In the Beginning

The Treehouse: Conversations About God

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(Welcome, newcomers! Here are a few guidelines! Also, just to be clear, we won’t be going through the whole bible verse by verse, LOL/whew. But as with any good story, a lot of important stuff happens up front.)

GENESIS 1. The Hebrew word beresit¹ is the first word of the Bible, meaning “in the beginning” (resit is beginning or start, and b stands for the preposition in). Next is bara, to shape, make, or create, followed by Elohim.² God. So we have “In the beginning created God.”³

(Sidebar: when you see the suffix “im,” in the Old Testament, that pluralizes the word. Like, a seraph is a class of angel, and seraphim is a bunch of seraphs. So, right away we see “El” (God) is plural. Definitely file that away.)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form, yada yada⁴, and darkness was over the face of the deep, the abyss, the sea. (The Hebrew word for darkness also carries the idea of obscurity.)

And…this is my favorite part, “…the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” Two things here: 1) the Hebrew word for Spirit is ruah, which is also the word for “breath” and for “wind,” and 2) this breath or wind moved over the surface of the water — some translations say hovered over the surface, and the Hebrew word used can also impart the idea of brooding, fluttering (also with the nuance of being soft or relaxed).

So, here is what I have so far as I’m building the structure of my theological system.

1. There is a God.

2. This is a creating God.

3. In God creating, there is a hovering, brooding, softened and relaxed energy at work in the midst of darkness or obscurity.

1. I’ve included links for some of the Hebrew words so you don’t think I’m just making stuff up.

2. The use of Elohim for God points to one of two source traditions that Genesis draws on. More on that later.

3. Another possible interpretation is “as God was creating,” which is an intriguing thought that comports with recent theorizing that what we call the Big Bang may have been one of many.

4. “Without form and void” — the Hebrew words tohu v’bohu mean “confusion, unreality, formlessness” (in other words, chaos) and “emptiness or void.” (The v’ appearing at the beginning of a word stands for “and.”)

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