October, 1945
371 i
THE INITIAL COSMOS OFSCRIPTURE
By H. Framer Smith
A complete article in itself, this study may nevertheless be read 'as a supplement to the article T h e T hird G olgotha , which appeared in the July and August issues of this mag azine. The Relation of Statement to Meaning T HE AUTHOR of perhaps the most scholarly volume text of the Bible says. Only then may we rightfully em bark upon the quest of determining what it means.” Several authors in this series have “determined the text of the Bible” by a method called “conjectural emendation” : by “proving” that the initial letter of the word there is an “insertion,” they change there to here; by “demonstrating” that the second letter should be supplied they read three for tree (!). The speaker just quoted was suggesting an antidote for such textual emendation. He advocated the careful study of each Hebrew word in a given text; the careful weighing of the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible—especially the Kittel Bible—with respect to a given text; a study of such given text in the Greek, Syriac, Latin, and Arabic translations; then the most exact trans lation of the thus certified Hebrew text. One of our most able Bible Conference teachers has his own way of voicing substantially the same maxim. Explaining why he con sulted and compared scores of different translations of Scripture rather than commentaries upon given passages, he declared himself to be seeking not what the passage meant but what it said: “If I know what it says,” he asserted, “I expect to possess intelligence enough to know what it means.” In this present article, particular attention is given to what the text says. For the most part, the meaning of what is said is left to the intelligence of the reader. Only as he puts himself in the position of reader does the author, here and there, determine the meaning of the passages cited. Some Genesis Utterances About the Creatiqn In the English Version» we read: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” For heaven the He brew original has the plural, heavens (Gen. 1:1)*. By all the related rules of Semitic languages, of which Hebrew is a most important one, this opening verse of Genesis is a complete thought, at the close of which we come to a full pause. The human author, Moses, has indicated the
in the I.C.C. series of expositions once said to his students, concerning the Hebrew Bible: “First of all, young men, we must determine and accept what the
completeness of the thought expressed in verse one by h/s use of the initial verb of verse two3. Moreover, the Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek, thus producing the Septuagint or LXX Version, so trans lated the beginning of verse two as to indicate that verse one expressed a full and complete thought* and that verse two introduced a new thing that had come into being. Because these normal Semitic principles—the proper pause or stop; the idea of became inherent in hayah;—are unfamiliar to the reader who depends upon translation versions, Genesis 1:2^ is commonly read as an integral part of Genesis 1:1. The two separate and distinct state ments are erroneously welded into one and the false de duction made that the earth of this creative act was a formless nebula. The simple statement of the opening verse of the Bible is that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In Genesis 2:4-6 we have a lengthier statement about creation. Just as some unthinkingly read Genesis 1:2a into Genesis 1:1, so others read Genesis 2:4-6 as a sum mary of Genesis l:2b-2:3. This thoughtlessness reads into Genesis 2:4-6 a meaning that its pure and simple state ment does not convey. That Genesis 2:4-6 cannot possibly be a summary of chapter or verses that precede is clear from the following facts: Genesis is God’s story of creation (1:1—2:3) and the subsequent “bringings-forth” of creation (2:4-50:26). The story of creation is told in two parts: creation of the heavens and the earth (1:1); ruin and restoration of the earth (l:2-2:3). The story of the “bringings-forth” of creation is likewise narrated in two unequal parts: the general bringings-forth (2:4-4:26); the specific bringings- forth (5:1-50:26). In the larger of these two sections we have the bringings-forth of Adam (5:l-6:8); of Noah (6:9-9:29); of the sons of Noah (10:1-11:9); of Shem (11:10-26); of Terah (11:27-25:11); of Ishmael (25:12-18);
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