Professor Ellen van Wolde believes that she has found the ‘true’ way to translate a verse of Scripture that has been translated differently by others for centuries before her. She says the first verse of the Bible doesn’t present God as creator of the Earth.
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In what must be the worst example of theological self-delusion in modern times, a theology professor claims God is only half a creator.
Professor Ellen van Wolde believes that she has found the ‘true’ way to translate a verse of Scripture that has been translated differently by others for centuries before her. She says the first verse of the Bible doesn’t present God as creator of the Earth.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Wolde, apparently a “respected” Old Testament scholar and author (it doesn’t say who does the respecting), believes that the first sentence of Genesis is wrong. A typical translation says: “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.” Wolde says this is not the correct translation of the Hebrew; it should really be rendered as: “In the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth.”
According to Wolde, the Hebrew verb “bara” does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate”. So the Earth was already there when God created life.
All current translations disagree. It really beggars belief that she could think that every other translator for over 20 centuries, going back to those who were much closer to the ancient Hebrew language than we are, could all be wrong.
Admittedly, over the centuries, some mistakes have crept into some translations of the Bible due to copying errors, but theologians are aware of these and have corrected modern translations by going back to the oldest manuscripts that pre-date the copies containing errors.
Also, in the last century or so, discoveries of other ancient manuscripts of the Bible, plus archaeological finds, have shed new light on Bible texts. This has meant that some minor translation disputes have been resolved, and theologians have been able to clarify the meaning of some words that the King James Version, for example, got wrong.
But all such advances in Bible translation have moved forward with the agreement of committees of scholars, who have been able to argue their case in the context of peer research and review, and consensus has been reached. Such scholarship has never suggested there was a need to change the translation of Genesis 1:1. Even the most wayward of idiosyncratic translations of the Bible have never come up with anything approaching Wolde’s theory.
Wolde, 54, will soon present her thesis at her University in The Netherlands. We will see if any other academics are persuaded.
But perhaps we can get a clue as to what has influenced her to reject the wisdom of centuries by her admission that her rethink on the original Hebrew text not only involved cross-referencing with other Bible verses, but other creation stories from ancient Mesopotamia.
Some of these myths say that originally there was a large sea filled with monsters, covered in darkness. This does have some echoes in the first chapter of Genesis, where the Spirit of God hovered over the waters before creating light. But, of course, there are a thousand creation myths from other cultures with which you could compare the Bible’s account. And if you don’t believe the Bible to be inspired truth from God, then you can pick and choose and mix and match to make up any old belief that you choose.
The truth is that God created the Heavens and the Earth – i.e. the entire Universe – not just the life on this planet. He didn’t happen upon the Earth when he was passing by, like an alien in a spaceship, and decided to add a few animals, plants and humans to a planet that already had some sea monsters.
Wolde argues that the beginning of the Bible does not refer to the beginning of the Universe, but the beginning of a narration. Yet, tellingly, she admits that technically “bara” does mean “create”, but in her opinion there is “something wrong with the verb.”
She asks: “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?”
Why God chose to create more than one thing at a time is entirely up to him, but it really doesn’t give any justification for saying that he didn’t create the Earth.
Wolde concludes: “God did create some things, but not the Heaven and Earth. The usual idea of creating-out-of-nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a big misunderstanding.”
So what kind of half-God are you left with?!
In her scenario, God came along and made the earth inhabitable for land animals and humans, separating the water from the land and bringing light into the darkness. Trouble is, you then need another creator for the world to have come into existence before God came along and fiddled with a few things on Earth. So there’d be two ‘gods’, at least.
At a stretch, it could be argued that God made the universe at an earlier point, and that the creation story in Genesis refers to what God did with the Earth later on. And he did indeed do some ‘separating’ – light from darkness (1:4) and the water above “the expanse” from the water below (1:7). But as Wolde herself admits, her theory goes much further than that. It effectively downgrades the biblical God to a wandering gardener with magical powers, rather than the omnipotent Creator of all that is. And in so doing, it contradicts the rest of the Bible.
Wolde is clearly troubled by her own conclusions. She says: “Maybe I am even hurting myself. I consider myself to be religious and the Creator used to be very special, as a notion of trust. I want to keep that trust… The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now.”
How very sad. But also completely ludicrous that she thinks her strange translation of a single verse of Scripture makes belief in a Creator untenable.
Such loss of faith is unnecessary if we maintain the view of the Bible that it claims for itself – the inspired Word of God. It is not to be compared with creation myths from other cultures, as if they can shed light on the One who is the Light. This, and a thousand other errors, flow from interpreting Scripture in a liberal way.
The Bible tells us to “examine the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). We are not to blindly accept everything that every so-called Bible teacher claims is true, but to examine Scripture closely for ourselves.
So, correct translation of the Bible is a terribly important task, and we must be open to allow the Holy Spirit to enlighten us in interpretation and translation. But a fundamental and healthy approach to Bible study, agreed upon by all believing scholars, is that Scripture must be allowed to be interpreted by Scripture. We cannot take one verse out of context, but must compare it with all other verses that relate to the same subject (and in their original language, if we have that ability).
If Wolde had done this, it’s extremely difficult to understand how she could do anything else but come to the conclusion that God is the Creator of the entire Universe. There are simply too many other Bible references to the omnipotence of God.
Even the “sea monsters” that Wolde claims were there before God began creating other things are clearly created by God, according to the Bible itself. Only 20 verses later than the first verse of Genesis that Wolde disputes, in Genesis 1:21, the Bible says: “So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems.”
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Tags: Christianity