The NRSV has, “In the beginning when
God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void” (Gen.
1:1-2; emphasis mine). This translation renders Genesis 1:1 as a complete sentence,
following the Septuagint (the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture,
abbreviated LXX): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (so
Jenson 2010, 89; e.g., the KJV, the RSV, and the NIV). However, the MT bereshit
bara’ ‘elohim means something more like “When God began to create . . .”
(cf. the 1985 NPJS translation and the NRSVue). Genesis 1:1-2 does not describe
the first act of God in creation, but rather is the heading or title of this
account, describing the state of things as God’s creation begins. (Steven S.
Tuell, God the Creator: Biblical Images of the Divine [Interpretation:
Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2026], 8)
But while creatio ex nihilo
(“creation out of nothing”) is an important theological claim, to Muslims and
Jews as well as to Christians, that is not what Genesis 1:1-2:4a is about.
Quite apart from grammatical concerns, if our aim is to preserve creatio ex
nihilo, translating Genesis 1:1 as a sentence is no real help. Genesis 1:2,
with its description of uncreated watery chaos, already defeats that purpose as
the rabbis long ago realized. In midrash Bereshit Rabbah 1:5, R. Huna asks, “Were
it not written, it would not be possible to say it: ‘When God began to create’—from
what?” he then answers his own question by quoting Genesis 1:2: “The earth was tohu
wabohu.” (Steven S. Tuell, God the Creator: Biblical Images of the
Divine [Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church;
Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2026], 63)
