... Therefore "IN" the beginning is an acceptable rendition.
"Beginning", "THE beginning" or "A beginning"?
With regard to the lack of the definite article with rē’shīt, Victor P. Hamilton (PhD, Brandeis University) in his NICOT commentary on Genesis notes the following points:
The Masoretes understood the word to be absolute, for they accented the word with a certain disjunctive accent that is normal for words in the absolute state, rather than with a conjunctive accent, which is normal for words in the construct state.
Further, contextually, the article is absent, the word rē’shīt is used in an absolute sense in Isaiah 46:10 in an exact parallel to Genesis 1:1. All the ancient versions translate the word as an absolute.
Thus the word rē’shīt is properly translated ‘THE beginning’ despite the fact that the definite article is absent in the Hebrew.
Tense "create" or "created"?
The Hebrew verb used here is in the Qal perfect state (more specifically the Qal perfect 3rd masculine singular).
Regarding the tense, the following is a quotation from author Jeff A Benner regarding how are Hebrew verb tenses different from English?
Hebrew verb tenses are related to action (perfect - completed action and imperfect - incomplete action) whereas English verb tenses are related to time (past, present and future). When the English translation has past tense it is usually the perfect tense in the Hebrew since it is completed action. The imperfect tense can be translated as present or future and can cause some problems when translating the Hebrew imperfect tense. The reality is that the Hebrew is not writing about time (past, present or future) as in their mind even something completed can be in the future.
... Therefore "IN" the beginning is an acceptable rendition.
"Beginning", "THE beginning" or "A beginning"?
With regard to the lack of the definite article with rē’shīt, Victor P. Hamilton (PhD, Brandeis University) in his NICOT commentary on Genesis notes the following points:
The Masoretes understood the word to be absolute, for they accented the word with a certain disjunctive accent that is normal for words in the absolute state, rather than with a conjunctive accent, which is normal for words in the construct state.
Further, contextually, the article is absent, the word rē’shīt is used in an absolute sense in Isaiah 46:10 in an exact parallel to Genesis 1:1. All the ancient versions translate the word as an absolute.
Thus the word rē’shīt is properly translated ‘THE beginning’ despite the fact that the definite article is absent in the Hebrew.
Tense "create" or "created"?
The Hebrew verb used here is in the Qal perfect state (more specifically the Qal perfect 3rd masculine singular).
Regarding the tense, the following is a quotation from author Jeff A Benner regarding how are Hebrew verb tenses different from English?
Hebrew verb tenses are related to action (perfect - completed action and imperfect - incomplete action) whereas English verb tenses are related to time (past, present and future). When the English translation has past tense it is usually the perfect tense in the Hebrew since it is completed action. The imperfect tense can be translated as present or future and can cause some problems when translating the Hebrew imperfect tense. The reality is that the Hebrew is not writing about time (past, present or future) as in their mind even something completed can be in the future.
Universe after universe is like an interminable succession of wheels forever coming into view, forever rolling onwards, disappearing and reappearing; forever passing from being to non being, and again from non being to being. In short, the constant revolving of the wheel of life in one eternal cycle, according to fixed and immutable laws, is perhaps after all the sum and substance of the philosophy of Buddhism. And this eternal wheel has so to speak, six spokes representing six forms of existence.� ---- Mon. Williams, Buddhism, pp. 229, 122.
The days and nights of Brahma are called Manvantara or the cycle of manifestation, ‘The Great Day,’ which is a period of universal activity, that is preceded, and also followed by ‘Pralaya,’ a dark period, which to our finite minds seems as an eternity. ‘Manvantara,’ is a creative day as seen in the six days of creation in Genesis, ‘Pralaya,’ is the evening that proceeds the next creative day. The six periods of Creation and the seventh day of rest in which we now exist are referred to in the book of Genesis as the generations of the universe.
The English word “Generation,� is translated from the Hebrew “toledoth� which is used in the Old Testament in every instance as ‘births,’ or ‘descendants,’ such as “These are the generations of Adam,� or “these are the generations of Abraham, and Genesis 2: 4; These are the generations of the Universe or the heavens and earth, etc. And the ‘Great Day’ in which the seven generations of the universe are eternally repeated, is the eternal cosmic period, or the eighth eternal day in which those who attain to perfection are allowed to enter, where they shall be surrounded by great light and they shall experience eternal peace, while those who do not attain to perfection are cast back into the refining fires of the seven physical cycles that perpetually revolve within the eighth eternal cosmic cycle.
The first day, or rather the first generation of the universe as we know it today, was only Light, massive first generation stars, and evening descended when the stars imploded in upon themselves and were condensed back into the infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity of origin, which singularity, would later be spatially separated by what is called the Big Bang and the second generation of the universe would come into existence etc.
Origen, was a Christian writer and teacher who lived between the years of 185 and 254 AD. Among his many works is the Hexapla, which is his interpretation of the Old Testament texts. Origen holds to a series of worlds following one upon the other,-- each world rising a step higher than the previous world, so that every later world brings to ripeness the seeds that were imbedded in the former, and itself then prepares the seed for the universe that will follow it. Every universe from the first to the last, from the smallest to the greatest, which have been created throughout the aeons of eternity, still exist in their independent Space-Time positions within the eternal and boundless cosmos.
The New international Version, the Scofield Referrence Bible, and the Companion Bible, all note that the phase in Genesis 1: 2; The earth was formless and void (Having neither shape or mass) should be correctly translated, “The earth became without form and void.� The Hebrew word “Hayah� translated “was,� means “To become, occur, come to pass, Be.� (Vines Complete Expository of Old and New Testament Words, 1985. “To Be.�)
When this universe collapses and is condensed once more into the infinitely dense, infinitely hot, infinitesimally small singularity of origin, it returns to THE Beginning, before space and time began, not to a new beginning, but to THE beginning.
Genesis 1: 1; In the beginning the earth became shapless and without mass (Formless and void.)
