Comments on: “When God Began to Create…”: Nouns Bound to Verbs

By: arachnophilia

arachnophilia — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 04:11:15 +0000

> If reading ראשׁית as a construct is OK, then in verse 2 the first clause must have been ותהי הארץ , not וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה …

i don’t understand your logic. wouldn’t deviation from the standard syntax be a good hint that verse 2 is NOT the independent clause, and that it is part of a larger subordinate structure?

By: Florin Lăiu

Florin Lăiu — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:31:39 +0000

The noun ראשׁית may indeed be a construct for בָּרָא the finite verb which follows. If we pay attention to the first clause only, it might be read as subordinate.
There is no need to vocalize ברא as an infinitive construct, even if it is possible. However, if one would emend the Masoretic vocalization, why not emend the vowel of the initial word בָרֵאשִׁת bAre’shit ?
My understanding is that ראשׁית does not require definite article, as well as other nouns like תהום , תֵּבֵל , שׁאוֹל . נ . In Is 46:10, this noun is also used without the definite article, though it is definite by itself: מַגִּיד מֵרֵאשִׁית אַחֲרִית. The drop of definite article is common in poetry (archaic language). It seems that the noun ראשׁית receives definite article only when it means “first-fruts” (לָרֵאשִׁית Ne 12:44). There is no other instance where ראשׁית receives definite article. Its antonym אַחֲרִית is also used without definite article, as well as its synonym ראשׁ (beginning) in Pr 8:23; Is 40:21; 41:4,26; 48:16; (מראשׁ); Qoh 3:11 (מראשׁ ועד סוף). The noun ראשׁ receives article when it means “head”, “chief” etc., but not with temporal meaning.
And there is another problem that appears if we choose to see ראשׁית as a construct in Gen 1:1. What about the syntax of verse 2 ? If reading ראשׁית as a construct is OK, then in verse 2 the first clause must have been ותהי הארץ , not וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה … Thus my conclusion is that the traditional translation (cf. Old Greek, Vulgate, Targum) is the best solution, up to this time.

By: arachnophilia

arachnophilia — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:49:34 +0000

i’d like to suggest that ברא is mispointed: that it shouldn’t read בָּרָא but rather בְּרֹא as in genesis 5:1. this would make it an infinitive construct, and make it grammatically similar to both genesis 2:4b and genesis 5:1, which are both (temporal?) infinitive constructs, preceded by complex prepositions. this makes the most sense, especially considering that genesis 5:1,2 was written as a direct compliment to genesis 1. and frankly, i think that makes a whole lot more sense than having a finite verb.

this would render the verse, “when god began creating…” which is similar to the nJPS translation you quoted above. for the record, i happen to think that the third verse is the independent clause, and the waw-consecutive can safely be ignored as it can in genesis 6:2.

By: Edward T. Babinski

Edward T. Babinski — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:17:45 +0000

Mark S. Smith in his new book, THE PRIESTLY VISION OF GENESIS sums up the case nicely, and agrees with your translation as do Jewish translators and some recent Christian Bible translators. Indeed, according to Mark, your translation of Genesis 1 has become the majority opinion.

By: Robert Holmstedt

Robert Holmstedt — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:31:44 +0000

In light of your comments, I’d be curious what you think of my argument about the syntax of this verse: VT 58(1):56-67. (You can download it from my site.)

Ellen van Wolde (JSOT 34(1):3-23) likes my analysis but takes me to task for a poor final translation (it was openly bumpy due to source and target language differences, which I discuss in a final footnote, but I clearly failed in fully justifying that rhetorical move).

By: anummabrooke

anummabrooke — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:15:57 +0000

Hi, Pete, thanks for reading. When I talked about the absence of a definite article, I was just trying to articulate the difficulty that beginning Hebrew students often have with the form: they hear “the” in English, and look for it in the Hebrew.

My reservation about “at first” is that, sure, it relieves the trouble in English, but the grammatical warrants for it from the Hebrew aren’t self-evident: we’re translating a Hebrew noun (ראשית) with an English adjective (“first”) without that English adjective even being clearly substantive (well, now or is it? Basically the phrase is elliptical for “at the first”…I dunno). It’s a possibility, but we’ve got this very well-attested grammatical feature—construct forms bound to finite verbs to form subordinate clauses—with many examples parallel to Gen 1:1. I think much might depend on whether one *really wanted* the remainder of verse 1 to be a main clause rather than a subordinate clause.

Pete, I never thanked you for your posts on definiteness. I’ll thank you here, if you’ll promise not to tell everyone how interesting I think definiteness in Hebrew is.

By: Peter Bekins

Peter Bekins — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:45:35 +0000

Well, if you translate רשית as “beginning” then it seems like it needs a definite article, but not if you translate it as “first”. It works fine as “At first, God created…”

Personally, I don’t really have a preference between the traditional reading and the construct.

Pete