בראשית
The Book of Genesis
Genesis is our main clue to the process which ultimately produced the the Bible
E.A. Speiser
In the ancient Near East, literary works were named by their initial word or phrase. In this case, the first book of the Torah is called in Hebrew“Bereshit” (“In the beginning”), as this is the first word with it starts
However, in the third century B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), the Greek translators of what is known as the Septuagint (or LXX) named it Genesis because this first book of the Torah starts with an account of the origin of the world.
The book is divided into 50 chapters—a practice initiated by Rabbi Solomon ben Ishmael (ca. 1330) and borrowed from Christian Bibles.
Whether or not one believes that the Creator of the universe wrote a book, the TaNaKh is still Israel’s greatest creation.
It is the foundation that frames all Jewish understandings of how life works and how every human being should look at their existence.
The book of Genesis (Bereshit in Hebrew) purports to answer several momentous questions regarding Judaism’s understanding of human life and how it should be conducted.
One could say that Bereshit answers the question of what it means to be a human being.
Genesis-Chapter 1
Genesis Chapter 1 wants to convey the idea of creation out of chaos, a progressive process of separation, division, and differentiation that made possible an ordered and viable place for life to take root.
At the same time, Bereshit’s initial chapters tell us that creating an ordered universe out of primordial chaos is not enough.
The term” chaos,” often used to suggest a breakdown of order and reversal of role performance in the TaNaKh, remains residually present and active as a threat to the created order.
The warning is that unless order is maintained, chaotic forces will overwhelm the cosmos.
The TaNaKh understands chaos as the mismanagement of forces.
If to create means to bring into being something that had not existed before, “creation” in the first chapter of the Book of Genesisrefers not to the end of a process but to the unending creative process.
Confronting chaos is the cosmos: the universe, the intelligent solutions constantly elaborated by human beings to keep chaos at bay.
As we learn every day, the universe is not a permanent structure but a constant flux of bringing into being what wasn’t. The world is constantly being created. In the words of the first of the benedictions of the synagogue’s Morning Services, the “Yotzer” prayer: “‘in goodness, the work of creation is daily renewed” (an idea taken from the Talmud, based on the prophet Isaiah)
The “Creation Story” in the book of Genesis tells that creativity is part and parcel of what makes the universe what it is: Creativity is one of the universe’s characteristics.
1* When God began to create heaven and earth
The creation story in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis would be misunderstood if it would be read simply as an intended report about a moment in the remote past when the world was created.
Though conveyed in mythical imagery, the objective of these chapters is not to provide a scientific or even a historical account of the beginning of the world and humankind.
2* the earth being then a formless waste, with darkness over the seas and only an a wind of God sweeping over the water
Bereshit doesn’t say that the world was created out of nothing; it describes what was there before the first word was spoken: It was tohu va bohu: chaos. “a formless waste.”