So where does it say in Genesis that God created the universe from nothing?

I don't want to derail the thread, but quick question:

Did Aristotle and Plato believe in God? Or god, or a god, or some being?

In other words, did Aristotle and/or Plato believe in some being that was beyond the physical and had created the universe? Or was the source of all that is good?

I think Plato believed in "the soul", and he believed that God was "perfect and benevolent" or "the source of good". Is this correct?

And I think Aristitotle believed that God was an "unmoved mover", something that created the universe without having to move. Is this correct?

>Genesis 1.1-2 in its properly translation literally states that God created from materials

I mean it doesn't, but ok

Try Robert Alter's translation of Genesis 1:1

When God began to create the heaven and Earth, and Earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said "Let there be light."

"Deep" here the the Hebrew "tehom". It refers to waters of the deep. The concept of a watery chaos preceding acts of creation is found in even older Mesopotamian creation stories.

It makes a bit more sense when you take into consideration the argument that the Hebrew word for "created" in Genesis 1 more closely means "ordered".

>Genesis clearly goes to lengths to display God as responsible for creating all that there is.
sure, it's now just a question of how we define "create". do we mean from nothing ("yesh mi ayin") as the rabbis believe. or perhaps by create we mean in the conventional sense of taking prexisting materials and organizing them. the biblical account could be used to support both views, although I think the latter is more plausible based on what the text says. not that i base jy metaphysical beliefs on biblical exegesis, im not a devout jew or anything.

Does not follow. The ",and " here can be read as sequential not synchronous.
As in first he began to make the heavens and the Earth at which point such was the state of the Earth

Read some modern theology, you stupid motherfucker.
holy shit Veeky Forums is literally FILLED with fucking retards.
GENESIS 1.1-2 LITERALLY STATES THAT GOD CREATED FROM SOMETHING, ONLY SHITTY MEME TRANSLATIONS USE LOADED TERMS.
Proper translation, sweetie.
>When God began to create heaven and earth—the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep (tehom) and :1 wind from God sweeping over the water”
Oh look, creation from materials.
See how the emdash works there, as an aside? To note to the audience that creation was not like it is now?
BUT OH WAIT I GUESS ITS FINE TO RELY ON ANCIENT SHITTY TRANSLATIONS BECAUSE MUH KJV MUH KJV ABLOOBLOO

>although I think the latter is more plausible based on what the text says

Then where did the rabbis as you said come to assert otherwise? You're putting a pedantic (and subjective) reading of the text at face value above the spirit of the faith itself
But then you are a kike so go figure

t. has not read Leibniz

I really don't care what some atheist anthropologists have niggerrigged into a fan fiction against thousands of years of hermeneutic tradition.
Your argument so far is petty and grasping

>Then where did the rabbis as you said come to assert otherwise?
it's a tradition, like everything in judaism. see vid related
m.youtube.com/watch?v=sWSoYCetG6A
>You're putting a pedantic (and subjective) reading of the text at face value above the spirit of the faith itself
no, im not. i just said that i dont base my metaphysical views on biblical exegesis. my post clearlt states that the latter view is more plausible based on text reading. that means that IF you want to base your understanding on what the text says alone you will probably support some kind of prima materia. im not implying that you SHOULD base it on the text.

Could be that we are actually trapped inside of a black hole and it's pulling our "universe" apart at the seams and that explains the continued entropy we observe. Could also be that our big bang is nothing more than a firework at a redneck 4th of July to beings not trapped in this third dimension of time (entropy observed). We are so mortal and temporary that one of our dimensions is best interpreted as entropy observed.

Your argument here rests on the idea we read texts on a bare and analytic way in which we take each sentence on its own and deduce in isolation its most likely propositional suggestion.
This is absurd however, the text itself is of a supreme singular and almighty God, to suggest the very same text precludes such a God with a dumb empty material lying stagnant is ridiculous
Its not a matter of tradition its a matter of not missing the forest for the trees

All that shit counts as "the heavens"

Thanks check out my blog

boards.Veeky Forums.org/lit/thread/1059453010594895

Here's Young's literal translation. A lot of other translations also tend to be more coherent when you replace the word "created" with some form of "ordered". God is pretty obviously working with a preexistent watery chaos.

Yes, this is 'nature meeting light'

Created, meeting their creator.
The being that percieves the inbetween.

Yeah it would. I'm more or less pointing out that we as the severely limited nifty apes that we are will never be able to understand how God or the Heavens work, and really we should concern ourselves with being good people and let the mysteries be revealed to us on death because it's our only hope at understanding. We won't know Jack shit as about how or why as long as flesh and neurons are our best tools at perception.

>in which we take each sentence on its own and deduce in isolation its most likely propositional
that's not at all what im saying. i mentioned in my first post that looking at the word "bara" in other contexts it fits the definition of "make" more than "creation ex nihilo". i also was careful to mention that if you wanted you could support both views from the text, but that i merely considered the latter view to be more plausible (which is not the same as saying that i consider the former implausible, on the contrary i simply consider it LESS plausible). you're the one being pedantic. why do you care if i believe in creation ex nihilo or not? you seem very invested in this. i was just trying to answer op's question as best as i know

>atheists
Sorry, these are theologians, Christian and Jewish theologians.
hurr durr tradition (based on a bad translation)
Fuck off heretic.

We are focusing on the Hebrew bible through a literary and historical lense, not Leibniz.

Yes, God creates the world from a pre-existant primordial ocean. It's similar to the Memphite Egyptian belief in the primordial ocean called Nun, from which the creator God forms the world (see the Memphite Theology in ANET). Connections have also been drawn to Babylonian mythology, which has Marduk creating the world from the corpse of Tiamat, an ocean goddess/monster who existed before the other gods (see Enuma Elisha)

Light=energy=matter.

This guy gets it. Pic related is the first few lines of the Enuma Elis

WRONG

LIGHT = [DEFINED MATTER, COLOR SPECTRUM, DIMENSIONAL MATH ADAPTATION]
DARK = [UNLIMITED UNDEFINED MATTER]

Energy is the speed that connects the two, with pre define substance, when energy reaches 0 it stops defining

Yes, this describes human nature arrived as an alien adaptation, to the life of the planet earth.

How the all different forms of lifes came to earth is a very complicated theory and anylsis to complete. If possible at all.

I could have sworn the first word of Genesis, meaning "In the beginning", is Bereshit.

yes, did my post seem to suggest otherwise? sorry for the confusion. and also: the meaning of the word bereshit is highly debated in judaism. gramatically it's quite strange. if you simply wanted to say "in the beginning" you would write "reshit", adding "be" changes the meaning. The most plausible interpretation, imo, and also i think the most common one by orthodox jews is "in the beginning of god's creating the heaven and the earth" rather than "in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth".

I think the academic consensus is that it's corrupt, so any translation is a reconstruction by default.

>these are theologians

Means nothing on its own, anyone can call himself a theologian

>here's a completely different text which says a completely different thing

Imagine seriously asserting this as a point

Lol are you trolling

I'm trolling? The dude just produced a completely different work from a completely different civilization with its own religion, culture and traditions as having some inherent bearing on the Bible
Total patchwork scholarship

Not obvious in the least nor do these essentially synonyms have any incontrovertible bearing on the matter.
So too does the translation you forward here make clear this was God's act in THE beginning, as the first cause
Frankly this whole conversation reeks of new age Eastern fancies and given the lack of substance I've been presented with I won't be entertaining it any further

What are you even talking about, you are relying on rhetoric

Same user, just remembered that ANET3 6-7 (an Egyptian creation story) is probably a closer parallel. It has Ra (or Re, or Amon-Ra) as the chief god and creator god, one of who's forms is Khepri, the sun scarab. I'll post it below, words in braces are glosses added by me.

>The All-Lord {Ra} said, after he had come into being :
>I am he who came into being as Khepri {the sun scarab}. When I
>had come into being, being (itself) came into being,
>and all beings came into being after I came into being.
>Many were the beings which came forth from my
>mouth,' before heaven came into being, before earth
>came into being, before the ground and creeping things
>had been created in this place. I put together (some)
>of them in Nun {the primordial ocean} as weary ones,' before I could find a
>place in which I might stand.' It (seemed) advantageous
>to me in my heart; I planned with my face; and I made
>(in concept) every form when I was alone, before I
>had spat out what was Shu {air}, before I had sputtered out
>what was Tefnut {moisture},' and before (any) other had come
>into being who could act with me.

Here you have many parallels and points of interest. Nun, the pre-existant ocean, is not created by Ra, even though he is the first being in existence. Ra creates by speaking, and creations come from his mouth, similarly to Elohim in Genesis 1 ("Elohim said, let there be X"). Ra also starts by putting air and moisture in place, similarly to Elohim creating the sky first. As a broader point, Ra has many forms or aspects, and was often combined with other gods (Amon and Khepri, for example) which was a very common feature of ancient near eastern gods. Another example is the Canaanite Ba'al, the gods Ba'al Sapun, Ba'al Hadad, and others were treated as their own gods or synonymous with Ba'al depending on context. Ancient Israelite religion just took this to an extreme by making every god an aspect of (or synonymous with) Yahweh, which is why he's variously called Yahweh, Yah, Elohim, El Shaddai, El Olam, etc. and has characteristics of many other gods, such as riding on the clouds like Ba'al (e.g. Isaiah 19:1, Psalm 68:4).

Amusing conjecture but little relevance to the Bible as it is

to answer OP's question, the first line of genesis states that the "earth was without form and void"

a very quick check of the word was (hayah) shows it is also translated as "was, come to pass, came, has been, were happened, become, pertained, better for thee" in the very same KJV translation

in other words, when you read the bible, even in the least degraded translations, you're still getting a pretty hefty "paragraph," which is to say, meaning is either being added, lost, or inadvertently twisted

I would guess that the correct translation of this first line is that 'the earth became formless' which is a pretty massive difference from the standard KJV, and is a little closer to scientific reality

>So too does the translation you forward here make clear this was God's act in THE beginning, as the first cause
Not that user, but you're wrong. That translation says
>In the beginning of God's preparing...
and you're reading it as
>At the beginning [of existence] God prepared...

They're clearly completely different chronologically. Compare
>in the beginning of me getting up...
with
>in the beginning I got up
The first one says nothing about what happened or existed prior to the action, while the second one asserts that nothing did.

The god of the Old Testament does not create from nothing. He reshapes a reality that already exists, sculpting it out of water.

The god of the Christians DOES create from nothing but it's not said anywhere in the New Testament.

You can only make sense of this when you realize that the Old and New Testament have two completely different gods and in no way compatible what so ever.

That's not strictly correct, the belief in creation from nothing does appear later in the hellenistic era, possibly influenced by the greek philosophy the invaders brought with them. See below, 2 Maccabees was written mid-2nd century BC.

From the Oxford Companion to the Bible, entry on Creation
>... creation is brought about by the separation of the elements of the universe, which produces an ordered and habitable world. Hence creation is not so much dealing with an absolute beginning, creation from nothing—though the idea appears later, as in 2 Maccabees 7.28—as with the world order as perceived by human beings.

but it could be anything

the first sentence in the torah is "bereishit bara elohim et hashemaim ve'et ha'arets." bara is "created from nothing"

No it isn't you baboon.

idk mam that's what I was taught
I've only read the Torah/Bible/Quran in pieces though

man not mam
lel

Yeah, well ברא means just generally creating something. "Creation from nothing" is just a later theological interpretation, which is implied nowhere in the Hebrew Bible. Both creation narratives in Genesis have their roots in older Mesopotamian/Near Eastern creation myths, where there always exists something before the creation (typically a dark sea ruled by another deity which has to be conquered before the creation can commence, such as Baal fighting Yamm in Ugarit, which in turn is referenced to in Job 38--42).

>typically a dark sea ruled by another deity which has to be conquered before the creation can commence
Any explanations why this is the common way of creation?

Different user here, with mythology and folklore, the "why" of the stories is usually inacessible. We don't know who first came up with these story motifs, we only know that they exist. In terms of the ancient near east specifically, we just see that Egyptians, Israelites, Canaanites, Babylonians, etc. have this mythical motif of a god fighting the sea monster. One hypothesis is that it's a justification for a certain god's primacy and kingship over the other gods and creation. For example, in the Ba'al cycle, Yamm (the sea god/monster) is chosen as king of the gods, so Ba'al fights and defeats him to take his place as king. Similarly, Marduk defeats Tiamat to become the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon.

This fight against the chaotic sea being is present in ancient Israelite belief, and probably had a similar purpose of justifying Yahweh's kingship. But was de-emphasised by priestly writers in order to emphasise Yahweh's complete sovereinty. Genesis 1:21 has the sea monsters as Yahweh's creation rather than primordial enemies, as does Psalm 104:30. The more archaic view is preserved in Job 41:1-11, Psalm 74:12-17, and Isaiah 27:1. In those passages Yahweh defeats Leviathan, which is cognate with the Canaanite Litan, also a chaotic sea monster that Ba'al defeats (KTU 1.5 I 1-4).

In fact, the wording of Isaiah 27:1 has Yahweh killing Leviathan, who is associated with Tannin, a generic word for sea monster. This is very similar to the descriptions of Ba'al killing Litan, and Anat killing Tunnan (cognate with Tannin)

Isaiah 27:1
>On that day Yahweh with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the Tannin that is in the sea.

Baal Cycle - KTU 1.5 I 1-3
>When you killed Litan, the fleeing serpent
>Annihilated the twisty serpent
>The potentate with seven heads

Baal Cycle - KTU 1.3 III 40-42
>Surely I bound Tunnan and destroyed him
>I fought the twisty serpent
>The potentate with seven heads

Interesting, thank you.

No, he believed the universe was eternal, never created. Don't project your jewish cuckoldry onto polytheistic platonists, like so many of your kind before, you autist.

What is KTU?
And, more importantly, where is it explained who created this formless deep, since as it has been argued in this thread, it seems to have already been there?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keilschrift_Texte_aus_Ugarit

Keilschrift Texte aus Ugarit, the standard reference system for the Canaanite inscriptions found at Ugarit, I quoted the Mark S. Smith translation. Nothing created the deep, it's the pre-creation state of reality.

Oh look, the little brainlet is upset.
It's from fucking Babylon. The Jews spent time in fucking Babylon.

Nope.