DISQUS

Markforever · 2 months ago

Interesting opinion. Of course, the title of the article/report, based on Professor Worde's opinion, is presumptuous. At best, it is only an interpretative possibility, not fact. I am interested in seeing the textual and linguistic support from Prof. Worde from the Hebrew and Mesopotamian ancient literature.

David Anthony Martin · 2 months ago

So interesting that after thousands of years mankind has realized that the only thing preventing agreement between scientific findings leading us to a theory of a "big bang" (when matter as a singularity gained the dimension of space between its divided particles) and fervent faith-based and scripture-supported belief in the same has been due a misinterpretation (or possibly a dis-interpretation.)

Finally there is good reason for all the quibbling and arguing can cease and we can join as one in a human brotherhood. This should be world-wide news and reason for rejoicing and peace can finally reign between "secular" and "religious" oriented people. The implications for an enlightened and exponential development of humanities sense of Oneness and solidarity are staggering.

nielper · 2 months ago

This is what is taught in Mormon temples.

KWiz · 2 months ago

Great post. Additionally, the fact that the text states, "...the earth was a formless void" (Gen. 1:2a NRSV) suggests that something was there, but there was no form. Moreover, that "darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (1:2),suggests the waters of chaos were present. So there was something there. In fact, I teach this to my 9th graders at a Christian college prep school, and while young people are able to wrap there heads around this concept, it's adults who seem to get bent out of shape about this.

richardfolker · 2 months ago

Shalom Krista et. al. When I think of creation, I too, am filled with awe and wonder (ala Abraham Heschel). However, as a liberation theologian committed to healing the world (tikkun olam) through concrete "Christian Praxis", I feel the restless zeal of the Hebrew prophets who were never comfortable with the "status quo" and thus, I am compelled to address the sicknesses which plague our planet, our people, and our future. As H.L. Mencken said about the craft of journalism: "My job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." Walter Brueggemann also writes cogently about the prophetic imagination and our need to challenge "Empire Theology". I am not trying to be cynical when I find semantic jousting over words like "bara", but I do think that since God has done her part by creating the world, it is now up to us to create something like community, diversity, tolerance, and an ethics of environmental stewardship. Remember in B'reishit (Genesis) that when God was finished with her work, she grabbed a beer, sat down in her barcalounger and thought, "It is all good, very, very, good". Let's not mess it up folks - Rick Folker Kansas City
"Si tu quieras la paz, trabaja para justicia" - Pope Paul VI

ruthhousman · 2 months ago

Who created God? If something was there, before God, did God create this or was this something there before God, herself? We have here a mystery, and it is profound. But I do believe, deeply, that all words are "divine" and that God herself/himself, created language, and this is for us to probe and like disrobing, the robe in probe itself, it's a neverending mystery that just keeps unfolding, like the "rose". The sun, a "rose" this morning.

I am following a profound and beautiful story that has everything to do with the potential of words, so yes, to BARA, and now we have BARA CK, and who knows whether he will do the Noble Thing in promoting world peace or whether it will be the "No Bell" prize.

Why is it we can, all of us, use this miraculous clay, the alchemy of language?

I am saying it's divine, and to ask that question, is to open more doors than you can possibly imagine. And I would say, in deep ways, I have been tossed some of those keys. Life is a door, life is adore.

Is there proof of the existence of God? Maybe it's time to take a closer look at the miracles in our own lives and wonder, what is it, moves us, E motion itself?

ElrondPA · 2 months ago

Like Markforever, I'd like to hear a little more basis than simply bald assertion. It should also be noted that "other creation stories from Mesopotamia" don't necessarily tell us much about what the Biblical text means--while there may be parallels, there are clearly other ways in which the Biblical text is self-consciously distinct, as would be expected when God is constantly telling the Israelites not to be like the surrounding nations.

More seriously, she seems to be wrenching one word out of its context and playing with it all by itself, ignoring how that word is used elsewhere in the exact same story, not to mention elsewhere in the Pentateuch and the Hebrew Bible as a whole, and ignoring the rest of the chapter. For instance, 1:21: "God created (bara) great whales..." 1:27: "God created (bara) man in his own image." How does "separated" as a meaning make any sense in these verses? Clearly God is doing a lot of separating (light from darkness, land and seas, etc.), but he is first creating things that need to be separated: "Let there be light" (bara not used there). And there's another perfectly good word for separating that is actually being used in the text: "badal" (vv. 4, 6, 7, 14, 18). Far more words than just "bara" have to be re-imagined for her new cosmology to be internally consistent.

In the final analysis, this looks like just another publicity stunt--make an outlandish claim that supposedly upends everything people have always known to be true about Christianity and/or Judaism and the credulous, secularist, and religiously illiterate press fawn all over it (see almost every Easter cover story on Time and Newsweek), eager for a new way to show believers to be the drooling idiots they've always known them to be.

AlanLP · 2 months ago

While all very interesting, this is really nothing terribly new. What was "new" was the idea of creation ex nihilo, driven by the medieval philosophers, who couldn't imagine God needing anything but God's intellect/imagination to create. The early Rabbis had no problem understanding that God used the stuff of chaos -- tohu va-vahu -- as the raw material of creation, even as human beings (adam) were made out of the earth (adamah), and the woman was fashioned out of the raw material of the body of the first human.

russell981 · 2 months ago

What a great thought-thank you SOF! I'm trying to watch some of the NASA research in the most outer reaches of "creation". We may never fully understand the creator's methods, but we do know his intentions-love for us. When we are done with finding out how it was done, we can then focus on the "inward", physiologically, I mean. There is now research on cells, with no nucleus, probably functioning billions of years ago? There is a new bible discovered recently-it's been stored in some european monastery for a very long time, and it's been digitized for all of us to see and even translate if one so chooses!

prakashparikh · 2 months ago

God created the universe and who created God have been debated in every religion. The problem is that humans write religious scriptures, whether they are revealed or not. Humans cannot conceive time except in a linear, consecutive increment and therefore we ask questions such as when the world was created, or what was before the world was created, etc. In the phenomenological sense and in this three-dimensional world view, we will continue to ask such questions. Many masters and seers in many ancient religions speak about the experience when time is experienced as NOW. The past, present and future exist as now and it can be experienced as such. All reincarnations exist simultaneously; and all events occur and can be experienced simultaneously. The world is becoming, meaning it is always being created.
The idea that God created man in his own image or the idea that God created the world from nothing are questions that show human limitations. Alternatively we will think of spirit or alien forms that have similar capabilities as us but may have superhuman capabilities as best we can imagine. We cannot conceive of multi-dimensional personalities or existences, or non-physical worlds, or worlds where time does not exist as we know it because we continue to use our cognitive faculties to answer these questions.
Mystics and many seers have experienced “god” but they recognize that to express it in human language distortions will occur. Therefore, they encourage experience over scriptural studies, and provide guidelines to help understand if experience is “real” or not. They also recognize that each person will have a different experience of “god”.