Other biblical passages, in
Deutero-Isaiah, do however appear to express the
idea of creatio ex nihilo . Isa 45:7 reads:
|
yôṣēr ʾôr ûbôrēʾ ḥōšek |
The
fashioner of light and the creator* of darkness, the
maker of well-being and the creator* of woe, I am Yahweh, the
maker of all these things! |
Isa 43:1, 15 speak in
similar language of the creation of man:
|
kōh-ʾāmar yhwh ʾănî yhwh qǝdôšǝkem |
Thus
says Yahweh,
|
These passages, more or less
contemporary with Genesis 1, use the same key cosmogonic terms, bārāʾ, yāṣar,
and ʿāśāh and evidently belong to the same intellectual milieu as Genesis 1.
But do they presuppose the doctrine? (Understanding bôrēʾ as “creator*” in each
case is contentious.) The first of these passages, Isa 45:7, is the key one,
but it cannot formally be said to do so, since it remains silent on the
question of whether light and darkness are made out of nothing, or whether they
are simply distinguished. As far as Gen 1:4 is concerned, which clearly has a
bearing on this verse, they are explicitly separated. This suggests that we
should discern the same nuance here. Here we may examine the etymology of the
verb bārāʾ, noting incidentally that it is roughly synonymous with the other
terms, the b word to the a words yāṣar and ʿāśāh. The three terms are used
throughout the narrative of Gen 1:1–2:4a, along with one other key term, hibdîl,
“divide”. The other three words here (besides bārāʾ) all presuppose the prior
existence of something to be manufactured, transformed, or divided, or named (qārāʾ):
the clay implicit with yāṣar (as in Gen 2:7), the division or distinguishing of
the light and dark, or upper and lower waters (hibdîl ), and so forth. (Nicholas Wyatt, “Distinguishing Wood and Trees in
Waters: Creation in Biblical Thought,” in Conversations on Canaanites and
Biblical Themes: Creation, Chaos and Monotheism, ed. Rebecca S. Watson and
Adrian H. W. Curtis [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2024], 215-16)
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