Hebrew Experts Required

God is not the Creator, claims academic

And why?

Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis “in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew.

She claims she has carried out fresh textual analysis that suggests the writers of the great book never intended to suggest that God created the world — and in fact the Earth was already there when he created humans and animals.

...She said she eventually concluded the Hebrew verb “bara”, which is used in the first sentence of the book of Genesis, does not mean “to create” but to “spatially separate”.

The first sentence should now read “in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth”

...the beginning of the Bible was not the beginning of time, but the beginning of a narration. She said: “It meant to say that God did create humans and animals, but not the Earth itself.”

Really?

Well -

...She said technically “bara” does mean “create” but added: “Something was wrong with the verb.

“God was the subject (God created), followed by two or more objects. Why did God not create just one thing or animal, but always more?”

She concluded that God did not create, he separated: the Earth from the Heaven, the land from the sea... The usual idea of creating-out-of-nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a big misunderstanding.”

...She said she hoped that her conclusions would spark “a robust debate”, since her finds are not only new, but would also touch the hearts of many religious people.

She said: “Maybe I am even hurting myself. I consider myself to be religious and the Creator used to be very special, as a notion of trust. I want to keep that trust.”...Prof Van Wolde added: “The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now.”

I am not an academic scholar of ancient languages.

All I can do is point out two instances of linguistics:

a) the Hebrew word ברא, to create as I would claim, is used in Psalms, admittedly a later time period, to signify not a splitting or separating but of a unified singular act: "create for me a pure heart, God" in 51:12. In Genesis 5:2, we read "male and female he created them". Now, you could say that Eve was fashioned by an act of separation but unlike her examples, she wasn't a different element but the same as Adam, a human. He created another human: "they were created" both of them together.

b) Rabbinic usage includes the form נברא in the sense of existed.

Robust indeed.

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Ooops.

Genesis 1:4, 1:6, 1:7, 1:18 etc. uses another word for the act of separating based on the root בדל. So if ברא indicates a separating, why the need for the other word?