Fundamentally

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth  Genesis 1:1 NASB In the beginning – Did you realize that the very first word in the Hebrew Bible has been the subject of intense theological interpretation rather than translation?  You might have noticed that something was amiss when the JPS translation (1985) reads, “When…

The Problem with Bet

 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1  NASB In the beginning – When does it all begin?  Most believers point to the first verse of Genesis.  “It begins with the creation of heaven and earth,” they reply.  Theologians point to the same verse and proclaim that it all started with…

Second Story

In the beginning Genesis 1:1 In The Beginning – The Tanakh opens with a single word, bere’shiyt, a compound of the preposition be and re’shiyt, a noun that means “the first, the chief, the best.” The rabbis noted a curious thing about bere’shiyt.  It begins with a bet, the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. …

Why, Not How

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Genesis 1:1 In The Beginning – Rethink from the beginning.  Start with the beginning and think again about what it says.  In our culture, we are so saturated with scientific naturalism (the idea that all explanation must be found within a closed-universe model of inferential…