Creation From Nothing?
In the debate over the relationship between the biblical creation and modern scientific theories of life’s origins, there is a tendency in some circles to harmonize the two poles. In the case of the so-called “big bang theory,” harmonizers argue that Genesis portrays the creation of the universe in much the same way; namely, as creation ex nihilo (Latin for “out of nothing”). According to this view, the God of the Bible is the agent by which the entire cosmos comes into being from nothingness—just look at the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Yet, more precise translation and contextual reading show that a big-bang-style beginning is not part of the biblical narrative. The original Hebrew of Genesis describes God starting to organize our world from existing materials at some point after the initiation of the wider universe.
Most English translations of Genesis 1:1 state, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” However, there are a few issues with this rendering. First, it is not clear that the initial Hebrew word, בְּרֵאשִׁית (be’reshit), should be translated as “in the beginning.” There is no clear indication of a definite article (“the”), and the first letter (ב; bet) often functions temporally, particularly when it precedes a word like רֵאשִׁית (reshit), which means “first.” Thus, a better translation of בְּרֵאשִׁית might be: “When at first.” Second, while Genesis 1:1 is usually translated “the heavens and the earth,” the Hebrew terms can also be rendered “the skies and the land”—a more contextually accurate translation since the Hebrew terms refer to the sky and terrain of our world throughout the chapter. Therefore, the English version of Scripture’s first sentence should probably read, “When at first God created the skies and the land….” Rather than referring to the ex-nihilo “big bang” of the entire universe, Genesis 1:1 describes God beginning to organize the earthly environment that humans will inhabit.
The second verse of the Bible corroborates this earth-bound activity: “When at first God created the skies and the land, the land was chaotic and vacant, and darkness was over the face of the deep” and God “hovered over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:1-2). When the Lord begins to engage with the earth, several elements already exist: the land, darkness, the deep, and the waters. A close reading of the available textual data shows that God works with preexisting materials.
At the same time, the Bible does not deny that God created the entire universe, and ancient readers (like modern ones) assumed that their God created everything. The Second Temple book of Jubilees, for instance, retells creation this way: “For on the first day [God] created the heavens above, the earth, the waters, and all the spirits who serve him” (Jub 2:2). Yet, when Jubilees asserts that God created “the waters” and “the spirits” (i.e., other divine beings), it presupposes a creative process not found in the text of Genesis 1. Strictly speaking, the waters—along with the land, the darkness, and the deep—already exist when the curtain of Genesis 1 comes up. It is understandable that modern readers (like ancient ones) would “fill in the blanks” and assume that God created the entire universe, but the Bible does not describe this creation, and readerly “assumptions” do not have the same authoritative weight as the text itself (nor can such assumptions simply “stand in” for Scripture). Genesis is concerned with the creation of the habitable space in which humans are the crowning achievement on the sixth day, not with the “origins debate” that pits “Science” over “Scripture.” Therefore, one can ascribe to whichever origins theory one would like and affirm the biblical narrative at the same time. Instead of meditating on the initial emergence of the universe, Genesis 1 depicts how the Most High organized a world in which human beings could live in relationship with the Creator.
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