{"id":105,"date":"2009-10-12T09:50:44","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T09:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/scholar-claims-god-created-us-but-not-the-earth.html"},"modified":"2009-10-12T09:50:44","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T09:50:44","slug":"scholar-claims-god-created-us-but-not-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/scholar-claims-god-created-us-but-not-the-earth.html","title":{"rendered":"Scholar claims God created us, but not the earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"earth_1489714c.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>And now, a little head-scratcher<\/a> for a Monday morning.  <\/p>\n

A leading scholar claims that a botched translation has been misleading us for thousands of years: <\/p>\n

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew.<\/p>\n

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.<\/p>\n

Prof Van Wolde, 54, who will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, said she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole, and in the context of other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n

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”.
\n
\nThe first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth.”<\/p>\n

According to Judeo-Christian tradition, God created the Earth out of nothing.<\/p>\n

Prof Van Wolde, who once worked with the Italian academic and novelist Umberto Eco, said her new analysis showed that the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration.<\/p>\n

She said: “It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself.”<\/p>\n

She writes in her thesis that the new translation fits in with ancient texts. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Continue at the link for more<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And now, a little head-scratcher for a Monday morning.  A leading scholar claims that a botched translation has been misleading us for thousands of years: Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-that"],"yoast_head":"\nScholar claims God created us, but not the earth - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/scholar-claims-god-created-us-but-not-the-earth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scholar claims God created us, but not the earth - 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}