While browsing materials on the "guph" in the Bible, I came across the following. It is interesting to note that the author of this article in The Christadelphian concluded that the Genesis 1 creation was discussing creating from pre-existing materials (i.e., creation ex materia) in 1888 (*)
1. In the beginning.—We have here the first note of divine revelation;
less than this it could not be, for man had not yet been called into existence.
The question afterwards addressed by the Almighty to Job, might with equal
propriety have been addressed to Adam—“where wast thou,” said Yahweh, “when I
laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4.) The introductory words of this
oracle tell us plainly, that there was a divinely initiated starting point, to
all that constitutes heaven and earth; and that therefore, what has come to be
called “matter,” is not eternal, with respect to its past existence (as some
say.) This is confirmed by the Spirit of wisdom speaking through Solomon, for
says wisdom, ‘the Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his
works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the
earth was. When there was no depths, I was brought forth; when there was no
fountains abounding with water; before the mountains were settled, before the
hills was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the
fields, nor the highest parts of the dust of the world” (Prov. 8:22–26). The
Genesis beginning is the beginning of a purpose, requiring as the basis of its
operations, the creation of a human habitation, commensurate with the vastness,
and far-reaching character of the scheme, before the divine mind. The phrase
“in the beginning,” may therefore be said to cover the whole of the productions
embraced in the first chapter; for while chapter one commences with the words
“in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”; chapter two begins
with the declaration “thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the
host of them” The first verse of the first chapter comprehends the
generation of the substance out of which the subsequent six days creations were
developed. This is to be inferred from the fact, that at the beginning of the
six days work, the Spirit begins to operate upon already existing materials, to
wit, an earth “without form and void,” a deep enveloped in darkness, and a
heaven without light (Jer. 4:23). How long these pre-existing materials had
been in course of formation, we are not informed, for the chronology of human
affairs commences with the second verse. (“Expository Notes: Genesis,
Chapter 1,” The Christadelphian 25, no. 285 [March 1, 1888]: 168-69,
emphasis in bold added)
