Old Testament scholar and author Ellen van Wolde claims the Book of Genesis was wrongly interpreted to say “God created the Heaven and the Earth”. The Hebrew verb “bara” used in the first sentence of the Genesis does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate.” Hence the sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth,” a report in British news site of Telegraph quoted her as saying.
Van Wolde, 54, will present a thesis on the subject at Radboud University in The Netherlands where she studies, the site said. According to the report she had re-analysed the original Hebrew text and placed it in the context of the Bible as a whole.
The scholar, who once worked with the Italian academic and novelist Umberto Eco, said her new analysis showed that the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration.
According to her the narration “meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself.” She also say her new translation fits in with ancient texts.
According to them there used to be an enormous body of water in which monsters were living, covered in darkness. Technically, “bara” does mean “create” but added: “Something was wrong with the verb.
“God was the subject (God created), followed by two or more objects. Why did God not create just one thing or animal, but always more?”
She concluded that God did not create, he separated: the Earth from the Heaven, the land from the sea, the sea monsters from the birds and the swarming at the ground.
The report quoted a spokesman for the Radboud University saying the “new interpretation is a complete shake up of the story of the Creation as we know it.”
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