Agreed, but then you immediately step off the reservation into eisegesis. You have only the Bible to base your beliefs on. Cutting and pasting it into convenient bits doesn't make your case. You lose the context and thus the idea. Eventually, you lose your way.
You go on to make several presumptions not proclaimed in the Bible. Genesis 1:1 says what it says and nothing more.
The Midrash also states that the Torah was the blueprint used for creation. We could go round and round with Rabbinic tradition.
Genesis 1:1 reads: New Living Translation In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The use of the word "created" is arbitrary. You could just as accurately use the word "formed", perhaps even more accurately as to the eastern mind creating order out of chaos is the greatest act of God. Here's another translation:
Young's Literal Translation In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth --
The Rabbis recognize that surmising as to what occurred prior to Gen. 1:1 is unwise. Not knowing God you then aspire to describe his attributes. This is why for Jews Christianity is such an offense. Are you familiar with the Mitzvot?
These are the Mosaic Law from the Torah. There are some 613, but the gross number doesn't matter. The first six are universal and always apply. Of those first six the first three are very familiar to Christians:
Ex. 20:2 New Living Translation "I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.
Again, check the Hebrew carefully and the context also. Who is the audience? We're just looking over Moses' shoulder.
When Alamo_Girl states that dimensions time and space were part of the creation, I take that implies God The Eternal Almighty pre-existed anything and everything we seek to comprehend, and certainly all the dimensions we may define.
We humans characterize the chaotic state and presume it is from such a chaos that The Creator fashions everything. We Christians would also presume that the 'thing', the state of chaos, was created by The Creator of all there is, has been, or ever shall be.
Frankly, I don't agree that there was an actual state of chaos, from The Creator's perspective.
The scriptures give us huge clues regarding a reality (which I've charqacterized as a where/when) that we presently cannot sense. It is from this 'other where/when' that the hand reached to write upon Belshazzar's wall.
Perhaps it is this 'other' where/when to which Jesus went when He arose from the burial clothes without unwrapping them or rolling away the stone fromt he tomb.
Perhaps it is back and forth with this where/when that Jesus used to appear and disappear following His resurrection. But we also have clues that He used this where/when before His crucifixion, when He 'passed through' those taking up stones to kill Him for portraying Himself as the Son of Man; when He stretched a few loaves and fishes to feed 5000; when He appeared upon the lake and upon entering the boat with the disciples, they were immediately at the shore when moments before they were in the midst of a storm and out in the lake.
And there are other clues scattered throughout the Bible (OT and NT) which give strong hint of another where/when not accessible to our senses, yet. This other where/when has spatio-temporal characterisitics thus it too is a Creation by The Creator, for The Creator God IS before ever there was anything. His name is I Am.
And 1010RD replied: Agreed, but then you immediately step off the reservation into eisegesis. You have only the Bible to base your beliefs on. Cutting and pasting it into convenient bits doesn't make your case. You lose the context and thus the idea. Eventually, you lose your way.... The use of the word "created" is arbitrary. You could just as accurately use the word "formed", perhaps even more accurately as to the eastern mind creating order out of chaos is the greatest act of God.
What "chaos?" Your view presupposes that there existed something before the creation event out of which God "formed" the world. But Alamo-Girl has never said this, and I have very strong doubts that she believes this. There was literally nothing for God to "form" until He created it: No matter, no space, no time. Nothing.
Some Eastern-minded physical cosmologists like to say that the physical universe arose out of a false vacuum. Yet a hypothetical vacuum field is not "nothing." It would already exist in space and time — a space and time that had not yet emerged, and could not emerge, prior to the Big Bang.
Genesis 1:1 says that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Evidently on your theory, God used pre-existing materials to do this. What pre-existing materials? A hypothetical chaos?
Prior to the Big Bang, there was nothing — the Ayn Sof; God was alone. Space and time did not exist. Matter did not exist.
As Georges LeMaître, the father of Big Bang/expanding universe theory, put it, the Big Bang (analogue of Genesis 1:1) was in fact "a day without yesterday." That is, there was no time before the singularity exploded the universe into existence. Time began only at the moment of this unique event, or slightly thereafter — and also space and matter. There was nothing for God to "form" prior to His creating these "materials" (e.g., space, time, matter). Which is why Christians believe God created ex nihilo — out of "nothing."
Something — heaven and earth — came into being out of nothing, solely by means of the Creator's creative Word, His Logos of the Beginning Whom the beloved apostle tells us "was God, and was with God." To me, the Big Bang is analogue of God's SPEAKING His Word into creation, whereby He created the universe, heavenly and physically (i.e., "the earth" of Genesis 1:1).
1010RD, you wrote: "The Rabbis recognize that surmising as to what occurred prior to Gen. 1:1 is unwise. Not knowing God you then aspire to describe his attributes."
Well, such surmising is not only "unwise," it pertains to a matter impossible for the human mind to know or directly validate. To that extent, the Rabbis are entirely correct. On the other hand, it is not needful to conjecture about the attributes of God beyond the revealed fact that He is creative. The Creation itself is proof of that.
There can be no "before" a "beginning." There is no time "before" time began.
LeMaître was one of the greatest mathematical minds of the Twentieth Century. (He was also a Roman Catholic priest.) It was he who conceived of the singularity — which he called the "Primeval Atom"; this is what "blew up" in the initial explosion that got the universe started, the initial point from which the Universe expanded. He also described the singularity as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation." Later on, Sir Fred Hoyle coined a disparaging/derisive term for this unique cosmic event: the "Big Bang."
As LaMaître noted,
If the world has begun with a single quantum, the notions of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning; they would only begin to have a sensible meaning when the original quantum had been divided into a sufficient number of quanta. If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time. [See "'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang" by Mark Midborn, in Commonweal, March 24, 2000:, pp. 18-19.]From this I surmise the Beginning of the world was the Logos; then it "blew up" in a "Big Bang." And then space and time and matter came into existence.
Funny thing about that Logos: It seems to have specified the creation without overdetermining it. That is, although it seems to account for some 200+ "finely-tuned" universal constants (specifying initial conditions), and to have specified universal physical laws ("guides to the system"), it leaves plenty of room for variety, diversity, innovation, development and change (within limits).
To me, "singularity" is effectively the scientific term for the Logos of the Beginning....
1010RD, you said that Alamo-Girl has only the Bible as a basis for belief. I don't believe this is an accurate statement. The Holy Scriptures articulate the infallible Word of God as He Himself reveals it to us. But He also gave us the revelation of "the Book of Nature," too: the Creation itself.
I see no "dispute" between Genesis 1:1 and the Big Bang/expanding/inflationary universe model. Both are revelations of God's Truth that, if anything, mutually support each other.
Well, them be my thoughts, FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, 1010RD!