basic reading of genesis 1:1

hi ICANT. i'm actually going to start at the end here, because i think this is important. you seem to be under the impression that the author wrote one thing, and the masoretes came along and changed stuff with niqud. further, you have kind of a double standard -- the vowels on genesis 1:1's ברא place it as a finite verb, and genesis 5:1 ברא place it as an infinitve construct. why, if it can be inaccurate for one, couldn't it be inaccurate for the other? this whole thing, really, it one big red herring.but i want to share a dirty secret. i am not up for my bar mitzah. i am not jewish. and, as you know, i studied modern hebrew. my professor was a modern israeli, and we learned to read the same way you would in modern israel: without vowels. we touched on them breifly, and i can tell my basic sounds apart. but honestly, modern hebrew ignores vowels. it only uses them for children and foreigners.consequently, i generally ignore vowels. you should take special note here that my position is most definitely not based on them. rather, it based solely on the syntax. i actually had plain forgotten that things change their vowel points (the verbal shortening is intuitive) in constructs. and i didn't even know that infinitive constructs (sometimes) change vowels.so when i read genesis 1:1, flying right over those silly vowels, as

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בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

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i don't even see that the vowels say the verb should be finite. because the syntax says it should be a construct. the sentence opens with a preposition, making it a dependent clause -- and making the verb an infinitive. agreed. so let's ignore the vowels, shall we? as i pointed out to kbertsche in Message 65, the vowels on ברא are the only weak point of rashi's view. this doesn't necessarily follow.for one thing, the LXX has been through a few revisions between its inception and our current form. the oldest LXX codex we have is only a bit older than the MT, and views are quite widespread as to which text offers a closer version of the original. i believe, in the academic circles, the opinion is slightly in favour of the MT, as it is not a translation. for an interesting look into LXX revision, you might research how hashem was replaced with "kurios" (lord) reflecting the traditional reading of אדני instead of יהוה. apparently, there's some argument that the original LXX actually contained the name of god, either in hebrew, or in similar-looking greek, or transliterated. the documents we have now lack it, iirc, in all but one instance.for another, the LXX scribes might well have just been recording traditional readings (all translation is interpretation) at the time. the MT seems to reflect both readings, paradoxically, at the same time. that is most certainly not what he is saying. and certainly he is not advising you that you shouldn't actually learn some hebrew syntax. this is just untrue, as the link (and example) i provided to you above shows. er, if your writing with vowels it needs different pointing. if you're not writing with vowels, obviously, you do nothing. why do you seem to think that not writing with vowels means you can't do the same things with consonants? he did! he could have used a ל to say, "in the day of god to create man" or a כ to say "in the day of god as create man" or a ב to say "in the day of god of create man" or a מ to say "in the day of god from create man". but clearly those would all be nonsense. only ביום ברא אלהים אדם "in the day of god making man" makes any sense. infinitives that have prefixes have them for grammatical reason that make sense. and when they are left off, it also makes sense. this does not make them not infinitives. had we been writing with vowels, i would have had to change them from the root -- but since we weren't, i did nothing. "creating". this happens to be an infinitive verb, and either way, technically biblical hebrew doesn't have temporal tenses. it makes sense to translate it "created" in english (because we do have temporal tenses), but the hebrew does not reflect this idea. rather, it says mechanically,

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this is a book of the generations of adam. in the day of god creating adam, in the likeness of god he made him.

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or, idiomatically,

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this is the record of adam's line.--when god created man, he made him in the likeness of god;

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i agree. it is exactly the same as genesis 1:1. it's a temporally-significant noun, with a preposition attached, followed by a verb, followed by a subject and direct object. tell me why, then, your concordance lists ברא as an infinitive here, as does the source you plagiarized. on the contrary. they do not need a prefix, and they are infinitives precisely because they are preceded by a temporal noun and preposition that are meaningless on their own. "day" might be fine on its own, but "in the day" of what? "beginning" might be fine on its own, but "in the beginning" of what? the preposition is really the key -- beginning a sentence with a preposition opens a dependent clause. i'd like you to consider another possibility.the possibility that you actually don't know something. and that you are simply mistaken. now, i have provided a link to a text (and an example from it) up above that show that infinitive constructs do not need prefixes.now, i'm suggesting again that you actually read that link, and learn something. and stop pretending that you know what you're talking about. maybe you took some hebrew classes 50 years ago -- but you're kind of rusty. you make mistakes that a second year student wouldn't make. that's okay, if you're willing to accept that you could be wrong, and take the time to actually look things up. especially when the sources are given to you. and try to have some humility. the rest of us just laugh when someone who can't even keep his hebrew alef-bet straight thinks he knows more than rashi and orlinsky about the language.

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אָרַח

No, it's NOT this simple and mechanical at all.Normal Hebrew word order is VERB-SUBJECT-OBJECT. Subject and object are usually nouns. Hence, two nouns are frequently side-by-side which are not in construct, but are subject-object. The text had no vowels, but the language had vowels. It can't be spoken without vowel sounds. The vowels were propagated through oral tradition. I would have translated it pretty much the same way that they did. I think it's the best fit, all things being considered. No, I disagree. I still disagree. No, if he would have added a preposition, as you suggest, he would have changed the sentence and messed up the construct chain. What we have in Gen 5:1 is a construct chain, with the infinitive construct in the middle of the chain (i.e. it is not the first construct in the chain; it follows a preceding noun in construct). Adding a preposition would break the chain and change the meaning.I just did a search for an infinitive construct (with or without a prepositional prefix) in the middle of a construct chain. Here are all that I find in Genesis. You can see that none have prepositional prefixes. Do you agree that any of these are infinitive constructs?Gen 2:4 "beyom 'asot YHWH" = "in the day of the making of God" = "when God made" (here "asah" changes form)
Gen 2:17 "beyom akhalekha" = "in the day of the eating of you" = "when you eat"
Gen 3:5 "beyom akhalekhem" = "in the day of the eating of you (pl)" = "when you (pl) eat"
Gen 5:1 (already discussed)
Gen 5:2 "beyom hibbare'am" = "in the day of the being created of them" = "when they were created" ("bara" here is in the "nifil" stem, denoting passive)
Gen 13:10 "lifenei shachet YHWH" = "to the face of the destroying of God" = "before God destroyed" (infin construct is in "piel", denoting intensive)
Gen 21:8 "beyom higgamel 'et-yitzchaq" = "in the day of the weaning of Isaac" = "when Isaac was weaned" ("bara" here is in the "nifil" stem, denoting passive)
Gen 29:7 "'et he'asef hamiqneh" = "the time of the gathering of the cattle" = "the time for the cattle to be gathered" (infin construct is in "nifil", denoting passive)
Gen 30:41 "bekhol-yachem hatzo'n" = "in all of the mating of the flock" = "whenever the flock was mating" (infin construct is in "piel", denoting intensive)
Gen 36:31 "lifenei melakh-melekh" = "to face of reigning of a king" = "before any king reigned"
Gen 38:27 "be'et lidta" = "in the time of the bearing of her" = "at the time that she bore"
Gen 40:20 "yom hulledet 'et-par'o" = "the day of the causing to be born of Pharaoh" = "Pharaoh's birthday" (infin construct is in "hofal", denoting passive-causative)Again, none of these occurrences put prepositional prefixes on infinitive constructs when they are in the middle of a construct chain. I couldn't find any examples which did so. Can you find any? But the Masoretes didn't invent the vowel sounds. they invented a way of writing the vowel sounds that had been carried along for centuries by oral tradition. Yes, some of the vowel sounds could have been corrupted over the centuries. But this doesn't mean that we should just ignore the MT vowels completely!

Hi kbertsche, Do you think the author of Genesis knew what a preposition was?Do you think the author of Genesis knew what a construct chain was?Do you think the author of Genesis knew what an infinitive construct was?I think these are parts of our language that we have tried to patch into the writings of the author of Genesis, to make the author say what we want him/her to have said.In other words we are trying to apply our rules and regulations to something that was recorded some 3500 years ago instead of dissecting what was written and trying to understrand what the author wrote.To read your and arachnophilia's posts a person would believe the author of Genesis could walk into a Hebrew classroom and start teaching the Hebrew language today.I really think because of the many different worldviews we have complicated the original text far beyond what it is.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Well no shit...The original text translated literally into english doesn't make any sense at all... 'In beginning created god sky earth' or whatever.Any translation is going to be clouded by interpretation.But that hasn't stopped you from claiming that the test says something very specific and if people don't agree with what you say it is, then they must conclude that god is a liar or it isn't his word.You're just as guilty of forcing an interpretation as you are accusing others of doing.

Hi arach, Convince me that the author of Genesis 1:1 knew what a preposition was.The author did know what a prefix was as one was used.It has been determined that that prefix means in, on, with, by, etc.Convince me the author meant to say 'when' as you declare he/she said, instead of 'in'.If there is no prefix we have 7 words which would translate:1. first
2. created (completed action because of root verb)
3. God
4. sign of the direct object not translated
5. the Heavens
6. and (sign of the direct object not translated)
7. the Earth.Which would read:First created God the Heavens and the Earth.A complete independent sentence of completed action of the verb preformed by the subject with the resulting direct objects existing.The verb is placed between the first two nouns and the sign of the direct object is placed between the other two nouns making sure there was no noun construct.Now you are arguing that since the writer placed a prefix meaning 'in' or 'on' it becomes a infinitive construct dependent clause.So give me the rules of Biblical Hebrew that make the beit a preposition that would be translated 'when'.Also the rule that the beit makes the infinitive construct as well as a dependent clause.When I meet Moses I will ask him what he meant when he wrote Genesis 1:1.I expect him to say:In the beginning God created the Heavens and then the Earth.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

i'm sorry, but this is so dumb it doesn't warrant a response. please attempt to re-think your post. i suggest reading some of that book i linked above, on syntax, before you attempt to argue something as ridiculous as "they didn't know what prepositions were". i refer you to Message 1. personally, i expect him to say לא כתב אני ספר בראשית, but that's just me.

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אָרַח

yes. because he used them. yes. because he used them. yes. because he used them. on the contrary. pretty much the only examples of biblical hebrew we have are biblical texts. the rules or grammar and syntax for biblical hebrew are derived from biblical usage, not imposed onto it. biblical hebrew, yes! because biblical hebrew is what is in the bible -- the stuff that author wrote. by definition. granted, but when have i or kbertsche appealed to any particular worldview? notice that our arguments -- even though we happen to disagree slightly on the most representative translation -- are based firmly and solely in grammar and syntax.i happen to think that genesis is quite inaccurate and holds very little explanatory power for the origins of the universe as we understand it today through modern science. have i mentioned that once, in this thread, short of just now? no, because it is irrelevant, and off topic. this thread is about how to read the text, not where it belongs in our particular worldviews. it is about determining what it says and means, not how we should interpret it into our particular belief systems.it is about grammar, and translation. not interpretation, beyond the basic level of cultural and linguistic context necessary to determine literal meaning.

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אָרַח

well, ICANT has been stumbling through "mechanical" (literal) translations this entire thread, continually demonstrating that he doesn't really know much about biblical hebrew (anymore).the problem is that so much of the meaning of hebrew sentences is derived from contextual clues. for instance, we're talking about construct chains. it took ICANT several pages to even realize that you should insert an "of" to express that relationship in english, even though there is no actual "of" prefix present in the hebrew. simply placing an absolute and a construct form together is enough to imply that relationship. if we're translating "literally", should we put those "of"s into it? a hebrew person reading it would understand the relationship, but by leaving it out of the english, you obscure it. now, he's trying to puzzle out the differences between two or three nouns together in a row, and an actual construct, and why infinitive function as nouns.oh, and there's a "the" definite article on "beginning" but it has been essentially removed, thanks to the "in" prefix. one always replaces the other, consonantally, even though the definite article is still represented in the vowels. should we translate something that subtle? if we excise the vowels, as ICANT seems to like, the "the" has to be determined entirely contextually. it is. but only a little -- not as much as ICANT would like us to think. my points are not derived from any interpretation i am injecting into the text. rather, they are derived solely from the subtleties of the grammar, and are the source for my interpretations. i would have no problem if the text did say what ICANT wants it to, and there are even a few arguments as to why it should. i address those upthread with kbertsche, and why i feel rashi and orlinsky have the more convincing argument. strangely, ICANT should agree, since vowels are the major weakness of that argument, and he's anti-vowel. indeed, more so.this thread began as an argument, not with ICANT but with IamJoseph, about the so called "gap theory", which postulates two (or more) creation events, as a way to rectify a literal reading of genesis with modern scientific knowledge about the age of the earth. i would have no problem if the bible did describe such an event (indeed, the repopulation of the earth after the flood almost qualifies as a second creation), but my point was that this reading is not supported by the grammar of the first few verses of genesis.the thread was revived when ICANT intimated a similar idea, in Message 17 of the How Creationism Explains Hominid Fossil Skulls thread, where he writes,

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So unless God told or either showed Moses what happened in the beginning during his 40 days on the mountain with Him how would anyone know information that has been confirmed in these latter times?

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According to Genesis there should be fossils of mankind and animals that existed before the events recorded in Genesis 1:2-2:3. Those fossils exist.

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as a way to explain other hominid fossils. genesis does not support this position, grammatically, and so after some off-topic argument, i referred him here.again, i would have no issue with the so called "gap theory" if it was actually supported by genesis. for instance, any of these arguments would not have raised a grammatical from me:

• those fossils represent the people who lived outside eden and/or the descendants of cain
• those fossils represent the nephilim of genesis 6
• those fossils represent the wicked people who were killed the flood
• those fossils were put there by satan to fool you
• those fossils are demons
• etc

they might have raised theological or interpretive arguments, or even scientific ones. but this is not any of those -- its an argument that the bible does not actually support that position, and is based only on grammar and syntax, and not interpretation, theology, or science. indeed, any and all of those topics are off topic to this thread.

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אָרַח

I am sure that the author understood these things. He probably first understood them intuitively. But he may have been schooled well enough that he could analyze the grammar as well. (Moses, for example, was raised and schooled as one of the sons of the Pharaoh.) No, English does not have "constructs." We indicate possessives very differently. This is a Semitic construction. No, these grammatical rules are derived from what the author wrote, by dissecting what was written and trying to understand it.But you are changing the subject and avoiding the questions that I asked. Let's get back to the Hebrew grammar.Here is what you have claimed:
From Message 72:

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The Hebrew word ברא is in the third person singular perfect form, which is the absolute. In Biblical Hebrew to change it to the infinitive construct requires a prefix the ב, ל, כ, serves that purpose. The infinitive construct can be inflected with pronominal endings to indicate its subject or object.

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From Message 75:

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When the infinitive is used without the prefix it remains in the absolute. When the prefix is used it is in the construct.

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kbertsche writes:

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Again, it does not need a prefix to be an infinitive. Especially to be an infinitive construct, which means that the vowels are shortened and the word pronounced more quickly.

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No it does not need a prefix to be an infinitive absolute. But it needs a prefix to be an infinitive construct.
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The verb bara' could have been placed in the infinitive construct by a prefix by the author but was not.

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The immediate question/disagreement is whether or not an infinitive construct requires a prepositional prefix. You claim that it does; I claim that it does not. I have presented Gen 5:1 as an example, but you read this as a Qal perfect rather than as a Qal infinitive construct. I think your reading makes the sentence very awkward, but rather than arguing this, I presented 11 additional examples in Message 77. This is what I'd like you to respond to, so we can hopefully agree on this issue of whether or not a preposition is required for an infinitive construct.I claim that all 12 examples are infinitive construct forms in the middle of a construct chain. You have already weighed in on Gen 5:1. I'd like to know how you view the other 11 examples. Do you see any of them as infinitive constructs, or do you see them all as perfect verbs, like you see Gen 5:1? What is your literal translation of each one?P.S. for you or others who are interested, there are a number of fairly decent resources on the web for learning biblical Hebrew. For example:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/
fredputnam.org - Registered at Namecheap.com
http://www.multilingualbooks.com/freelessons-hebrew.html

Hi kbertsche, You said: I have said Biblical Hebrew had no vowels. If it had no vowels there is nothing to shorten.How do you get bara or bero out of ברא which transliterates as bra?How do you get beyom out of ביום which transliterates as byvm?Will get to your questions later.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi arach, thanks for the reply. I couldn't find it, but while you were gone for that while, I brought your name up in a debate with ICANT and he said that you were the one who doesn't know anything about hebrew The context was me explaining to him how you had showed me in the past that the phrase in Gen was better translated as 'when god was creating'...Fortunately, the record speaks for itself. Depends I mean, sure, if that's what it means then put it in there. But if you were translating just strictly what it literally said, then I think they should be left out if they're not written there. The reader would need to understand they were implied to make any sense out of it. I don't know enough about hebrew or the parts of languages to really know what your talking about enough to make any intelligible comment. But I do think I understand what you're saying so thanks for sharing. I was thinking about my claim... If you're just translating one word, say rojo in spanish, then really there's no interpretation to cloud the fact that it simply means "red". I see that. I think that I was originally thinking that there's always going to be some idioms or idiosyncrasies that just don't directly, or literally, translate from one language to another.Like the greeting: "What's up?" doesn't get translated into spanish as lo que esta arriba (what is upwards?) because that wouldn't make any sense. Converly, we don't translate que pasa (accents removed) as "what has passed?" because we don't talk like that in 'Merican. But those would be the strictly literal translations, right? (Spanish is the only other language I know anything about besides Engligh)So if the hebrew says "On beginning", then I suppose that would be the literal translation, but I wouldn't translate it like that if I wanted anyone to understand what was actually meant to be said. I'm familiar with the Gap Theory and ICANT's (mis)use of it. I've actually refuted his interpretation in another way if you care to read it:This is the refined version, Message 263, of the earlier argument I simply stumbled upon myself, Message 198.Basically, I can't puts Gen 2 - Gen 4 in between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, and then continues on with Gen 5 after Gen 1, IIRC. THe problem I exposed is that the characters at the end of Gen 4 and the beginning of Gen 5 are the same people with the same names so they couldn't be talking about two different groups of people. ICANT's only response is that there could be two different families with the exact same names Being refuted in the past does not stop ICANT from repeating his same old arguments and claiming they've never been refuted. He is not an honest person. That just raises more doubt in him knowing anything about hebrew either.He simply debates like old people do (and he is an old person). They're stuck in their ways as they have been for years and they're not going to actually listen to anybody that challenges them or change their position at all. You've certainly got a solid case against him. I'll remember this, and my other rebuttle of his interpretation, next year when he tells some new guy that he has this interpretation that nobody has ever refuted before.

i'll be the first to admit that i am not an expert by any means, not even close. the problem is that he claims to be, when he demonstrably knows even less than an untrained layman such as yours truly. indeed. what with the spelling errors (mixing up letters of the alef-bet in a consistent pattern), the failure to understand constructed relationships, and now suddenly reverting to not understanding vowels?i was, for quite a long time, highly skeptical of his claim regarding "six years of studying biblical hebrew", but now with the recent information, "in the 60's", i might actually believe his story. 50 years is a long time between learning a language and understanding it, if it hasn't seen any real use in that time. when i say that these are errors a second year student wouldn't make, i mean that honestly. i've only had two years, and i don't make those kind of errors. but unlike ICANT, i can go look things up. which is why i say that understanding the language is far, far better than mechanically rendering the text. there are certain linguistic properties that just don't translate mechanically. this is a good analogy. there are idiomatic translations, and i can see the merits of them over literal translations, some of the time. the translation i am referring to in the OP, the nJPS, is an idiomatic one. it happens to represent certain idiosyncrasies in the text, and retain their meaning, better than a literal translation would.there are argument for literal translations, as well, as idiomatic ones are inherently influenced by interpretation. the hope is that those interpretations are informed by linguistic analysis, and not simply by dogma. that risk is, of course, balanced by the lack of idiomatic representation in the literal translation.it should be noted also that literal translations are also not entirely free from this dark cloud of interpretation. this is a good case -- an idiomatic representation of the text that faithfully represents the idea does not allow for a certain interpretation often derived from (or imposed upon) the literal text. in this case, the literal is as much a product of interpretation as anything else.this particular conundrum is the reason i decided to learn at least a little hebrew. correct. it wouldn't represent the idea, which renders better as "at the beginning of", or in the context of the sentence, "when (god) began". yes, it's clearly nonsense exegetically. i sort of believe him that he took hebrew fifty years ago. but only sort of. but no, if refutation were enough to stop him, he wouldn't be a creationist, would he?and i know it's sort of an argument from authority, but he honestly seems to think he knows more about biblical hebrew than rashi and orlinsky -- and now moses? and i'm sure he doesn't like a young whipper-snapper like me challenging him. just refer him back to this thread, and laugh. he generally goes away after that. as he is from this thread now, slowly.

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אָרַח

while i'm sure you will, how about you wait on that for now, and first figure out how to read without vowels. by reading it.seriously. how the hell do you suspect anyone gets on in modern hebrew without vowels? it's really not very hard.

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אָרַח

Hi kbertsche, We were talking about temporal infinitive constructs.In the texts you gave there is one temporal infinitive construct.In Genesis 2:4bara' is a temporal infinitive construct
asot is not a temporal infinitive construct
byom between two verbs is not in the construct.God Bless,Edited by ICANT, : correct spelling

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi arach, The same way we do in English they are the way we think.The ancient Hebrew did not have vowels. Nor did they think vowels.If you ever quit looking at ancient Hebrew from the western viewpoint and begin to look at it from the ancient Hebrew viewpoint you will be able to understand the ancient language. Until then you are like a drunk blind man in a china shop.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."