בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א = “In the Beginning” or “Began to Create”
In Gen. 1.1 the JPS translation goes against the English near consensus by translating בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א as “When God began to create…” rather than “In the beginning…”. I am having a difficult time understanding why this is so. The bet has a sewa underneath so I guess this could result in “beginning” being indefinite (“In a beginning…”) but I am not sure how the JPS reached “began to create”.
The LXX renders it Ἐν ἀρχῇ. All the English translations that I have consulted say “In the beginning…”. The French Louis Segond renders it Au commencement.
The only translation I have found that goes the direction of the JPS is the French TOB version which renders it Lorsque Dieu commenca la creation. That does not explain the justification. Does anyone have any suggestions to why “When God began to create” would work?
From Nahum Sarna’s JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis:
“When God begun to create This rendering of the Hebrew looks to verse 3 for the completion of the sentence. It takes verse 2 to be parenthetical, describing the state of things at the time when God first spoke. Support for understanding the text in this way comes from 2:4 and 5:1, both of which refer to Creation and begin with “When.” The Mesopotamian creation epic known as Enuma Elish also commences the same way. In fact, enuma means “when.” Apparently, this was a conventional opening style for cosmological narratives. As to the peculiar syntax of the Hebrew sentence—a noun in the construct state (be-reʾshit) with a finite verb (baraʾ)—analogies may be found in Leviticus 14:46, Isaiah 29:1, and Hosea 1:2. This seems to be the way Rashi understood the text.
The traditional English translation reads: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This rendering construes the verse as an independent sentence complete in itself, a solemn declaration that serves as an epitomizing caption to the entire narrative. It takes the initial word be-reʾshit to mean “at the beginning of time” and thus makes a momentous assertion about the nature of God: that He is wholly outside of time, just as He is outside of space, both of which He proceeds to create. In other words, for the first time in the religious history of the Near East, God is conceived as being entirely free of temporal and spatial dimensions.
In favor of the traditional English translation are the arguments that be-reʾshit does not have to be in the construct state and that the analogies of 2:4 and 5:1, as well as of Enuma Elish, are inexact. In each instance, the word translated “when” is literally “in the day,” which is not the case in this verse.”
Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 5.
This verse is discussed here as well:
http://goddidntsaythat.com/2010/05/05/first-things-first-stress-focus-and-biblical-hebrew-word-order/
Mike: Would this lead to a more accurate English translation saying something like “When God began to create the heavens and the earth (the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters) and God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.”?
WE: Thanks! I will take a look at that link.
I’m not sure. Note that Sarna’s gives both sides, but doesn’t actually draw a clear conclusion. Personally, my Hebrew isn’t super strong, so I can’t really make a call, but I thought it would be helpful to provide some explanation from one of the JPS translators in terms of what they were thinking.
Mike,
Mine either. I am unsettled on this matter. Maybe there is a reason for disagreement in that it could go either direction?
That might be it.
The translation in JPS goes back 1,000 years to Rashi.
I have an explanation here.
-Joel
Joel,
Thanks. I will take a look at your post.
Take a look at my 2008 Vetus Testamentum article** for a discussion of this construction. I argue that it is an unmarked relative, “in (the) initial period (that) God created…”. Sounds rough, but it makes sense in the context of the argument. And the smoothest English equivalent is “When God began to create”
**2008. The Restrictive Syntax of Genesis i.1. VT 58 (1): 56-67.
(available at http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/robert-holmstedt/holmstedt-pdf-files/)
The link was broken. Can you post it again?
Sorry — that end parens mark shouldn’t be in there: http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/robert-holmstedt/holmstedt-pdf-files/
Thanks!