Separated in the beginning

[Chris Sergeant]

The opening section of the Bible which states God created heaven and earth is a mistranslation, according to a professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

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" ]

Of little relevance to most people, unless they employ words such as “inerrant” or claim biblical support for believing the Earth was created 6k years ago.

Some links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... demic.html
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... _earth.php
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article ... essor_says

[Roger Stanyard]

The opening section of the Bible which states God created heaven and earth is a mistranslation, according to a professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

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" ]

Of little relevance to most people, unless they employ words such as “inerrant” or claim biblical support for believing the Earth was created 6k years ago.

Some links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... demic.html
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... _earth.php
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article ... essor_says

Well the fundies in the USA are re-writing the Bible to exclude any liberal "bias" so I can't see them bothering about "inaccurate" translations. What matters now is not whether they agree with what the Bible says but whether the Bible agrees with what they say. It's a new twist to the fundamentalist ideology.

[Paul Braterman]

The claim that bara in Genesis 1:1 does not mean "created" seems strange. In Rabbinical Hebrew, at least, the present participle form borei is used with a single object in benedictions over food and drink, and a completely different word is used for separating in Genesis 1:3 (day and night) and 1:7 (waters above and below the firmament).