In The Beginning

What makes a good story?

For me, I am not an avid reader. I average reading probably only one book every three years or so. It takes me a long time to read a book, usually. Most often when I have a hard time reading a book it is because I have a hard time getting into reading that book, and it usually all stems from how the book begins.

Great stories stem from great beginnings. “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” “Eh bien, mon prince” (a french phrase meaning “Well, prince.” These phrases are the beginnings of some of the greatest stories ever told. What makes them great? They are iconic. Most people read these phases and know exactly what story they begin to tell; Star Wars, A Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace. Each one of these phrases set the stage for what is coming next in their respective iconic stories. They give us key information about when the events of their stories are taking place; they describe the state in which they are happening; they introduce the audience to the main characters involved with what is happening; they give us key clues that will help us understand the whole of the story that is to come.

Recently, some friends of mine have been asking me to start a small group that can meet together outside the structure of organized religion. These are people, like myself, who have become disenfranchised with the structure of “church.” They are longing for a way to reconnect with their faith, but have felt like they cannot find that within the current structure of mainstream religion. Because of this, a small group of us has begun meeting at a local bar and grill for something that I have begun to call Bibles and Brews. In thinking about what the structure of this group should look like itself, something that fosters faith formation rather that just straight teaching, I thought that it would be interesting to rediscover the great story that is the bible. To do this I found a book that I thought would help guide us greatly. What better way to rediscover, or discover for the first time, what the bible says than by looking at what the bible doesn’t say. The title of the book that I have chose to help guide us is “The Bible Doesn’t Say That: 40 Biblical mistranslations, misconceptions, and other misunderstandings” by Dr. Joel M. Hoffman. Rightfully so, this book begins its look and what the Bible doesn’t say “In the Beginning,” the story of creation from Genesis 1 and 2.

Think for a moment, without looking it up in the bible, about how the Bible begins. What are the first words? What is the iconic phrase that sets the stage for the rest of the story that is to come? If the phrase “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” came to mind you would be correct; to a certain extent.

When I read these words, this iconic phrase, there are two key pieces of information that come out of them: God is the creator of all things, and it was in the beginning that God did this work of creating. While these assertions are technically correct, the modern English translations do not emphasize what the original Hebrew text meant to convey.

In the Hebrew language, phrases usually begin with the verb. If this had been a typical Hebrew phrase it should have sounded like it was coming out of the mouth of iconic Star Wars character Yoda’s mouth: “Created by God, heaven and earth were, in the beginning. However, the original Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 is not a typical Hebrew phrase. Instead of starting with the verb, the word for “to create” comes after the word b’reishit which means “In beginning.” Hebrew scholars have come to agree that this happens in the Hebrew language usually when the author wants to put emphasis on something in particular, or to answer a question that has not officially be asked. In Genesis 1:1 the latter seems to be the case. The unasked question here then is “When did all these things take place?” and the emphasis then goes on the word for “In beginning” rather than on God creating.

As a good Lutheran this leads me to ask the question, what does this mean? It means that the author wants us to know that before anything else there was God. The author wants to set the stage for the rest of the story that is to come. It is a story about God being in the beginning. The focus of this verse and the ones that come after it are not so much what happened, but when it happened, and by whom. One possible interpretation of the opening phrase of the Bible then could be, “Before anything else, in the beginning of all things, there was God. And God began to create.