You rightly believe in creation ex nihilo, but it is a doctrine you impose on your short canon of Scripture, rather than derive from it, while for all Christian traditions that existed before the 16th century, it is a Biblical doctrine, precisely because we all (Orthodox, Latin, monophysite and Nestorian alike) have 2nd Maccabees in our canon.
“You’re reading into the passages from John and Colossians the Church’s understanding that was based on 2nd Maccabees.”
This is a pretty irrational conclusion, since you didn’t even attempt to defend 2nd Maccabees as actually inspired. This is like trying to stand without ground, or breath without air. Thus I conclude that you either concede the points I made or can’t refute what I said on the matter. In either case, you want me to believe (in effect) that the Jews concluded that God created everything from nothing from a book they didn’t even believe was inspired, rather than concluding that the book is merely a product of a belief already held, which is the most rational conclusion. After all, the book is an abridged and humble history book, and makes no pretensions of being anything more than that.
As to the truth of creation “from nothing,” so as to silence the Mormons rooting for you, it is understood by “the rabbins, who are legitimate judges in a case of verbal criticism on their own language, are unanimous in asserting that the word bara expresses the commencement of the existence of a thing, or egression from nonentity to entity. It does not in its primary meaning denote the preserving or new forming things that had previously existed, as some imagine, but creation in the proper sense of the term, though it has some other acceptations in other places. The supposition that God formed all things out of a pre-existing, eternal nature, is certainly absurd, for if there had been an eternal nature besides an eternal God, there must have been two self-existing, independent, and eternal beings, which is a most palpable contradiction.”
He continues, expanding on the rest of the words in the sentence as the Jews interpret it,
“The word eth, which is generally considered as a particle, simply denoting that the word following is in the accusative or oblique case, is often understood by the rabbins in a much more extensive sense. “The particle eth,” says Aben Ezra, “signifies the substance of the thing.” The like definition is given by Kimchi in his Book of Roots... “The particle eth (says Buxtorf, Talmudic Lexicon, sub voce) with the cabalists is often mystically put for the beginning and the end, as alpha and omega are in the Apocalypse.” On this ground these words should be translated, “God in the beginning created the substance of the heavens and the substance of the earth,” i.e. the prima materia, or first elements, out of which the heavens and the earth were successively formed. The Syriac translator understood the word in this sense, and to express this meaning has used the word yoth, which has this signification, and is very properly translated in Walton’s Polyglot, Esse, caeli et Esse terrae, “the being or substance of the heaven, and the being or substance of the earth.” St. Ephraim Syrus, in his comment on this place, uses the same Syriac word, and appears to understand it precisely in the same way.”
It doesn’t appear that the Jews are in any way dependent on 2 Maccabees for their conclusions on ex-nihilo.