Note again that the multiple plural Elohim still takes the singular verb form, a consequence of monotheism.
BEIN HA OR U VEYN HA CHOSHECH (בין האור ובין החשך): Between light and darkness.
1:5 VA YIKRA ELOHIM LA OR YOM VE LA CHOSHECH KARA LAILAH VA YEHI EREV VA YEHI VOKER YOM ECHAD
וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי עֶרֶב וַיְהִי בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד
KJ: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
BN: And Elohim called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And it was evening, and it was morning, one day.
LA OR "YOM" (לאור יום): Yom is a corruption of the word CHAMAM (חמם) = "heat".
VE LA CHOSHECH KARA "LAILAH" (ולחשך קרא לילה): And the darkness he called "Night". (Not VA YIKRA – ויקרא - on this occasion). LAILAH comes from the root LIL which also gives LILIT, the nocturnal spectre who was, according to the Midrash, Adam's first wife. (If Night is thus the name of a god, demon or spirit, is not Yom too?! The same question that we asked over Choshech and Or; and the same answer applies.) The story of Shimshon (Samson) and Delilah (Judges 16) links to this later on, with Samson = Shemesh = Tammuz, the sun-god marrying Delilah = Lilith, the goddess of the Night.
VE LA CHOSHECH KARA "LAILAH" (ולחשך קרא לילה): And the darkness he called "Night". (Not VA YIKRA – ויקרא - on this occasion). LAILAH comes from the root LIL which also gives LILIT, the nocturnal spectre who was, according to the Midrash, Adam's first wife. (If Night is thus the name of a god, demon or spirit, is not Yom too?! The same question that we asked over Choshech and Or; and the same answer applies.) The story of Shimshon (Samson) and Delilah (Judges 16) links to this later on, with Samson = Shemesh = Tammuz, the sun-god marrying Delilah = Lilith, the goddess of the Night.
VA YEHI EREV (ויהי ערב): And it was evening. Elohim works by day only, again connecting him to Shamas(h) the sun-god, and not to the moon-goddess, as was the norm for the religion of the Beney Yisra-El, at least until the time of King David; after which the cult appears to have become patriarchalised, and the moon-goddess either masculinised, though still named YAH (יה), or reduced to mere "holy ghost" as the Shechinah, or expunged altogether.
ARAV (ערב) = "to set". Hence MA'ARAV (מערב) = "the west", where the sun sets. Hence EREV (ערב) = "evening", the time when the sun sets. Hence ARAVAH (ערבה) = the dry area in the south-west of Yehudah. This is a perfect example of the way in which Yehudit roots operate. (cf NEGEV = dry = south).
VA YEHI VOKER (ויהי בקר): And then it was morning. BAKAR (בקר) = "to cleave", or "to open". Also "to plough", whence BAKAR = "oxen, cattle". "Morning", from the "breaking forth" of light.
The Jewish day however is lunar. A day begins and ends at moonrise, not sunrise (cf Leviticus 23:22, "from even unto even"), which is why all festivals, like the Shabat, commence in the evening.
YOM ECHAD (יום אחד): One day. Not "the first day", which in modern Ivrit (Hebrew) is Yom Ri'shon (יוֹם רִאשׁוֹן). A single day. The first day of the Jewish week is Sunday, the day of Shamas(h), the sun-god.
pey break: the first strophe in the Yehudit text ends here.
ARAV (ערב) = "to set". Hence MA'ARAV (מערב) = "the west", where the sun sets. Hence EREV (ערב) = "evening", the time when the sun sets. Hence ARAVAH (ערבה) = the dry area in the south-west of Yehudah. This is a perfect example of the way in which Yehudit roots operate. (cf NEGEV = dry = south).
VA YEHI VOKER (ויהי בקר): And then it was morning. BAKAR (בקר) = "to cleave", or "to open". Also "to plough", whence BAKAR = "oxen, cattle". "Morning", from the "breaking forth" of light.
The Jewish day however is lunar. A day begins and ends at moonrise, not sunrise (cf Leviticus 23:22, "from even unto even"), which is why all festivals, like the Shabat, commence in the evening.
YOM ECHAD (יום אחד): One day. Not "the first day", which in modern Ivrit (Hebrew) is Yom Ri'shon (יוֹם רִאשׁוֹן). A single day. The first day of the Jewish week is Sunday, the day of Shamas(h), the sun-god.
pey break: the first strophe in the Yehudit text ends here.
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