The highly
philosophical construct of a creatio ex nihilo, which appears in the
historical record for the first time only in the second century A.D., arising
in the early church, cannot be found in the Hebrew Bible. It developed from the
ontological perspective that had its origins in the time of Aristotle and
leads, in regard to understanding Genesis 1 and other passages, to error.
Another verse frequently mentioned in this context, 2 Macc 7:28, is no support for
a creatio ex nihilo of a Hellenistic character. It is a negative
formulation: God did not make the heavens and the earth out of existing things
(hoti ouk ex onton epoiesen auta ho theos). “Existing things,” however,
must here in good biblical tradition refer to ‘created things’ as opposed to a
presumptive “pre-world.” (Othmar Keel and Silvia Schroer, Creation: Biblical
Theologies in the Context of the Ancient Near East [trans. Peter D.
Daniels; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2015], 139)
Blake T. Ostler, Out of Nothing: A History of Creation ex Nihilo in Early Christian Thought
Daniel O. McClellan, James Patrick Holding refuted on Creation Ex Nihilo
