I'm an Italian noahide.
Here are some observations on Genesis 1: 1, about which I would very much like to know your opinion.
1 In most translations I have consulted, the verse is thus render:” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. It is a very ancient translation, already found in the Septuagint: Εν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν”. According to this meaning, if I am not mistaken, the conception of the "creatio ex nihilo" is founded, supported by many masters of the Jewish tradition including Rambam and Ramban. According to this exegesis, before this "beginning" there was nothing except HaShem, neither matter nor time.
2 In the translation edited by Judaica Press, however, this is the version: "In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth”. This second interpretation, if I understand correctly, does not see "the beginning" in the absolute sense, but only as the beginning of the described creation, thus opening the possibility of hypothesizing that:
-God may have created and then destroyed other universes before creating the one in which we live;
-God may have created this universe using a matter that existed before the "beginning" (I have also read some articles written by Orthodox Jews who support the creation of the universe from a pre-existing matter).
Instead, I was very surprised by these two statements:
3 Rambam, in his monumental "Guide for the Perplexed," says that Genesis does not actually test the creation of the world, because his words in this sense could have an allegorical meaning, such as those that would make one think of a body dimension of God.According to Maimonides the Tanakh does not prove neither the eternity of the world nor his creation, and if we must adhere to the theory of creation it is because the theory of the eternity of matter seriously endangers religious faith;
4 The great rabbi, philosopher and poet Yehudah ha-Levi says, in his famous work "Al Khazari"(I,67):
“The question of eternity and creation is obscure, whilst the arguments are evenly balanced. The theory of creation derives greater weight from the prophetic tradition of Adam, Noah, and Moses, which is more deserving of credence than mere speculation. If, after all, a believer in the Torah finds himself compelled to admit an eternal matter and the existence of many worlds prior to this one, this would not impair his belief that this world was created at a certain epoch, and that Adam and Eve were the first human beings.”
How do you see these multiple positions?
I express my personal reflection: I do not know what is the most precise meaning between "in the beginning" and "in the beginning of”, but I believe that to hypothesize previous creations, by God, of universes that have disappeared today ,or the creation of this universe from pre-existing matter, provided it is always created by God, does not pose problems with regard to the biblical faith; but I am of the opinion , without obviously wanting to disrespect the great Rabbi Yehudah ha-Levi,that the theory of eternal matter is incompatible with the monotheism taught by the Tanakh. In fact, if the matter were eternal wold not be born of an act of God's will and this, in my opinion, would necessarily lead to one of the following two conclusions:
-There would not be one God but two gods, HaShem and matter, because both of them would be eternal and therefore "autonomous" from one another;
-God and matter would coincide: it would reach a pantheism that would destroy the principle of HaShem’s transcendence and His irreducible "otherness" compared to any other existing reality.
As for the possible "allegorical" sense of which Rambam speaks, I do not know what to think.
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