Academic: God is the Creator, but not of Earth

Professor Ellen van Wolde has proposed an alternative translation for the Hebrew word “bara” in Genesis 1, suggesting that it should be retranslated as “separate” rather than “create”[1][2][3]. This proposal has sparked discussions and debates within the academic and religious communities regarding the interpretation of the creation account in Genesis.

The notion of God as the Creator is wrong, claims a top academic, who believes the Bible has been wrongly translated for thousands of years. Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew. She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals. Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia. She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb “bara”, which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate”. The first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth” According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing. Prof Van Wolde, who once worked with the Italian academic and novelist Umberto Eco, said her new analysis showed that the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration. She said: “It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself.” …

 

via God is not the Creator, claims academic – Telegraph.

While some scholars find her approach thought-provoking, others are cautious about its implications and the philosophical considerations it raises[4]. Van Wolde’s argument is based on cognitive linguistics for Biblical studies, and it has been the subject of analysis and critique in various academic publications[1][2][3][5].

Citations:

^{[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309089209348155
[2] https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/did-god-create-heaven-and-earth-or-just-separate-them-an-analysis-of-ellen-van-woldes-hypothesis-part-1-of-2
[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/43894175
[4] https://goddidntsaythat.com/2009/10/15/review-professor-ellen-van-wolde-on-bara-in-genesis/
[5] https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/download/11258/8602/29650}