During my first graduate school program, I did a whole paper on the interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2. Indeed, these verses have made for quite a bit of entertainment and controversy. One of my favorite possibilities alluded to in Genesis, comes with this very first phrase from the very first line: in the beginning.
Of course, this is not what the phrase says in Hebrew:
בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית
The root of the word is “head” reš with a bә added for effect. Scholars seem to think it means something like “at the head.” Of course the glaring problem is the absence of the definite article. But without the definite article, which would look like (ba)reishit instead of (bә)reishit, we are left with an awkward construction, namely: “in a head.”
Now perhaps it has been suggested that what is really being said is that creation began in the mind (head) of God. Other than making this a Matrix-type/Bishop Berkeley illusion of creation, the other possibility suggests that if we stay with the colloquial translation of “beginning,” we still are left with something like this: “in a beginning.” This is actually theologically consistent when one considers that the story of the flood and the rebirth was a beginning as well, and so Genesis 1:1 is not the most important beginning but is a beginning. This is also possible, if one considers that this most likely had nothing to do with creatio ex nihilo. And so God, working and fashioning pre-existing matter created “a beginning” by giving it form, the same way he creates a new beginning in the post-diluvian world. That is to say this isn’t a cosmological statement about the universe, but one about humanity’s beginning. The existence of the matter prior to its fashioning is of no interest to the author, but rather that God creates out of it a world for us. It is story thoroughly situated in our world!
There is still another possibility, and unless you are into ancient alien myths, the knights templar, and other Christian conspiracy theories, you’ll most likely not like this one, but I would caution that it is about as cogent a theory from a secular standpoint then it is to claim that Genesis 1:1 points to a scientific theory of Big Bang cosmology from the Niels Bohr particle. That is to say, there is a modicum of faith that must be administered, in the same way one must tie any faith to his spiritual life.
Let’s propose that beyond the ancient texts, there is a God who is all-powerful and from himself begets reality. “In a beginning” may imply that there are also other beginnings, not important for us, but perhaps on other worlds. This was something I considered as I completed a very interesting independent study course on the Question of the Incarnation and Extra-terrestrial Life. After all, the vastness of the universe makes our own reality a bit absurd, even WITHIN the context of one’s faith. That God would reserve billions upon billions of galaxies for nothingness while we make up the only contingent of life would be an incredible tale. The crowd who considers that all of this is for us still seems not to have gotten past the Christocentricism and Anthropocentricism that despite science’s best attempts with Darwinism and Copernicanism remain hard at work in convincing us that we are prized creatures.
David’s question “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” need not be a statement of our solitary station in the universe or multi-verse for that matter. That God would mind anything other than himself seems an even greater statement than his minding us once you try to wrap your brain around what it means to be eternal and perfect!
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