Here is the New American Standard 's Version (1) translation of the opening and ending verses of the story of how @Élöhîm re-formed the earth and re-filled it with life in Genesis One. Other translations are much of a muchness.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1.1) These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. (Gen 2.4)
This is how the verses are formatted in the Masoretic text (2) (3)
Gen 1.1: berë@shîth bärä@ @Élöhîm @ëth hashshämayim we@ëth hä@ärets # Gen 2.4: @ëlleh thôledhôth hashshämayim wehä@ärets behibäre@äm ~ (space) <> (indent) beyôm øásôth YHWH @Élöhîm @erets weshämäyim #
This is how I translate and format them.
In a beginning @Élöhîm brought into existence the heavens and the earth (the cosmos). These [are] the proceedings of the heavens and the earth when they were brought into existence. When YHWH @Élöhîm fashioned land and sky (planet earth).
In a literary analysis I did of Genesis One, I concluded that Genesis One is an oral story written down verbatim and likely told around the campfires for generations. Within that context, I think that Genesis 1.1 was the Ancient Near East equivalent of the current practice of dimming the lights to let the audience know that this particular story was about to begin. The need to capture the audience's attention before beginning a live performance has never changed down through the millennia of storytelling, whether by a storyteller or by actors on a stage or projected on a screen. I strongly suspect that the storyteller would have stated Genesis 1.1 in a loud booming voice in order to quiet the conversations around the campfire and grab the attention of the audience. This one short sentence effectively introduces the main character, @Élöhîm, and focuses the audience's attention on the theme of creation. However, the sentence structure of Genesis 1.1 is more a part of the discussion of the first sentence of Section 2 than it is part of the discussion of the ending transition point of Section 1. So, that discussion is in the essay on Section 2. Genesis 1.1
Gen 2.4: @ëlleh thôledhôth hashshämayim wehä@ärets behibäre@äm ~ (space) <> (indent) beyôm øásôth YHWH @Élöhîm @erets weshämäyim #
This is the first of the five ending transition statements I see in Genesis.(4) In terms of its formatting, it looks to me like the scribe(s) creating the verse divisions in the Masoretic text thought that the two halves of the verse did not form a complete sentence, and therefore separated the two halves of verse 4 by putting the second half on a new line and indenting it. Also, the atnah (~) indicates a pause when the verse is read out loud. So, the oral tradition preserves a separation between the two halves of the verse as well as the written tradition.(5) However, the Septuagint (6) version reads:
This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, when they were made, in the day in which the Lord God made the heaven and the earth. <> {} HAútay hay biblos genésteos ouranoû kaì gâys, hóte egéneto, hây haymérai epoíayse Kúrios ho Theòs tòn ouranòn kaì tàyn gâyn,
The Septuagint translators did not indicate a separation within the verse. Does the Masoretic Hebrew text preserve a more accurate rendition of the verse by splitting it into two sections, even though it would have used later Hebrew texts than those used to translate the Septuagint? I think that very likely. I agree with the Masoretic text that Genesis 2.4 is not one sentence, but no English translation I've found reflects the formatting in the Masoretic text. They all translate it as one sentence. But, again, I don't think it is one sentence. Combining the Septuagint and Masoretic texts, I think verse 4 should be translated and formatted as follows:
This is the book of the proceedings of the heavens and the earth in their being brought into existence # (Indent) When YHWH @Élöhîm fashioned land and sky #
My hypothesis is this first transition statement represents the end of one story, Genesis One, or How @Élöhîm re-formed and re-filled the earth, and the beginning of the next story, Genesis Two, or How YHWH @Élöhîm created hä@ädhäm and his ishshäh (wife). Since they are two separate stories, they might very well have been on separate scrolls, especially since the ending verses for each of these sections uses the phrase "This is the book of the proceedings of . . .". Genesis One: Author and Scribe Now I also call these transition statements, "signature statements," because I think they give the name of the author of the section, except in Genesis One. As I stated earlier, based on my literary analysis of the text of Genesis One, I concluded that Genesis One is an oral story written down verbatim. It works beautifully as an oral story, but it's actually a little boring as a written story because of the repetition an oral story needs to keep its listeners engaged. The story of @Élöhîm sculpting the earth and creating life upon it had to have come directly from @Élöhîm or His angels. It could not have come from Adam's observations or memories because he was not yet present at the time. I don't think that the story was composed after the Flood in response to the other versions of creation that had started popping up. I strongly think that Rûãch @Élöhîm would have made sure the Line of the Promise had His true story first before hearing any alternate versions. So, who told the story first? Did YHWH Himself as the Angel of YHWH tell Adam and Eve this story, just sitting around in the Garden of Eden in the evening shooting the breeze? Or, was it perhaps angels teaching them about the world in which they lived, as suggested by the Book of Jubilees? (7) I rather like the idea of YHWH Himself telling the story, but there's no way to know that from the text. So, I speculate that the signature statement gives no human author because the author wasn't human. The answer to who told the story of Genesis One first is one that we'll have to wait for until we get to heaven. Who wrote the story down and when? There's no way to tell. Was it Adam? He certainly could have during his 930-year long life. I find it difficult to believe that Adam had not heard the story of how @Élöhîm reformed the earth and refilled it with life. Did Noah transcribe the story during the years before the Flood in order to preserve it? Or, did a post-Flood scribe write down the oral story to preserve it as alternate versions began to appear after YHWH assigned the nations to Watchers to rule following the Tower of Babel incident and people began substituting false gods for the Most High God? I don't know the answer but I think that the oral story is original to YHWH @Élöhîm and not composed by someone in the Line of the Promise in response to the Sumerian stories. I think Noah transcribing it before the Flood in order to preserve the story is a likely scenario. It would be a logical thing to do for an oral story. Was it eventually written down on a vellum scroll instead of on clay tablets for ease of transport, and copied as needed down through the centuries, leaving no original preserved in the desert sand? There's no way to know, but even so, I believe that the oral story of how @Élöhîm re-formed the earth and re-filled it with life, as it lay a wasteland and empty of life under the cover of darkness, was composed before the similar Ancient Near East stories. So, on to the next section, Genesis 2:4b to 5.1a, the book of the proceedings of Adam.
FOOTNOTES
1 Lockman Foundation. New American Standard Bible, Reference Edition. La Habra, CA: Foundation Press Publications.1973, 1334p., 396p., 115p. Return
2 Elliger, K. and Rudolph, W., eds. Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 1967/77, 1574p Return
3 My transliteration system is my own. I based it on the official transliteration system, but re-worked it for use in MS Word; the diacritical marks were not available
in MS Word in 1996 when I started my research (or, at least I didn’t know how to access them). While this mostly affects the vowels, I also use @ for aleph
and ø for ayin. Half the time I could not tell the difference between the apostrophe and the reverse apostrophe due to bad eyesight. So, I found symbols that I could see
and easily distinguish between for clarity. Return
4 Doede, D.M. "On the Generations Of: A Pattern of Usage in Scripture." Badgerholt 2.0, WordPress Return
5 I acknowledge there could be all sorts of reasons for the Masoretic formatting that I don't know about, but, nevertheless, the separation within the verse does
exist in the Masoretic text. Return
6 Brenton, Sir Lancelot C.L. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. London: Bagster & Sons. 1851 (2001, US: Hendrickson), 1138p, 248p Return
7 Charles, R.H. translator (1902). The Book of Jubilees. Merchant Books. 2010, 275p. Return
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