VERSE 1
BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia): בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ
ESV (English Standard Version): In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
NLT (New Living Translation): In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
LXX (Septuagint): ἘΝ ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν
BETS (Brenton English translation Septuagint):IN the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.
NETS (New English Translation Septuagint): In the beginning God made the sky and the earth.
OSB (Orthodox Study Bible): In the beginning God made heaven and earth.
VUL(Latin Vulgate): in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram
DRB (Douay Rheims Bible): IN the beginning God created heaven, and earth.
NAB (New American Bible): In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth
Other English translations with variant readings:
GNB (Good News Bible): In the beginning, when God created the universe…
LB (The Living Bible): When God began creating the heavens and the earth…
TM (The Message): First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth—all you see, all you don’t see.
YLT (Young’s Literal Translation): In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth…
Observations:
- The Hebrew Text has the plural form for the “heavens.” The LXX uses the singular.
- All LXX translations use “made” instead of “created.” Significance? The MT and the VUL seem to use better words than the LXX, yet the Greek word for “do or make” can also be translated “create.”
- The Catholic New American Bible (NAB) actually inserts a temporal pronoun “When” into the verse which doesn’t seem to be there in the Greek, Latin or Hebrew. They are attempting to make a more modern connection between verse 1 and verse 2. I don’t think it’s necessary. Other translations have this idea as well and it implies that when God started his creative efforts which culminated in life on earth and man created in his own image things were a mess as we see in later verses. It’s an interesting approach because if the bible is the story of God’s redemption of the world through His Son it would make sense to start when things were at their darkest. And it appears that’s what we get in the following verses. Now according to the Translator’s Handbook on Genesis (THG) the difference is significant, “If the traditional interpretation is followed, then the beginning refers to the time when the universe came into existence, rather than the beginning or opening of the story of creation.[1]
- Eugene Peterson’s translation attempts to salvage the idea of the visible and invisible in his translation and we see in the original languages there is some validity to that.
- Young’s Literal translation incorporates the idea of “preparing” instead of ex-nihilo creation to include the idea that something was there before God started His redemptive plan.
- Many commentators and bible scholars will argue that the Hebrew phrase for “heavens and earth” is a figure of speech. The writers of THG hold this to be true. They say, “The heavens and the earth is the Hebrew way of speaking of all that existed. It is an idiom made up of two opposites, like the expression ‘good and evil,’ and in this context it means the universe, or everything in the universe, and not just the earth and the sky.[2] If it is a figure of speech we might translate the phrase to say God created “all that is, both here and there.” The demonstratives are referring to the heavens (there) and the earth (here). Maybe “God created everything that exists” is a more appropriate rendering.
CLV (Chuck Larsen Version): In the beginning (when) God created heaven and all it contains and earth and everything on it,
[1] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 28.
[2] William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 29.