Genesis Series: The Word Face in Genesis 1

You sent forth your Spirit, and they were created, and you renewed the face of the Earth. (Psalm 103)

The word 'face' is a fairly simple concept taken from antiquity. This word is used a great many times in the Bible e.g. face of the Earth, face of the sky, face of wind, etc. In the Hebrew it is a plural word which some have pointed out suggests the many motions and changes of the human face.

Face refers to the front of the head, that location from which the eyes are directed. The ancients transferred the concept 'face' to pretty much anything even God. When this concept is used figuratively an observer substitutes his eyes with the plane of the object in question. It is as if objects have a face with eyes and are looking the observer in the face. So it is as if the Earth has a face with eyes looking at you when you are aligned with plane of the Earth. Strictly speaking this is only possible from outer space but it can also be envisioned from a mountain top over looking a plain.

Now take the Man on the Moon as an example. We face the full Moon and imagine it to have eyes and a mouth on its plane. Face of the Moon, face of the Earth, face of the wind, etc. is a subjective, self-referential notion. It's use implies an observer projecting an imaginary set of eyes on the plane of the object in question. You look at the object and imagine the plane of that object to have eyes looking at you or at something else. Perhaps later this notion degenerated to reference the literal plain concept of a surface but the above is, I think, something of the original notion that dates to antiquity.

So now take the second verse of Genesis One. The sacred author describes the Earth as if some features of its plane were looking at him:

And when the Earth existed as an astonishing-desert with darkness over a face of an abyss, and the Spirit of God oscillating over the face of the waters . . .

The sacred author describes facial features of the Earth. His use of the word 'face' suggests to me that he had a bird's eye view of the Earth and that Genesis One is a prophecy. How else could he write with any sort of intellectual honesty?  This view was made possible by God who stimulated a prophetic experience in the brain of the sacred author. The sacred author was not really present way back when the Earth existed like an astonishing wasteland with a water supply prior to the moment when God changed it in the light-event; but he was able to see this Earth because of the vision that God induced in his brain.

The sacred author was induced to look at the Earth from afar as if from a vantage point in outer space. This is how he is able to describe this object as an astonishing-desert with some sort of aquatic facial features. As if the waters, or whatever primitive ocean existed was looking at him placed beyond in outer space with the imaginary eyes he substitutes on its plain.  At first the sacred author is seeing the Earth from the vantage of a satellite or spaceship. And what did he see? His description is basic. He saw a dark and barren astronomical object standing out before him, with no life or living entities.  He also knew of a water supply and the Spirit of God hovering over the surface.  

This is simple stuff, the difficulty lies in establishing a reasonable and correct context.  By doing this we do not stray by reading all sorts of ridiculous myths, matter, space, time, universe, Hell, fallen angels, photons, cosmic microwave background, etc. into the first and second verses. 

Genesis One is a prophecy. The sacred author describes the Earth just prior to God changing it's surface in the miraculous light event. The light event is a physical and phenomenal manifestation of God's power, election, mercy, love. God enacts an event in direct relation to the Earth via the Spirit. God and the Earth came face to face and as Earth revolved God was like the Sun, miraculously stimulating it in the events described.  If you were there to see you would see the Earth lit up and the atmosphere bursting forth from the waters. God sent forth the Spirit and transfigured the face of the Earth. This happened just prior to the Earth being locked into an inverse square gravitational regime with the Sun, which is described later in the narrative as the fourth day. 

Genesis Series: Darkness of Genesis 1:2

In a beginning, God had created the form Heaven and the form Earth.  And when Earth existed as an astonishing-desert, with darkness over a face of abyss . . . 

"Darkness was upon the face of the deep." A new source for fables and most impious imaginations if one distorts the sense of these words at the will of one’s fancies. By “darkness” these wicked men do not understand what is meant in reality—air not illumined, the shadow produced by the interposition of a body, or finally a place for some reason deprived of light. [. . .]The word is simple and within the comprehension of all. [. . .] But reason asks, was darkness created with the world? Is it older than light? Why in spite of its inferiority has it preceded it? Darkness, we reply, did not exist in essence; it is a condition produced in the air by the withdrawal of light. (Saint Basil, Hexaemeron, Homily II) 

What is Darkness?

Darkness lacks form and so refers to a concept.  Darkness is a brainwork. In the above quote, this is what Saint Basil was trying to get at. Since darkness is a concept it needs to be defined. Start by saying darkness is a relation of your eyes with all objects of the universe mediated by a fundamental subatomic object from which atoms derive their form, and by which atoms consummate light events and gravity/inertia in relation to all others.  An atom is literally a convergence of zillions of these fundamental subatomic objects which have unique properties and are probably liken to a double stranded thread.  Atoms constantly impinge upon these fundamental subatomic objects, in a torsion, at various frequencies, and in this we have basic action and reaction events.  When atoms or molecules of one's eyes receive certain frequencies from exterior objects the brain relates what we call darkness. Darkness resolves to a lack of certain frequencies which the eyes and brain can utilize in image. Darkness is concept conceived by Man.

In the Sacred Script, this concept is used to describe the object called Earth. In relation to the object called Earth is this relation called darkness. God did not create darkness. Darkness does not exist. Darkness has no nature. We can all go home and sleep well knowing that this word does not refer to some primeval entity, a mythical object, a fallen angel or Hell. Darkness could be used as a figurative concept to refer to other concepts such as evil or disorder, or a weak connection in the mind, etc. Yet here I have firmly established over the course of previous articles that the second verse of Genesis 1 refers to the astronomical object Earth. The sacred author saw the Earth. The Earth is the subject of the sentence. In Gen 1:2 use of the word darkness is not figurative, philosophic, mythical or even theological it is rather descriptive. The sacred author is describing the Earth as he saw it in a vision induced by God, just prior to the main light-event. If you want to read a philosophy or myth or scientific theory or theology or figurative language into this word then in my opinion you depart from the intention of the sacred author which is also the intention of God.

Strictly speaking there is no darkness only lower frequencies that the human eye cannot relay to the brain. If our eyes and brains utilized all frequencies we would literally be blinded by white light.  Mother Nature does not care what mode of frequencies your eyes and brain can use. She just keeps signaling at all frequencies from all atoms by way of these fundamental subatomic objects interconnecting all atoms.   

No matter where one looks the atoms of our eyes and entire body are being signaled at various frequencies. Light phenomenon is a constant occurrence. Light is a two way phenomenon: to and from all atoms, just as described by Newton's and Einstein's c squared concept. Atoms are constantly torquing the mediators at various frequencies. There is no real atom that is not giving and receiving a torsion signal via the physical mediators of light. Darkness resolves to a lack of certain frequencies stimulating your eyes. It is a subjective and artificial concept. Man made it up. God did not create darkness and the sacred author names it in Genesis 1 to help establish a context for the events happening.

Darkness in Genesis 1:2

In the Genesis 1:2 context, darkness is coupled to a preposition denoting spatial relations.  In Hebrew the word is 'al , and can be translated to English as 'over', 'upon', 'against', and so on.  Only darkness is not an object it is a concept. Darkness is not literally over, upon, against, the surface of the Earth, but while reading we simply reify (treat a concept as if an object) darkness and perform a contextual grammatical analysis and so understand that this is simply a concept.  Put two and two together and the sacred author is clearly referring to Earth and outer space contouring the surface of the Earth, so to speak.      

The sacred author was not describing the Earth from her surface, he was rather describing the Earth and surroundings from a bird's as if from a bird's eye view as if from outer space.  The sacred author was mystically looking at the Earth and her surroundings and described it as dark.  No Sun was lighting up her surface as of yet.  

My Interpretive Theory of Darkness in Gen 1:2

The darkness concept in Gen 1:2 is fairly simple. I assume the sacred author experienced a prophetic 3D movie of the events he later described in his Script by Divine Inspiration. He looked at the Earth, saw it's Form as if orbiting her in space. He noticed a few surface features. But it was dark.  No Sun or star was lighting up her surface as of yet.  This implies that Earth was roaming somewhere in interstellar space and it also necessarily implies that it was cold and inactive.  If there were activity happening on the Earth he would have been able to see it just like we can see our cities lit up by satellites.    

The sacred author is explaining the face of the Earth as if seeing it from outer space. It is dark.  End of story. It is a very simple word just as Saint Basil said. It can be comprehended by all. Earth is dark and is contoured so to speak, by the darkness of space. Once you realize the sacred author was experiencing a prophetic 3D movie the descriptions are easy to visualize. Just imagine yourself in place of the sacred author.

Earth's Location

I believe God showed the sacred author the Earth as it was moving between stars. The Earth’s surface was at the time not stimulated as it is now closer to the Sun. Back then the Earth was swinging around the galactic core on a course near the Sun. She was not yet near the Sun when God first sent forth the Spirit and transformed her surface. So perhaps the sacred author saw Earth’s shape, and some surface features, but at first impression the surface may have been a bit dim by lack the full range of perceptible frequencies coming from the Earth. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had a vision similar to the sacred author's and she describes the Earth as a ‘dark globe’. It was a dark star or black dwarf moving between stars i.e. interstellar space. In any case he clearly saw a shape and some surface features since Earth was miraculously spotlighted by the Presence of the Spirit.

In the fourth Divine Day, the God of power and of might moves the Earth into a locked system (an inverse square regime) with the Sun, and He, that is God moved the Moon in a system with the Earth so that these may signal at frequencies in a visible range.  However the events of Genesis 1 begin beyond the Sun’s effect on the Earth. So perhaps the sacred author saw something like this:



Like I said in another post these pictures are not to be taken too literally. All I am trying to do is help place one in the mystical eyes of the sacred author. The Earth was between stars. There was darkness beyond her boundary, however the Spirit of God was emitted from Heaven by the Father and the Son. Make no mistake it all happened very fast.  The Spirit literally lit up Earth's surface seconds prior to the main event. Perhaps the Spirit had one side of the Earth lit up in a preferential direction connected up to the Heaven of God.  Like a ray of light or spotlight.

Imagine being given a side view of God in Heaven as if a star emitting a ray of light down on a dark planet. The light beam connecting God in Heaven to the Earth lighting up one side of the Earth represents the Spirit. The Spirit was present as the Mediator of God's Word. The Father and the Son transformed the face of the Earth via the Spirit who was sent so as to establish a Divine connection. This is crucial to understand.

Spirit of God paralleled with Darkness

Darkness over a face of abyss
Spirit of God oscillating over a face of the waters

In the well-known and well-studied parallel structure of the second verse darkness is set in contrast to the Spirit of God moving over Earth's surface. Spirit of God and darkness are not synonyms or even antonyms. They are contrasted since the sacred author saw the Spirit moving around Earth's boundary. The Spirit is the only object proximate to the Earth. There is just the Earth, and the Spirit moving around the Earth's surface. So perhaps the movements of the Spirit lit up a portion of the Earth’s face when the command is sent and the Spirit stimulates the entire surface to erupt or expand out coinciding with a glow in the dark:

For the Spirit being one, and holding the place of light, was between the water and the Heaven, (Theophilus ad Autolycus, Genesis Commentary)

In the prophecy the Spirit is the go between God in Heaven and the Earth. The Spirit is there awaiting the command to stimulate the surface. Prior to the light-event God sent the Spirit to establish a singular unprecedented connection between God and the Earth.  

Genesis Series: Tōhû wābōhû

Tōhû wābōhû is one of my favorite words of the entire Bible. It is wrapped in the mystique of the ages.

The Earth was what???  In this article I will first share a list of translations, then I will share my translation and unique interpretation.  

Translations

Latin Versions and Derivatives:

inanis et vacua (Vulgate)
void and empty (Douay Rheims)
empty and unoccupied (CPDV)
idel ond æmti (AElfric, Old Anglo-Saxon)
idol and void (Wycliffe)

Greek Versions and Derivatives:

aoratoj kai akatskeuastoj --- invisible and unformed (LXX w/ literal Eng trans.)
kenwma kai ouqen --- empty and nothing (Aquila)
qen kai ouqen --- nothing and nothing (Theodotion)
argon kai adiakriton --- unproductive and indistinguishable (Symmachus)
unsightly and unfinished (Brenton's English Septuagint)

Hebrew Derivatives:

chaos and vacancy (Hebrew Interlinear CHES 2.0 Version)
formless and void (NASB)
formless void (NJB)
formless wasteland (NAB Vatican Version)
without shape and empty (NET)
waste and void (Young's Literal)
without form and void (KJV & RSV)
formless and empty (WEB)

Foreign Language Bibles:

desordenada y vacia (Spanish, La Santa Biblia)
vide et deserte (French, La Sainte Bible)
afluniaidd a gwag (Welsh Bible)

Scholars:

astonishingly empty (Rashi)
completely empty (Rashbam)
empty waste (Ibn Ezra)
completely prime matter (Ramban)
desert waste (Claude Westermann)
haltos et gestaltos (Gorg)
contingent potentiality in a potentiality of being (Fabre d'Olivet)
hodgepodge (Jack Sasson)
mish-mash (William P. Brown suggestion)
welter and waste (Robert Alter)
chaos and watery chaos (Albright)
uninhabitable and unproductive (absence of fauna and flora: Roberto Ouro)
desert-like and empty or desolate and uninhabited (Tsumura)

Scholarly Notes:

"barrenness of the earth before anything grew on it" (N.H. Tur Sinai)

"a state of confused matter ... with no differentiation or organization" (U. Cassuto)

Targum Neof according to G. Anderson: "This text first reproduces the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew pair tohu wabohu and then interprets them. The first term, tohu, is interpreted to mean absence of faunal life; the second term, bohu, the absence of floral life." (from 'The Interpretation of Genesis 1 in the Targums', CBQ, 1990 p. 23)

My Translation:

astonishing-desert

Some Remarks on Translations

I am in strong opposition to translation rendering 'formless' or 'without form' or 'shapeless' or 'without shape'. These translations are oxymora. They are influenced by outmoded Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophies. They are fodder for troubled philosophers and opium induced drunks. The subject of the verse, the Earth, is a noun of reality. It is an object, an astronomical object. By definition it has form or shape. The Earth had a form long before the main light-event.  In supernatural vision, the prophet saw at an object that has a form. In this same vein I am opposed to the translations which include 'invisible' or 'nothing' or 'void'. Again the prophet saw an astronomical object so these would be non-nonsensical.

I am also opposed to the philosophical translations that suggest this verse refers to prime matter or any sort of philosophical translation. Sacred authors and prophets do not fop around with philosophy. A prime matter translation and interpretation destroys the context. What is prime matter? Define prime matter ________. Do you really think the ancient Hebrew had any notion of prime matter or saw prime matter? Does prime matter have a surface of waters?

I am also strongly opposed to the 'chaos' or 'Chaoskampf" translations and interpretations. These associate Genesis 1 with the Ancient Near Eastern myths. They read a struggle against evil into the Text. The holy author inspired by the Holy Spirit himself could not possibly be influenced by pagan creation myths.

And I am against the idea that this verse directly refers to Hell or fallen angels.  No stretch of the imagination could possibly see these in this verse since the Earth is described with surface features.

I do tend to favor the abiotic translations and interpretations. The Earth that the sacred author describes is obviously without living entities whether fauna or flora or microorganisms. These are narrated as coming into form within the light-event. But this line of thought doesn't resolve the mystique of the word. What exactly did the sacred author see and then describe? How can one reconcile the notions of desert, desolation, aridity, idleness, emptiness, etc with that of a water covered surface? Can one make sense of this seeming contradiction? I think one can.

Earth was and still is a very old inactive dark star or rogue planet that naturally transitioned for countless years prior to the main event prophetically recorded in Genesis 1.  Planets are cooling and compressing stars with vast histories. The object that the prophet saw and later described was what is perhaps what we could call an 'ice planet' or 'ice world'. The Earth was slumbering in cold interstellar space away from newer active stars. She was not far from the newer Sun and yet not yet orbiting the Sun. Her surface was icy H20 and volatiles with ancient subsurface liquid oceans (or abysses). The subsurface abysses were heated by her hot core that stimulated mantle and crust. Like Antarctica she was dry and arid yet still had an immense water supply. Her surface was idle and barren. The Spirit was about to stimulate her surface in the light-event. But upon first impression, the prophet was mystified by what he saw. This is what led him to trace and utter the Hebrew word wrapped in the mystique of the ages:

tōhû wābōhû

A Tōhû wābōhû Thought Experiment

Imagine you are an inhabitant of the Middle East.  You live about four thousand years ago. You've never seen an image captured by the space crafts in your life. But you have had the fortune of travelling all around the Middle East. You are familiar with all sorts of terrain. You've seen the lush pastures and vines of the Fertile Crescent but you have also been to the Arabian Peninsula and explored the edges of the Arabian Desert. You've seen the dread dunes of the Rub' al Khali. Maybe you've even seen or heard of the white deserts of Egypt. But your heart is in the Holy Land. You are a Hebrew. You speak a primitive mode of the Hebrew tongue and of course you love your God who led you out of Egypt.

One night you go to sleep. While asleep instead of dreaming a dream of fragmented memories you experience a vivid movie in which you seem to be a part of!!! The first frame of the movie appears as something like this:


the Jovian Moon Ganymede

What would be your first impression? How would you first describe this object in your own tongue and in accord with your own experiences? Perhaps it would remind you something like the Moon, yet given your location and time is there even a word to describe something like this? What would you write about it?

If you have read some of this blog you know I am biased toward a prophetic interpretation of Genesis 1. I assume the sacred author had a vision, of course stimulated by God. Gen 1:2 is his basic description of the first frame of his prophetic 3D movie. Either in retrospect or while experiencing the movie he realized that the object he was looking at was Earth. I assume at least in the beginning of his vision on the first Divine Day, he saw Earth from a bird's eye view and described what he saw.

I don't want anyone to take the above image too literally. I chose Ganymede as a model for the thought experiment. Ganymede is a good model since it has little or no atmosphere as well as a surface of icy H2O and silicate rock. It is also thought that a salt water ocean exists under the surface layers of ice water. Plus Ganymede is perhaps an old dark star like Earth.  Maybe Ganymede is something like the Earth that the sacred author first saw in his prophetic movie. He may have had a closer view brought into focus as the vision unfolded. Recall of the God induced vision led him to pen the famous tōhû wābōhû description.

My interpretive theory for the tōhû wābōhû concept is fairly simple. The Earth that the sacred author saw reminded him of a desert or wasteland. Only for him this was no ordinary desert terrain. For him deserts were regions of land with boundaries relating them to other terrains. But the wasteland that the Genesis 1 prophet saw had no boundaries other than the boundary of the entire object facing him. The entire face appeared bare, dry, without rain (no atmosphere), lifeless, inactive, uninhabited, and so on and so forth. And so he conceptualized an ultimate wasteland, a wasteland to end all wastelands, a strange wasteland. To him the Earth that he saw was a surreal desert, a super-desert, since he had no concept of an entire planetary surface barren before his eyes, perhaps excepting the Moon, but even in comparison to the Moon this was even vivid and strange.  And of course he understood the difference between the Earth and Moon.

The ancient Hebrew has a manner of repeating a word so as to denote intensity or emphasis. An example of this is taken from Genesis 3:16. God uses the word rabah twice in succession to denote intensity:

Increasing I increase your labor pains, etc.

Word repetitions or so called 'figures of repetition' are not exclusive to ancient Hebrew tongue, they are common to many languages. In fact there is a catalog of word repetitions in Greek. Figures of repetition are employed to stimulate emphasis, clarity, amplification or emotions. The Genesis 1 author did something similar only he got a little creative. He provokingly added a manner of mystique to his amplifier by changing the first letter and connecting via the Hebrew letter 'waw'.

Tohu can refer to a desert or a wasteland (see Tsumura: The Earth and Waters in Genesis 1 & 2: A Linguistic Investigation). The connected word bohu is a spontaneous intensifier of the word tohu. Because of the strangeness of the object recalled from the vision the sacred author decided to invent the new word bohu so as to intensify and even mystify the referent of tohu. Instead of simply duplicating tohu so as to intensify, he decided to get a little creative and may I say stylish, by changing a letter and connecting via the waw letter. So instead of tohu tohu we are given tōhû wābōhû. The modified intensifier that is tōhû wābōhû  used only two other times in all of extant literature (beyond Sacred Scripture).

This word discloses a mystic experience. One can almost feel the emotion evoked from the very word he invented.  What he saw was wondrous and momentous.  And so it is my theory that the sacred author invented the word in response to his prophetic vision. The word is later adopted by Jeremiah and Isaiah for use in their prophecies. Tōhû wābōhû or tohu and bohu paralleled in the same verse is exclusively used in Hebrew Prophecies. It is a prophetic word.

The referent of tohu wa-bohu is the whole surface of the ancient Earth. In the 'structure' of the second verse, Earth and tohu wabohu have no parallel whereas waters is paralleled to abyss, and darkness is paralleled with Spirit of God.

And when Earth was an astonishing-desert, and darkness over --- a face of abyss, and the Spirit of God oscillating over --- a face of waters.  

Tohu wabohu is a description of the entire object facing the sacred author in the prophetic movie. The Earth first appeared to be a desert world. The sacred author could have simply stated: And when Earth was an astonishing-desert. Tōhû wābōhû is the sacred author's name of the object we call Earth which grammatically speaking is the subject Earth of this sentence. It is the head descriptor or main descriptor of the Earth. The paralleled second and third clauses: "Darkness over a face of abyss and the Spirit of God oscillating over the face of the waters" modify and add additional information to the main descriptive word: tōhû wābōhû and of course the main subject Earth.

I translate tohu wabohu as astonishing-desert or astonishing-wasteland in honor of Rashi's idea:

The word תֹהוּ is an expression of astonishment and desolation that a person wonders and is astonished at the emptiness therein. (Rashi Commentaries)

Rashi's idea fits in with my prophetic assumption. The sacred author was astonished by what he saw. The Hebrew word tōhû wābōhû has wrapped up in it all the excitement and strangeness of seeing an object that has never been seen before. This is why it is a unique wonder of a word. I think Rashi has a good attitude toward this word. In the midst of all the solemnity and gravity read into this story I suggest there was a little playfulness and creativity happening in the mind of this Middle Eastern child of God when he wrote. This suggestion fits the context. The miraculous transformation of the Earth described in this story is a joyful occasion. It must have been for a prophet an elating as well as majestic experience to see it happen in a prophetic state. He even experienced the satisfaction of God described in "And God saw that is was good!"  So instead of going with desert wasteland, I went with astonishing-desert or astonishing-wasteland. Other ideas could be ultimate-desert or super desert.

These translation are concrete and I prefer it this way. They offer the reader an opportunity to visualize the setting. But there is a problem with this translation and interpretation. Scholar R. Gilboa raises the issue:

Suggestions for tohu as ‘desert’ (a geographical term often used for arid and uninhabited land OED) are implausible even impossible since we are told that everything is covered with waters. (p. 242, Intercourses in the Book of Genesis)

Gilboa seems to be biased toward a mythical chaos interpretation but this is a reasonable point.  We have a bit of an enigma here.  I would answer his valid objection by stating the ancient Earth could have been thought of a desert while covered with waters. This is what everyone should want to know. How is this possible? What was the Earth when the Spirit was sent forth so as to stimulate it? The sacred author knew that there was a water supply on the Earth's surface and under the surface. He saw what he figured were waters erupt from the surface, react, and wrap around into the the first essential modern atmosphere. Then he saw that God moved the Earth close to the Sun so as to receive her light.

But before these courses of events happened the Earth was moving between stars. She was located far enough away from younger active stars so that her surface waters were not stimulated to liquid. Her surface was 'flooded' over with waters, but the waters were perhaps frozen. And maybe the waters in her subsurface remained liquid via the stimulation of her hot core. But on the outside she was an idle ice world. An ice world can be thought of and described as a desert or a wasteland especially to an ancient Middle Easterner who has never seen one before!

Now you may ask what is the Earth? What was her history prior to the Divine phenomena recorded in Genesis 1? How did she get her water supply? I've already said many times in previous articles that I hold to the assumption that the Earth is an old dark star or rogue planet. I'm not a follower of the solar nebular hypothesis and the Big-Bang with its time constraint. I think the Earth naturally transitioned to her long black dwarf phase from a young active phase such as our Sun. She is supposed to have begun as a star magnitudes larger than our Sun. She was fit to fuse and compress a sold iron core. Prior to her stimulation and transfiguration with God she cooled to a phase where she may have synthesized H & O to H2O at her outer layers not to mention many other crystals, chemicals, compounds and so on. Or she may have assimilated H2O by swinging through dense interstellar medium in her galactic rotation or even by crossing paths with other stars such as TW Hydrae which has an abundant water supply in its formation disk.  And like I said before regardless of what I think about the Earth prior to the main event in Genesis it is clearly described as an astronomical object with surface features as we will further see.  So the only other choices we have other than the above is 

1.  God simply created this astronomical object ex nihilo which He could have done but did not need to since he had gazillions of rogue planets to choose from

2.  It was a planet formed in a primeval nebula of another star not our Sun and got thrown out of orbit, wandering through interstellar space like a rogue. 

But I think planets could very well be old cool stars. Some of these are captured or guided into orbit of newer active stars via their heliospheres. Once they are guided in they swing around the mother star by the fundamental subatomic object connecting as well as constituting all the atoms of the Universe.  But our planet was not captured. It was placed in orbit around the Sun by God on the fourth Divine day in the course it's transfiguration that God initiated perhaps just beyond the Sun's heliosphere.

The beauty of the story is that our history began with God and Heaven and the Earth, alone beyond the Sun's influence. Everything about the Earth as it now is: is unique. The Earth is elect, meaning God chose it out of gazillions. He made a connection with it by emitting the Spirit, and he renewed her face!

Tōhû wābōhû serves as a mystic first description of Earth as the sacred author saw her prior to the miraculous light event enacted by God via the missive Spirit.  

Genesis Series: Universe and Matter in Genesis 1?

Universe and Matter?

Some choose to interpret the universe and matter into the first two verses of Genesis 1. If they choose this route they are tasked with convincing the reader that God and the sacred author used figurative language in this context, e.g. Earth figuratively alludes to matter. They are also tasked with defining the key words universe and matter in no uncertain terms. Then they are tasked with convincing the reader that their definitions of the key words universe and matter is what God and the sacred author directly intended to communicate to the reader via the figures they chose. For example you will have to explain how the sacred author knew your definition of matter's creation ex nihilo well enough to describe it using figures of speech. Did the sacred author see matter, figure it as the Earth, and then describe it as a tohu wabohu? Did the sacred author go to school in Greece, learn Aristotle's concepts of matter and decide to put it in his own words? Is it even possible that the sacred author referred to matter via the word 'Earth'???

Similar with those commentators who wish to adopt models of modern physics and assume them to the Sacred Text. Convince me, that the sacred author saw the Big-Bang or studied general and special relativity as well as quantum mechanics at Oxford. Convince me that the sacred author saw the Higg's Boson field and particle and decided to represent it with the words Earth and tōhû wābōhû.

History of Matter Interpretations

In his survey of Genesis 1 translations and interpretations through the ages Jaki begins with the ancient Jewish sages who lived after the Hellenistic invasion of the Middle East. He mentions:

Some took the tohu and bohu as the prime matter from which light and darkness were respectively created. (Jaki, Stanley J. Genesis Through the Ages, Chapter 1: Genesis 1 and Jewish Sages, p. 37)

Some Jewish sages were likely influenced by Grecian notions of matter perhaps Aristotle's. Aristotle's vague matter concept was linked to his change of substance and form concepts. These terms were used rather ambiguously. But the problem with this line of interpretation of that the concept 'matter' was not something the ancient Hebrew author conceived of. He lived well before Aristotle and the Grecian philosophers. This alone should rule out the matter interpretation of Gen 1:2. Do you really think the ancient Hebrew sacred author and possible prophet knew of the Greek concepts of matter? If so which Greek philosopher did he follow? Aristotle or Democritus? Is it even possible to retain intellectual honesty when travelling down this foreign interpretive path?

Through history the matter interpretation continues to appear. Some Christians have adopted the matter interpretation. Saint Basil, a Church Father from the 4th century was up in arms concerning the matter interpretation:

But the corrupters of the truth, who, incapable of submitting their reason to Holy Scripture, distort at will the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, pretend that these words mean matter. For it is matter, they say, which from its nature is without form and invisible,—being by the conditions of its existence without quality and without form and figure. (Basil Hexaemeron, Homily II)

My favorite example of the sloppy matter interpretation is taken from the drunken-opium induced proto-god of modern cosmology also known as Edgar Allan Poe. After his wife died Poe entered into a severe depression and penned a delusional book called Eureka: A Prose Poem. In this book he used a sloppy translation of Gen 1:2, in particular tōhû wābōhû to help him dream up a primitive version of the Big-Bang model:

We have attained a point where only Intuition can aid us: — but now let me recur to the idea which I have already suggested as that alone which we can properly entertain of intuition. It is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason, or defy our capacity of expression. With this understanding, I now assert — that an intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created — that that Matter which, by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from Nihility, could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of — what? — of Simplicity? 

Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be, when, or if, in its absolute extreme of Simplicity. Here the Reason flies at once to Imparticularity — to a particle — to one particle — a particle of one kind — of one character — of one nature — of one size — of one form — a particle, therefore, “without form and void” — a particle positively a particle at all points — a particle absolutely unique, individual, undivided, and not indivisible only because He who created it, by dint of his Will, can by an infinitely less energetic exercise of the same Will, as a matter of course, divide it. (Taken from Section 02)

It is good to note that Poe preceded LeMaitre's primeval atom hypothesis by about eighty years. But notice how ridiculously Poe contradicts himself in the same sentence. He speculates a discrete particle of one form and yet magically 'without form and void'! An object cannot both have a form and not have a form. By definition an object has form. All types of matter, whether the fundamental objects constituting as well as interconnecting all atoms and the atoms themselves this primal quality called FORM. And void refers to that which lacks form. So then did God disintegrate and then annihilate whatever it was that Earth refers to?

Poe got drunk, inhaled opium and fed off of bad translations. Poe's folly illustrates the faultiness of the 'formless', 'without form', 'shapeless', 'without shape' and 'void' translations of the Hebrew tōhû wābōhû. These translations are heavily influenced by outdated Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophical notions. Philosophic notions such as matter and form and substance have no place in Genesis 1.

In our times commentators continue to read space and matter into the first verses of the great Genesis 1. Some examples include:

Rev. John F. McCarthy: On the plain and superficial level, the earth (haarets) in verse 1 means the land inhabited by man, whether it be thought of as a globe, a disk, or just a territory with as yet unknown borders. On the technical literal level it seems to mean primal matter as the ground of all future corporeal beings.

in another place

Taking, then, a model of modern physics, we can interpret the text as saying that, on the most elementary subatomic level, the "earth" spoken of here is the primal matter which was created as the "ground" of all more organized matter and which was infinitesimal, unstructured, minimally informed, and in a totally fluid state. (see his page:http://www.rtforum.org/)

McCarthy supports the concordist school of interpretation and it seems that he manipulates words like a magician.  In one verse we are shifting from Earth to ground to matter to the subatomic level.  Similarly some misguided interpreters are packing into a single word from Earth to clay to homonids to male and female gametes in their desperation to make Genesis 2 conform to modern theories of evolution.

Next,      

Pastor Bill Randles: The first verse of the Bible, is a summation of all that exists, for there is only Creator and creation. The infinite, personal, almighty, and Holy God made the heavens, (Space) and the Earth, (Matter) in the beginning, (Time). [...] The text simply tells us that when God created matter, it was originally in a formless state, waiting for his creative hand to give shape to it. Our physical world was created first in a formless state, and also in a state of darkness, for it pleased God to shape , and energize the world in later stages of Creation. (see his page:http://billrandles.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/creation-ex-nihilo-genesis-1-pt-2/)

So Heaven refers to space and Earth to matter. Space and matter are concepts. God doesn't create concepts, He creates objects. Created objects relate via objects (mediators) and we conceptualize their relations.

Lakeside Ministries: "WITHOUT FORM AND VOID" [. . .] THE ESSENTIAL MEANING, THEREFORE, IS: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (or SPACE and MATTER), and the matter so created was at first unformed and uninhabited." [. . .] The created cosmos, as discussed earlier, was a tri-universe of TIME, SPACE, and MATTER. Initially there were no stars or planets, only the basic matter component of the space-matter-time continuum. The elements that were to be formed into the planet Earth were at first only elements, not yet formed but nevertheless comprising the basic matter- the "DUST" of the earth. (reference:http://lakesideministries.com/1stCovenant/Genesis/04_GenSect0102_Creation_Itself.htm)

So the Middle Eastern Hebrew author conveniently conceived of a tri-universe of Time, Space and Matter---all Western concepts.

Some few have even tried to fit the Big-Bang into the first three verses (e.g. Gerald Schroeder). The Earth refers to the universe or prime matter (whatever that is), tohu and bohu refers to the state of prime matter, the darkness over faces of waters refers to space-time, the Spirit is moving over space-time and then Bang! Flash! There is light. Out go the discrete photon particles which miraculously stretch as waves. About 13.8 billion years later the scientists detect them with their grand technology and some interpreters proclaim to the world that Genesis 1 was always right after all!!! We have proof in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. And so on. Apparently the sacred author studied mathematical physics and knew that relativity breaks down at the quantum level. He was a follower of Lemaitre, Einstein, Hubble, and the gang. Maybe he built a satellite. Or perhaps he had a vision of the Big-Bang. What do you think?

Personal intentions aside, I think that those who read in prime matter or Big-Bang in the second verse of Genesis join the ranks of drunks, charlatans and frauds. There is no justification for reading the creation of matter into the first sequence of Genesis 1 period. This is an unsound interpretation. Sober faith-filled minds snub their noses at these ridiculous interpretations. They betray a lack of humility and respect for the Sacred Script which implies respect for God and the sacred author who worked together in a mystical relationship as joint authors.

For whatever reason, from time immemorial, probably out of misguided pride or weakness of mind, men try to wed Genesis 1 to the physics and/or philosophy of the day. Or they get delusional. Instead of coming up with creative solutions with what has been given in the Text they get delusions of grandeur. Of course there are also those at the other end of the spectrum who sell out completely on Faith.

Conclusion of the Above

Throughout history matter has been ill-defined. It is a joke of a word. People, including scientists, use it for anything and everything. The sacred author could have cared less about matter. To imagine the sacred author thought of or saw the creation of what would have been to him unknown material and then describe it using figures is an unacceptable stretch of the imagination.

Instead, what is clear is that an astronomical object called Earth is the important object to the sacred author since this is the location where all the supernatural events that he relates take place. And it is important to us since we are conceived and born on Earth, live on Earth and will certainly die on Earth.  Christians also believe that God will create a New Earth after the Resurrection and Last Judgment.

A central theme of Genesis 1 is the Earth. Earth is elect, chosen by God.  This does not imply that the Earth is the center of the universe. This was read into the Text by the Greek influenced ancients. Genesis 1 has nothing to do with physics or philosophy, Greeks or ANE myths, moderns or ancients, believers or atheists, medievals or post-Moderns, rabbis or priests, Popes or gurus, creation ex nihilo or an eternal universe, Big-Bang or the cosmological principle. Genesis 1 has everything to do with a miraculous course of events that God, in the past, wrought in relation to Earth and showed to the sacred author who in-errantly recorded them in the third person. That is all.

The Definition of Universe and Matter

I now want to share a clear definition of universe and matter that I have inherited in order to confirm that there is no possible way the sacred author could be referring to these in the first and second verse of the Bible.

Universe is a concept, to be more precise an abstract concept.  Concept refers to a relation between two or more objects worked out by the brain.  Modify concept to a higher order mode and one has a nest of objects and/or concepts together in abstraction. Universe is an abstract binary conceptual system that relates space and matter.  Matter is quite simply a conceptual nest of all existing objects, i.e. all that which has form.  For example, atoms, stars, trees, and so on.  Space relates lack of form, in other words a static distance between all existing objects.  I would guess that an ancient got sick of saying, "All the trees, and all the hills and the seas, and all the men, women, and children, and all the stars, and space and the aether, etc." So he came up with the bright idea now called Universe or Cosmos. Universe lacks From, this name resolves to a high order abstraction.

Again, space is a sheer concept that refers to nothing in existence. It is all 'where' and no 'what'. Space is distance.  Space does not have form and neither does time. Objects do not occupy space or time. We imagine space and time, and then hopefully define these words but objects are just there, they cannot be defined.

Earth

The events of Genesis 1 are frames of the Universal Movie. And yet they were not a result of Mother Nature, but of God emitting His Spirit and supernaturally transforming the face of the Earth in what I simply call the light-event. And he initiated an exclusive relationship with the Earth that is not found among all the stars of the universe. God accomplished the impossible.

The subject of Gen 1:2 is planet Earth. The Earth of the second verse is not a figure referring to matter or anything else other than the ancient astronomical object under our feet. The second verse picks up with the Earth of the first verse. She is the new subject and the sacred author adds additional information and modification concerning her.

My loose speculation is that the Earth of the first verse and second verse is an old dark star that naturally transitioned up to the time when the Spirit was emitted. The assumption that the Earth is the cinder of what was once a star has rarely been suggested through history but it is much more reasonable than the solar nebular assumption. Perhaps it is even suggested in this lofty sequence from the Book of Job. God speaks to Job:

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?
Tell me, if you possess understanding!
Who set its measurements – if you know –
or who stretched a measuring line across it?
​​​​​​​On what were its bases set,
or who laid its cornerstone –
​​​​​​​when the morning stars sang in chorus,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (NET)

The formation of the Earth seems to be associated with a time of morning stars perhaps referring to the first stars.

Some modern philosophers and physicists, one of whom is Anthony J. Abruzzo have gone as far as to suggest that the Earth is an old dark star that has existed for billions of years, longer than the supposed age of the Universe in modern physical cosmology. This idea makes more sense to me, and fits in better with an interpretation of Genesis 1.  Even G.K. Chesterton made a strange and somewhat mystical allusion to this idea that Earth is a star:

If we once realize all this earth as it is, we should find ourselves in a land of miracles: we shall discover a new planet at the moment that we discover our own. Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star.
---G.K. Chesterton, From The Defendent

In any case sacred author sets up his story perhaps countless years after creation ex nihilo at the previously stated object, the Earth. He did not necessarily have to know anything about Earth's prior history. It was just there in his vision, and he was left to describe it in the Script, generally, as it was just prior to the light-event.

This is my basic interpretive theory to help shed light on the first and second verses of Genesis 1. In the second verse the sacred author speaks of the Earth as an evident object of anterior creation. What he knew of the Earth's history prior to what he was shown is a moot point. All he stated was that God had created a definite object he traced as Earth. I think the sacred author saw the Earth in a vision from a bird's eye view as if orbiting her like a satellite. He saw her face like we see the face of the Moon from Earth, only he had a closer view. The word he chose to describe the full view of her face was the mystic tōhû wābōhû.

Informal Intro to Genesis 1:2

There are all sorts of talk about the grammar of the second verse and how it fits into sequence of the first three verses e.g. disjunctive clause, circumstantial clause, parenthetical clause. Perhaps the insight that circumscribes all the grammar talk is the suggestion by Westermann that the second verse is a ‘this and not yet that’ description. The Earth is described as she appeared just prior to the main event or the light-event as I call it. 

The sacred author was not given a prophetic movie of the Earth's entire history from when she first formed, I assume like all stars do, gravitation-ally from an interstellar cloud with perhaps some trigger event. Instead he was given a some frames of the Earth just prior to God entering the movie. God was about to manifest Himself by transfiguring the Earth via the missive Spirit. The Spirit was primed to receive God's commands and work the Earth in the cold darkness of interstellar space. It was a very exciting time, and the prophet was fortunate to have been given sight of this great miracle, a miracle so great that only little children of the Holy Father can believe it.

The Earth was at that time not unlike other planets or moons.   An old dark star metamorphosed from its younger phase of fusion, compression, crystallization and chemical reaction.  She probably passed through several dense interstellar clouds by which atomic elements and molecules diversified her makeup. The elements of her essence synthesized and solidified. As she cooled she probably synthesized H2O helping form her crust or perhaps assimilated some of her H2O from a dense interstellar medium for water is abundant between stars.

Earth was a wandering star. In its latter stages of development the Earth may have even orbited a younger star besides the Sun. But when God initiated the first described event of our Genesis 1 story the Earth was moving about halfway out from the galactic core in the vicinity of a newer star called by the sacred author the "greater light", the Sun. After God forms the atmosphere, He will move the Earth in a gravitational lock with the Sun later in the story, on the fourth Divine day. He will also place the lesser light, the moon and the other planets of our solar system which he calls stars in close relation to Earth so they can be seen by us and used to keep times, on the same day.  

But when God was about to initiate the light-event the Earth had some sort of core, mantle, crust, a water supply and either no atmosphere or a thin atmosphere. And she was not a ball of chaos. She was slumbering in the cold darkness of space. Some of her surface froze over and she appeared as an astonishing-desert or wasteland. Perhaps she was an ice planet. Not a lot of activity was happening on her surface. There were no living entities. She was waiting to receive the stimulation of the Spirit and glow in the dark!

The seer saw her full face in a prophecy, was mystified and came up with a playful word to first describe her, namely: tōhû wābōhû. There are some excellent scholarly studies of this gem of a Hebrew word.

Genesis Series: "When This and That Was Not Yet . . ."

Introduction

In his book Genesis 1-11 Westermann comes up with a fine association which helps with an interpretation of Genesis 1, in particular Gen 1:1-3. He does a comparative study of ancient creation myths and what scholars have to say about the creation myths and there seems to be a common introduction formula used in most of these. The formula is summed up as

'When this and that was not yet'

This formula is used to frame the creation myths.  I do not believe Genesis 1, 2, 3 are myths, myths defined as made up or fictional events.  I believe Genesis relates true consummated events between real objects. Genesis 1, 2, & 3 uses some figurative concepts but the reason is that God and the sacred author explain past objects in existence and their relations that are not apparent. No one was there to see what happened other than God and the Angels.  In addition the prophetic author had a smaller pool of concepts to use in his description.  He is writing thousands of years ago before all our modern developments.  Thus they (God and the sacred author working together) reasonably choose some figurative concepts so that the reader can visualize what is happening. 

But even though I do not think that Genesis 1 is a myth, it seems reasonable to me that the sacred author would use an opening formula similar in style to other stories of his time.  The sacred author was embedded in an ancient Eastern culture.  So if this is how people opened stories in his time then so be it.  One need not abandon Faith, only assume this study to Faith and further apply some critical thinking skills.  So in my view it can only help to know how people may have related their stories way back in the ancient days.

God, Heaven and Earth in Genesis 1:1    

My translation of Gen 1:1-3 is

In a beginning God had created the form of Heaven and the form of Earth 

And when the Earth was an astonishing-desert with darkness over the face of the abyss 

And the Spirit of God oscillating over the face of the waters: God said, "Let light happen!" And light happened.

The opening phrase is a concept associating the memory of God creating the Heaven and the Earth . The Heaven is an object that exists not a concept (a relation of two or more objects). The Heaven of the first verse is the detached sphere God created and placed Himself in. It is the place where God lives. It is discrete, detached from matter, i.e. the network of atoms.  It makes perfect sense that the sacred author would open with this object since God created this object first and this is from where God will act to transform another object called the Earth.  In telling a story it makes sense to state all the relevant mediators involved in the events.  God acts from His sphere called Heaven.  

Prior to the the main event of Genesis One, God was not yet on the Earth.  Earth was just another old dark star assuming a succession of locations in relation to all other stars of the Milky Way.  Yes God had created it long ago, and perhaps Earth was predestined. God always knew what he would accomplish with the Earth, but even before God moved to enact the miraculous light event, Earth was not special.  There are countless objects out there that God could have just as easily have chosen for his purposes.  But he freely chose to send the Spirit to this astronomical object called Earth.  It is when the Spirit was sent to the Earth, hovering over the surface of the Earth so as to be the Divine mediator of the miraculous light event that all of a sudden this object becomes special, elect, and so on.    

The Earth of Gen 1:1 is also an object that existed and still exists.  It resolves to an astronomical object, not a concept. God creates nouns of reality not concepts.  God uses concepts He conceived to work his miracles, but these resolve to real objects in relation with each other.  The Heaven and the Earth are two real objects.  

The word 'beginning' resolves to a concept.  Time is not a noun of reality.  There is no such thing as time.  Time is not an object, and it certainly does not exist.  Time is a brain-work. The brain works to compare two or more motions where at least one is an assumed constant, e.g. rotation of the Earth and orbit of Earth in relation to Sun.  The conceptual beginning which the sacred author proposes is indefinite for several reasons one of which he decided to omit a definite article, "the".  To omit a definite article is to propose indefiniteness.  A higher conceptual translation is "In a beginning", not "In the beginning".  The definite article was later added to translations because of the misconception that the sacred author is describing matter's creation ex nihilo. 

Instead the sacred author describes an indefinite memory and motion of three objects namely God and the Heaven and the Earth. In other words he knew that these two objects were created by God and existed, but he did not know when in relation to the main light event. He is simply states that these objects had been created by God and had existed for an indefinite time, one that he had no other motion to compare to.  

More importantly the prophet is stating that these are two objects of his story.  As a result of the events of Genesis One a Divine connection is established between the Heaven and the Earth.  Heaven is not woven into the web of atoms, but the Earth is.  God sends forth the Spirit to the Earth thus making a connection.  This is elementary.  Anyone who reads a merism into this verse is missing the point.  It is implied in all of the Genesis One events that God is acting from the sphere He created and placed Himself in. Later on the second Divine day, God calls the Earthen-sphere Heaven as a figurative concept, identifying our Earthen sphere and associating it with His sphere.  One of the reasons He does this is for teaching purposes.  These are some reasons why the Heaven of God gets related at the outset.

Heaven and Earth a Merism for the Universe???  

Why read universe into 'the Heaven and the Earth'?  There is no point.  Yes God created all objects out of nothing.  Every believer knows this.  But Gen 1:1 only states two objects:  the Heaven and the Earth.  Two objects does not equal all objects unless you make the Heaven into a plural and stretch the meaning, something which is inconsistent with the rest of a narrative that rests on unity, integrity and organization.       

The second verse is the proposal of 'when this and not yet that'. We have the Earth, an astronomical object that exists but this Earth is not yet transfigured by a miraculous light event described in the third verse.  This is an Earth that is radically different from the one we know today.  Barren, no living objects, no clear landmasses and oceans.  So a basic description is given as to the state of the Earth just prior to when it was transfigured by God. 

My understanding is that Genesis 1 has nothing to do with the angel's and matter's simultaneous creation ex nihilo. Assuming Faith, there is no reason that God and the sacred author would crunch in countless years between verses 1 to 5. Creation ex nihilo happened before the main event of Genesis One and the sacred author decided not to explain these. Why? Because he was not given a prophetic communication of the angel's and matter's creation ex nihilo. God only took him to this and not yet that.  He had a mission to write that which was shown him from the past and not all history.    His flash point was a phase of the Earth just prior to surface having been transfigured by God.  The Earth was a wandering planet not even in a gravitational lock with our Sun.    

Now, all the educated Gen 1 students know that the creation ex nihilo teaching did not develop for hundreds of years after Gen 1 was written.  No problem at all.  Creation ex nihilo can be drawn from hundreds of other verses in the Bible.  The only problem is coming up with a fresh solution to the Gen 1 Text.  We actually have to think now outside of the old stodgy rules for a change.

Genesis One is a story of election and critical events that define our existence. Just because theologians cannot figure out at what phase of the Earth that the main event initiated, does not mean we have to go adopting a mythical eternal matter, a primeval atom or undefined chaos with germs of intrinsic annihilation (Ala ancient myths, Edgar Allan Poe, Big-Bang and Big-Crunch).  Nor do we have to go reading in a tract on philosophy, e.g. materia informis and the concept time. One is free to do philosophy to solve the problem of universal history but this is not the place.  The Gen 1 author could have cared less about philosophy.  He wrote as a prophet.  Prophets speak forthright.  They do not fop around with philosophy.  Too much is at stake.  Were Jesus and Moses and Elias philosophers or were they prophets?    

The Earth of the first and second verses resolves to an object not a figurative concept.  Concepts are relations of two or more objects. Concepts do not have surface features (e.g. face of the waters) as do physical objects in existence whether that be five billion years ago or today.  Example:  your wife's face has little pools of tears over her eyes.  This is a facial feature similar to the Earth having a face of waters.  

The relation of Gen 1 verses 1, 2, & 3 suggests an undefined prehistory, one that we know little or nothing about. Prehistory is the angel's and matter's history. On the other hand our history begins with the main event, namely:  And let light happen.

Clause Westermann's Thought   

Westermann has some interesting thought concerning a formula that suggests the opening language structure of the prophetic Genesis One story. I think these are useful. 

From Westermann's Genesis 1-11 pages 42-46:

A formula which is so widespread and of such a long standing must say something very important about the idea of creation. The action of creation is understood as a transformation, as a changing of chaos or nothingness, however these are understood, into the world as it now is, that is, into the world which is destined for people to live in. This way of speaking about transformation prevents the world and its existence from being taken for granted; the world in its contingency is traced back to an event which transcends it, namely the act by which the creator brought about change. This way of speaking is of great significance because it is the place where talk about creation becomes a narrative in the strict sense. It brings a flash point into the creation event. It is here that the question of creation ex nihilo must be introduced. Can the phrase “when this and that was not yet” be replaced simply by “when as yet there was nothing” without altering the purpose of the narrative which is to describe creation as a change? . . .

These threads of thought fit in very well with my understanding of the light event. God acts to transfigure a preexisting astronomical object and this transcendent event marks the beginning of our history. Our unique beginning is 'and light happened'. Light references a phenomenon, a dynamic relation of objects. God initiated a unique and miraculous relation with a preexisting astronomical object labelled by the sacred author as the Earth. 

God did this via the Spirit. In my view, the Earth was an old star prior to the main event which is basically the same as a planet. This star existed for billions of years and naturally transitioned to the phase which is summarized by the sacred author in the second verse. When the Earth was a cinder of what was once a star, God sent forth the Spirit and changed it. God renewed the face of this old star and this is the beginning of Man, and not only man but also the first pristine plants, microorganisms, animals, landmasses, and oceans before the Fall.  Westermann continues:

The texts Grapow has collected show the significance of this formula and demonstrate at the same time the different ways in which it can be used. Its basic function is always the same; to fix a point in the course of events when time and existence as experienced in the everyday world are marked off from a primeval state when all that conditions present existence had not yet come to be. One could describe the formula as the narrative trait that marks off primeval time.

So the formula that the sacred author uses is consistent with other creation stories. It marks off a transition from a prehistory which we know little about.  Who presumes to know the entire history of the network of atoms, i.e. matter?  Who presumes to know the entire history of the angels?  No one in their right mind.  Plus for what critical purpose would the info on the history of angels and matter serve us?  Why would God even bother revealing this type of information?  Westermann continues:    

The reason for this is that the formula “when there was not yet” is the narrative characteristic that marks off primeval time. Narrative must speak of something; it cannot tell of nothing.

This calls to mind Gen 1:2, for the explanation of which we have now an important insight. The survey shows that it is Gen 1:2 and not Gen 1:1 that corresponds to the formula.  Consequently the argument for translating Gen 1:1 as a subordinate clause corresponding to the formula disappears. On the other hand Gen 1:2 corresponds exactly, the only adaptation being that the negative expression is changed into a positive one as with the example cited from Egyptian texts. Gen 1:2 must be explained from the history of the tradition of this motif. This means that its intent is not to describe a state that preceded creation, but to mark off God’s act of creation from a “before” which is beyond words and can only be described in negative terms.
The primary purpose of all these sentences is to delimit and not to describe, 

The formula “when there was not yet” [in other words creation ex nihilo] makes it possible for the old creation narratives to describe creation as an event or as an act. Acts and events occur only in a series in any given narrative, linked in some way to what has gone before. Creation is narrated as the primal beginning which took place “when this and that was not yet there.” The purpose of the formula is to give creation the character of an event. 

Gen 1 has no option but to speak in concrete terms which mark off creation as an event from any “before” which can only be described negatively. If Gen 1:1-2 intended to describe creation ex nihilo, then that would be something that simply cannot be reported. One can teach creation ex nihilo; but one cannot narrate it.

Gen 1:1-2 does not describe creation ex nihilo.  But the existence of atoms, stars, and the fundamental objects that mediate light and gravity, not to mention the Angels, prior to the main event of Genesis One was not really chaos or negative it is only dark to the sacred author's mind, so to speak. He did not know much of anything about it other than God created these two objects called Heaven and Earth.  

Gen 1:2 describes an astronomical object, one which has form.  The Earth is described as an astonishing-desert with facial features that is an abyss/the waters.  This object is about to be transfigured by God via the missive Spirit. Gen 1:2 describes an astronomical object which is about to enter in a singular relation with God that no other astronomical object in the universe can boast of.  The Earth was an old transitioned star and at some flash point God changed it forever.  God initiated a unique and dynamic relationship with this dying star that will continue forever. The future fire event predicted by Saint Peter will be the final renewal begun by the light event of Genesis One.

Final Thoughts        

The main event of Genesis One is the transfiguration [i.e. change of the surface] of the Earth to a renewed astronomical object fit for Man.  Soon later Adam and Eve sinned in Paradise and perhaps were detained there asleep so that the Earth could cycle through a fallen course of Nature for millions or a few billions of years.  So much so that the new Earth Adam first saw when he was created, and the old cursed Earth Adam and Eve were banished to from Paradise were very much different in spite of some similarities.

Genesis Series: The Hebrew Shamayim

Some translate the first verse of the Bible

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Heaven is sometimes given a plural translation. The justification for this seems to stem from grammatical studies that the Hebrew word transliterated 'shamayim' is what they call a Hebrew dual word. There is no singular variant of the Hebrew shamayim. So I looked into this and came to my own conclusion that the Hebrew word 'shamayim' appears as a dual because it is a compound of the Hebrew word 'mayim' meaning waters.

Hebrew, like most other languages, has two characteristic numbers: singular and plural. A third is called the dual which is a modification of the plural preserved by aid of punctuation. The purpose of this article is to present my opinion that the Hebrew shamayim appears to be a dual since it has the Hebrew dual mayim built into it. If I can rest on this assumption then the referent of shamayim is not always many objects or a pair of objects and from a sheer grammatical conception (let alone an interpretive conception assuming Faith and reason) need not be always be translated as a plural.

Some Hebrew words are plural only or dual only. Plural or dual only are words that have no singular variant. An English example is 'glasses' or 'scissors'. The Hebrew word for water, mayim, is supposedly a dual only. For whatever reason the ancients conceived, uttered and traced the word referencing water as a pair. Perhaps the reason is they understood the basic cyclical relation between the water of the land and the water of the sky.  And not only this . . . it would seem that God used some of the waters already present on Earth's surface to make our first modern atmosphere (more on this in future articles).

It seems that this Hebrew word mayim is built into the Hebrew word for heaven: shamayim. Shamayim could be a compound of 'waters' and a prefix. Lets take a look at a couple of sources.

1. The great Medieval Jewish interpreter Rashi.

Rashi's loose translation and interpretation of Genesis 1:8:

God called the expanse "heaven" because it was made from fire and water. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.

And Rashi's notes:

And God called the expanse heaven: Heb. שָׁמַיִם [This is a combination of the words מַיִם שָׂא, bear water (Gen. Rabbah 4:7); שָׁם מַיִם, there is water; אֵשׁ וּמַיִם, fire and water. He mingled them with one another and made the heavens from them (Chag. 12a).

So with Rashi there is this concept that the Hebrew word shamayim is a word combination: fire in waters, or fire and waters or fiery waters.

2. To paraphrase, scholars Bauer and Leander in Historische Grammatik der hebraischen Sprache des Alten Testaments I return to Proto-semitic postulating the reconstruction of samayim from *sa, which is according to them the (demonstrative and) relative pronoun, and *maiu “water.” *sa-maii would yield the meaning “place of water.”

3. Min Suc Kee in a little article from the Jewish Bible Quarterly states:

The word shamayim (sky, heaven), which is closely associated with water in the cosmologies and takes the same intriguing dual ending, could be explained in the same manner. A point of interest here is that fact that the words denoting "sky' in the Semitic languages are all spelled by prefixing s/sh to the words meaning "water" in general. Simply understood, for example, shamayim in Hebrew or Aramaic and šamu in Akkadian could be seen as a term combining "of/one of which"(ša) and "waters" (mayim/mu). One might therefore assume that the sky was "one of the waters/of the waters." (see http://jbq.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/403/jbq_403_mayim.pdf)

4. And from Fabre d'Olivet's etymology:

I am taking up here, the etymology of the word [shamayim] heavens, because it is attached to the one I have been explaining in this article, and because it signifies literally, the waters, raised, brilliant and glorified; being formed from the word [mayim], waters, and from the root which is united to it. This root contains the idea of that which rises and shines in space, that which is distinguished and noticeable by its elevation or its splendour." (From The Hebrew Tongue Restored)

So I conclude the Hebrew word shamayim is a dual since it has the Hebrew dual mayim built into it. Thus shamayim can reference a single object or many objects pending the context. For example in the second day sequence of Genesis One God names a singular object, thus the name should be translated in the singular Heaven not the plural Heavens. If He made a single thing that is Earth's atmosphere then it follows that the name should be translated singular for this context. If God or a sacred author reference the many stars and galaxies seen through the night sky then the word could be translated in the plural: heavens.

In the Bible shamayim seems to reference either God's sphere or house, the Earth's sphere or atmosphere, or the stellar spheres seen through the night sky, the stars, interstellar clouds, galaxies and so on. So all the translator need do is decide what the word references in a particular context and mark singular or plural for his readers. It all boils down to context. Context, context, context. There is no justification for translating oblivious to context or making a case that the shamayim of Genesis 1 or Gen 1:8 should be translated as a plural based on morphology alone.

Back to Genesis 1:1.  I am of the opinion that the shamayim of the first verse of the Bible refers to God's Sphere, the Heaven of God, the Heaven of the Blessed, the Place where God lives, God's House, God's enclosure, God's Tabernacle.  Describe it how you will, but the important interpretive point is that it is an object (that which has form).  Thus it should be translated in the singular. There is only one Heaven housing God. This is the object from where God triggers the main light event described in the subsequent verses of the Genesis narrative. The name Heaven of the second day sequence refers to Earth's atmosphere which God forms from the H2O, gas molecules and chemical compounds of this astronomical object's surface. Thus 'shamayim' of Genesis 1:8 should also be translated in the singular.

God named Earth's brilliant atmosphere Heaven in order to plant in our brains a connection between His most exalted Sphere where he lives and Earth's Sphere.  The Shamayim of God is of course disconnected from the all the atoms of the Universe, as well as the fundamental objects which interconnect all atoms, constitute them and mediate light and gravity between them all.  God could have his House, his Shamayim close to the Earth or the Sun and humans would never be able to see it, detect it, locate it, and so on.  And yet the prophetic author of Genesis One had a vision of God and Heaven in close relation to the Earth.  God, Heaven, and Earth are all relevant objects involved in the miraculous light event and thus described to open the narrative.

Genesis Series: Key Hebrew Words in Gen 1:1

The Hebrew Aleph-Thao Article

There is an important and meaningful Hebrew preposition used in the first verse of the Bible. This preposition modifies the noun Heaven and the noun Earth with distinction. Sadly, it has rarely if ever been translated in all the versions of the Bible. Even the literal versions of the Bible as well as the Hebrew interlinear that I use omit this article. I just came across this article while studying my Hebrew grammar. I knew it prior to this but no one ever clearly explained to me the meaning.

Now that I know what it means, I am disappointed that few translators in history bother to convey it or add it to his notes. It matters not that this preposition has no equivalent in the other languages. Once the translator understands this Hebrew word concept, all he need do is create a new mode of uttering and tracing the concept using the idiom at his disposal. In short he must generate a new spoken word as well as traced word and note what it means. Or just leave the Aleph-Thao in and everyone should be taught what it means. Maybe it would be awkward but oh well. If God and the sacred author used this article to convey meaning, its 'presence' trumps eloquence. Perhaps if this preposition had always been translated it would be accustomed to seem eloquent.

How could this Hebrew prepositive article just be skipped over in one of the most prominent verses of the entire Bible? This word concept is crucial in this context.

The Hebrew preposition is an Aleph-Thao script. The preposition is composed of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. What is its meaningful relation?

A basic understanding of this word is that it is used to introduce a semantically definite direct object. This alone is enough to destroy any understanding of the Heaven and the Earth in Gen 1:1 as referring to a conceptual figure. The Heaven and the Earth of Gen 1:1 considered alone or taken together does not refer to a concept or figure of speech.  The Heaven and the Earth of Gen 1:1 both respectively refer to an object.  We define object as that which has form. God created this thing. It is spatially separated, bound from its immediate surrounding. In the case of Heaven it is disconnected from matter. It exists even prior to the main event described in Gen 1:1, and the same goes for the astronomical object called Earth.

But now lets get into the concept of this singular Hebrew preposition. I take from The Hebrew Tongue Restored by the french man Olivet:

This is the designative preposition (Aleph-Tao), which I have mentioned as having no corresponding article. . .The movement which expresses this preposition with the nouns which it modifies, is that by which it puts them en rapport as governing or governed, as independent one of the other and participating in the same action. I name it designative, on account of the sign of signs, Thao, from which it is derived. It characterizes sympathy and reciprocity when it is taken substantively. Joined to a noun by a hyphen, it designates the substance proper and individual, the identity, the selfsameness, the seity, the thou-ness, if I may be permitted this word; that is to say, that which constitutes, that which implies something apart from me, a thing that is not me; in short, the presence of another substance. This important preposition, of which I cannot give the exact meaning, indicates the coincidence, the spontaneity of actions, the liaison, the ensemble and the dependence of things. (p. 116)

This incredible effort on his part is followed by an exact translation in English:

the-selfsameness-of-heaven and the-selfsameness-of-earth

The concept of this Hebrew preposition in context to God and the Heaven and the Earth can be taken in both above meanings. First, there is sympathy and reciprocity between God and the Heaven and the Earth. This is established by the light event described in Gen 1:3. God created the Heaven and the Earth to be together in a mutual exchange; a harmony.

Second, the Earth already consisted of a core, mantle and surface prior to the main event described in the third verse.  In other words the Earth had form and existed prior to the Spirit having been sent to it.  The Earth existed from core to surface, from inside to out prior to the main event. The Earth had form. It had all of its elements and molecules. The Earth was on its own prior to God electing it and performing His miraculous light event with Earth as target. Similar things can be said of the Heaven.  The Heaven where God lives had form and existed prior to the main light event.

What is fascinating about this writer, Fabre d'Olivet, is that in his subsequent section on Hebrew Tense, he, in spite of himself and custom, reveals the implications of this unique Hebrew preposition on the translation of Genesis 1:1-2:

One must first examine the intention of the writer, and the respective condition of things. Thus, to give an example, although, in the French and English word-forward translation, conforming to custom, I have rendered the verb bara, of the first verse of the Cosmogony of Moses, by he created, I have clearly felt that this verb signified there, he had created; as I have expressed it in the correct translation; for this antecedent nuance is irresistibly determined by the verb haitha it existed, in speaking of the earth an evident object of an anterior creation. (p. 191)

Olivet explains that the two Hebrew tenses convey temporal continuity: from extreme past to present and from present to extreme future. The context, or an inflection can restrict the action to some point on the conceptual timeline. So now assimilating these concepts I could translate Gen 1:1-2 something like this:

In a beginning, God had created the form Heaven and the form Earth.  And when the Earth existed as an astonishing-desert, etc.God said, "Let light happen." And light happened.

The correct relation between the Heaven and the Earth is that God connects Heaven and Earth by the effusion of the Spirit and establishes a unique relation between the two objects in the light event. In Gen 1:1 the Heaven and the Earth are not a figurative concept referring to the universe. They are not a merism. This is a sloppy misconception. Rather, they are two distinct objects brought together by God in the light event. God lives in Heaven. It is implied that God is miraculously acting upon the Earth from Heaven. God, from Heaven manifests Himself by inducing a miraculous change of this astronomical object called Earth via the Spirit. God from Heaven lights up the Earth. God stimulated the face of the Earth like the Sun stimulates your face. God miraculously transfigured the face of the Earth which had already existed for countless years.

I have not mentioned this on the blog yet but nowhere in the third verse does it convey that God created or made light. The sacred author simply writes: And light happened. He does not write: And God made light, or And God created light. People read this into the text because they do not understand what light refers to. Light refers to a concept, that is a dynamic relation between objects (atoms) via an invisible mediator. The physical mediator of light phenomenon had already existed countless years prior to the main event described in the story of Genesis One. Natural, physical light happened as soon as the network of atoms existed. Light is just atoms impinging upon the fundamental objects or mediators which interconnect and even constitute all atoms [at various frequencies].  Torsion signals physically affect the receiving atoms, inducing motion. This atomic action and reaction is a model of the light event described in Genesis One, only the sending atom, so to speak is God and the receiving atom is the Earth and the Mediator between the two is the Holy Spirit. The light of Genesis 1:3 is a miraculous phenomenon consummated by God through the missive Spirit.

The Earth existed billions of years prior to the main event. It was a clearly bound from its immediate surrounding (had form).  Maybe Earth was among a first generation of astronomical objects formed from within the network of atoms of our galaxy. The Aleph-Tao article conveys the truth that the Earth had already been created, "in a beginning". I think Earth is a star which at the time of the main event was a cinder of what was once a star. It was a dark star. A black dwarf. A rogue planet.  But regardless of what I think about its history the Earth is clearly marked in the Text as a pre-existing astronomical object with surface features.  And when it was this, then God miraculously worked the surface which was like a desert and had a froze over water and chemical supply. When God initiated the light-event the surface broke out: it jumped, making the atmosphere. 

The underlying meaning of the Divine word concept; light; is that God initiated a singular manifestation, a dynamic relation with the Earth via the Spirit which culminated in the miraculous creation and motion of Adam and Eve. The light-event is the symphony of God orchestrated from Heaven to the Earth. It is one of God's greatest works where He shows forth such great purpose and prowess.

Genesis One is not a statement of creation ex nihilo. God created the Earth as a definite astronomical object long before God initiated the transfiguration of its face in the awesome light event. Matter, the network of atoms, already existed when God created the Earth. God had created the Earth from the network of atoms prior to the main event. Earth's core, its stable base, was gradually forged by stellar nucleosynthesis prior to the main event. Subsequent to fusion the Earth shed its outer layers, formed crystals, molecules and settled into a dark desert-like water-world not unlike more than a few observed planets and moons. This all prior to the main-event.

After the Earth had naturally transitioned as an astronomical object for billions of years, when it was a dark star: God initiated a singular relationship with it by sending forth the Spirit and transfiguring its face in the light event. No other astronomical object has ever or will ever receive the Divine miraculous relation. Earth is elect. This is why we will never find living entities on any other planet.

The Hebrew Verb Bara

The Hebrew verb bara takes on the meaning 'to make something from nothing' and 'to make something from something' in Gen 1:1. The Heaven is made from nothing. The Earth is made from pre-existing matter. All these circular debates over the years as the the meaning of the Hebrew 'bara' in context to Gen 1:1 are nullified just by understanding that the Heaven and the Earth are two definite objects. They had form prior to the main event of the narrative. God and the sacred author made this clear via the Aleph-Thao article, they placed in front of the noun Heaven and the noun Earth. God decisively chose his concept of the Heaven and the Earth into existence long before the main event of Genesis One. The main event sealed the Earth with God's love and election. It established a harmony between the Heaven and the Earth. And in the end the plan is realized fully when God not only lives in the Heaven but he also lives on the Earth. God does not live on Mars or any other astronomical object. God lives on Earth.

Our millions of artificial concepts have adulterated this Sacred Text. It is so simple yet so profound. The manner in which God did his awesome work and the manner in which He conveyed His work is astonishingly lucid, direct, straightforward, clear-cut. It was effortlessly beautiful and wondrous.