Understanding the Beginning of Genesis : Just How Many

and Introduction The first word of Genesis, as traditionally pronounced, means literally “In a beginning”. However, tradition has it meaning and translated as “In the beginning”. The literal meaning is considered as contradicting reality. Therefore, Rashi attempted a syntactic solution to resurrect the traditional meaning. However, this syntactic solution requires a change in the pronunciation of the second word of Genesis. This paper argues that we should accept the traditional pronunciations and the literal meaning and explores the consequences of that literal meaning. A Possible Mistranslation and Misunderstanding The most commonly given English translation, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. of the first sentence of the book Genesis (תישארב [b’reshit]) of the Bible (j’’נת [tanakh]), :uרֶQâ ה תאç וé mEמãXâ הã תאç mיקִֹלאֱ ארâBâ תיXִארçBé [b’reshit bara elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz.] may be wrong. This potential mistranslation is not restricted to English. The same translation is repeated in every translation, not only in English, seen and understood by this author. The problem is that the first word “תיXִארçBé ” [b’reshit] is translated as “In the beginning”. If the meaning were “In the beginning”, the original Hebrew first word would have been “תיXִארçBâ” [bareshit]. That is, what is written, “תיXִארçBé ” [b’reshit], should be translated as “In a beginning”. The difference is that in the Bible, the vowel under the “B” [b] is “é” [ı̆], shva (אוש), serving as an indefinite article, instead of “â” [ă], qamatz (uמק), serving as a definite article. Strictly speaking, the Bible does not provide the vowels that distinguish the two meanings, as the Bible is written without vowels. Thus, the first sentence, as found in the Bible, is hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh All uses of God’s names in Hebrew are slightly misspelled to avoid using God’s names in vain and to avoid God’s names being trashed if a copy of this paper were trashed. When a Hebrew phrase is given in parentheses, the Hebrew phrase is the Hebrew translation of the phrase that precedes the open parentheses. When a Hebrew phrase is followed by Latin-letter text in brackets, the Latin-letter text is a transliteration of the Hebrew phrase according to English pronunciation rules.