Creation ex nihilo and Genesis 1:1

It is proposed by most conservative Christians and theologians that Genesis 1:1, and the whole Bible, teaches creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). The question that I will be ask is whether the Bible in fact teaches creation ex nihilo.

The often remembered words of Genesis 1:1 are "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The traditional understanding is that "In the beginning" refers to the beginning of all time. Also, with out modern scientific understanding, we see "heavens" and equate it with the universe as a whole. Thirdly, "created" (bara in the Hebrew) is sometime said to speak of creating our of nothing due to some arguments as to the meaning of the word, as opposed to a word often translated as "made" (asah in the Hebrew).

Is what was intended initially by the writer of Genesis 1:1? Lets look at those three main arguments and investigate them.

1) "In the beginning" refers to the beginning of all time

Certainly, this is not an impossible understanding of the text. If one wanted to speak of the beginning of all time, one could definitely say "In the beginning." However, could this phrase be understood in an alternate manner?

Consider if I say "Back in the beginning, I was not a very good soccer player." The phrase "in the beginning" was not considered by most people to describe the beginning of all time (but if one interpreted that it way, it would be hard to argue that I was not a good soccer player). Instead, the phrase was used to refer to the beginning of an implicit time period. Depending on the context of the statement, it could refer to the beginning of my life or it could refer to the time when I started to play soccer. Beginning in these situations indicates more of a relative time than an absolute time.

Could Genesis 1:1 be understood in this manner? It is certainly possible. Matter of fact, in my opinion, I think it is more probable. It seems doubtful that the writer of Genesis 1:1 was concerned with the idea of time just beginning. It seems to me that the ancient Hebrews would probably not have a conception of the beginning of time itself. Thus we would not really expect a Hebrew to speak of the beginning in that manner.

Instead, the talk of the beginning seems to be used in terms of the time of the earth, in its formation. The time notion is present with speaking of the first day, second day , third day, etc. This beginning seems to denote a time before a day had passed. And the concept of a day to the ancient Hebrew was not 24 hours, or 1440 minutes, or 86400 seconds. Rather, it is said "there was evening and morning, first day." A day seems to be defined in Genesis by the cycle of light (presumably upon the earth), so one could not really say that beginning should be termed by the first seconds, but rather before the first day of creation had took place.

So the idea of the beginning seems to be related to the 7 days. We should not include another meaning to beginning as referring to the beginning of time unless we take the six days to be referring to the first 144 hours of creation, because otherwise would be to put a double meaning upon the word "beginning" which would seem awkward.

So in short, I think that "In the beginning" does not refer to the beginning of all time, but the beginning of the creation/formation of the earth. This is not to say that the author was opening up for time before the creation of the universe. Rather, he would have no concept of time before the creation of the earth and would probably not be concerned about it, thus he doesn't address it.

2) "Heavens" refers to the universe as a whole.

Today, our modern scientific understanding of the stars is that they are physical objects that exist in a great expanse known as the universe. When we think God created the heavens/universe we think of God creating the space which the stars were placed in.

Is this how the Hebrews though about it though? Doubtful. Their ideas of the heaven is based upon what they saw. When they looked up at night, they saw stars, and when they looked up in the day they say an ocean. They had no concept of the stars in the sky as being part of another space. Rather, it was to them a visual show. So they term heavens by what they saw, not in terms of the physical objects seen.

I don't know if I adequately described that (it is a hard concept for me to put into words right now), but basically, when they talked about the heavens, they referred to the sights seen. It is not a statement that the whole universe was created, but rather the sights above them were created. One might say that when it is say "heavens and earth" the ancient Hebrew through what was above them and what was below them (taking earth not to be referring to the globe, but the firm ground that people stood upon).

So I find no reason to say that when it is said that "God created the heavens" that it refers to the universe and all the objects and dimensions (such as time) within it, but rather it just refers to the sights seen when a person looks up.

3) "Created" (bara) means to create from nothing.

This is sometimes stated by a few people by looking up the usage of the word. 4 times out of 45 times, "bara" is attributed to someone that is not God (Joshua 17:15, 18, Ezekiel 21:19, and Ezekiel 23:47). By implication them, the other times it is either explicitly stated or implied that God is the one who does "bara." We can take from this that there are definitely times where "bara" is not used to indicate creating out of nothing, because no man can do that.

Furthermore, there are times the word is used when it is clearly not creation ex nihilo. In Genesis 5:1, it speaks of the day that God created (bara) humanity. This is clearly not referring to creation ex nihilo because it is said that God formed the man from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). And if one investigates the usage of the word further, it is sometimes used in referring to God creating other men, who are born and not made out of nothing.

Now this does not demonstrate that bara can not be used to refer to the concept of creation ex nihilo. As a matter of fact, I believe it could have been used in such a manner if that was the intention of the author. However, it has been shown the word does not denote the concept of making something from nothing. As a matter of fact, this seems to be too much of a technical definition to attribute to a meaning of a word within the Hebrew vocabulary.

So, in short, I do not think Genesis 1:1 can be said to definitely refer to the concept of creation ex nihilo. I think the evidence indicates the author was concerned about something else and not about the idea of God making something out of absolutely nothing.

Now, this is not to say that God didn't create out of nothing in some point of time. But to impress upon the text of Genesis 1:1 the idea of creation ex nihilo is to give more meaning to the text than was intended by the author of Genesis, in my opinion. I do believe that God created everything in the universe from nothing and that there was a "time" (not using the word in a technical sense) when only God existed and nothing else. I just do not think the Bible teaches that explicitly anywhere.