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| PentecostalTheology.com
I had once heard that one of the remarkable thing about the creation account in Genesis, as compared to the other creation accounts of the cultures of the surrounding area is that God creates the universe out of nothing, or ‘ex nihilio’; whereas the other creation accounts usually had a god or gods forming the created universe out of some sort of pre-existing chaos.
A cursory reading of Genesis in KJV would seem to indicate ex nihilio:
King James Version: Genesis 1:1-2
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
However, reading Young’s Literal Translation, it seems that the original Hebrew account was written in the present tense, and the language would actually indicate the formation of the universe out of chaos, using phrases like ‘preparing the heavens and earth’ and ‘the earth hath existed waste and void’.
Young’s Literal Translation: Genesis 1:1-2
1 In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — 2 the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,
My question is how would early Jewish reader/hearer have interpreted this passage? Would the concept creation ‘ex nihilo’ have stuck out to them, in contrast to the other cultures around them? Is the Young translation wording here just indicative of the difficulties with translating this text’s meaning?
