HEBREW WORD STUDY – IN THE BEGINNING (OF TIME) – BERA’SHITH  בראשית Beth Resh  Aleph Shin Yod Taw

Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Something that has always fascinated me was how Christians tend to come entirely unglued with evolution.  Books have been written trying to debunk evolution, societies have been formed to push creationism, battles are being fought with the education system to include creationism and evolution is officially declared by Christians to be non – Christian.  

Yet, having my PhD in Archaeology I am troubled by the scientific evidence that the earth is millions of years old and that creatures roamed the earth millions of years before man came on the scene.  It just doesn’t add up to the creation story as we literally take it. I struggle with it.

To me evolution teaches that some gob of cream of wheat or oatmeal turned into intelligence. Creation teaches that some intelligence created intelligence.  A dumb universe created intelligent beings according to evolution.  Creation teaches an intelligent being created intelligent beings. 

Evolution teaches natural and selection but these are two incompatible terms. Natural implies a blind necessity dictated by the consistent patterns of nature. Selection implies intelligence.  I think that is what we call an oxymoron.  It seems like the choice of such terms indicate that scientists at least subliminally recognize that there must be an intelligence at work.  Thus, it would be much more intuitive to believe that the primal substance of the universe is not matter but intelligence.  

Jews generally do not embrace evolution in its purest form. For the most part, Bennie Sanders excluded, Jews believe in an intelligent design. It seems the real bone of contention is with the age of the earth.  Now you would think that since the Jewish calendar starts with creation that the Jews would be real sticklers about the age of the earth as their calendar clearly states the earth is 5,780 years old.  With Christians this seems to be a real bone of contention with science.  But with Jews they have no problem with the earth being millions of years old, dinosaurs existing millions of years before man.

To be sure there are multiple explanations but, at the present time, I tend to think all these explanation seem to be built on the definition of bera’shith, “in the beginning.”  You see the root word is rosh which means head, top of and begin.  Western Christianity which finds it  hard to accept more than one definition of a Hebrew word will stop there and say, “See there, in the beginning of all things.”  But the Jews take a different look at this word. Rosh can also mean to animate, to appear, perceive, vision, mirror, viewing instrument, to see one another, sharp eyed bird, and to experience.  In it’s Semitic origin it is used for the source.  Rather than say: “In the beginning” you could render it “as to the source God created the heavens and the earth. The Akkadian uses the word to express the first or finest quality.  Perhaps, we could render this as the first and finest quality was created by God.  Hence you have the argument for the gap theory, that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1-2. The source rendering would suggest that God had other worlds that he created and other creations and this one was of the finest quality.  

Basically, two words that are very important to creation is bera’shith which I have just pointed out is ambiguous at best and the other word is yom, for day which is also an ambiguous word.  In certain contexts it means a 24 hour day and in other contexts it means a period of time, like the Day of the Lord.  Yom could be 24 hours or a million + years. 

But if there is any reason the Jews do not have a problem with the age of the earth it is in the word bera’shith which many of the old sages render as “In the beginning of time.”  You see the first thing God created was time.  Outside the physical realm time does not exist, it was created by God.  Yeah wrap your brain around that.  Yet, it is perfectly logical.  Thus, the age of the earth is irrelevant.   God simply took His creation, which in our frame of reference could be billions of years old and put it into another frame of reference and called it a week. One day with the Lord is like a thousand years  II Peter 3:8. So, if time is not relevant to God, it is not relevant to the sages. 

After all these years this is my best understanding as to why the Jews are not bothered by evolution and why they, who actually number the years since creation, do not take up the cause against evolution with us Christians.  To me our war is not against evolution, it is against the atheist who use it to debunk the existence of God and that is what I fight against.