Hebrew Genesis 1

[Vicomte13]

Alright alright alright. Where did I leave off?

Have we done the pictographs of the names of God yet? Have we don't the WORD "God" in English yet?

Have we defined English "soul" and understood Hebrew "nephesh"?

Have we come to understand body + spirit = soul?

Do we know that spirit is breath, and that the wind is the breath of God?

Have we comprehended yet that there is no temporal flow in Hebrew verbs, and that nothing is completed on any of the first six "days"?

Have we realized what a "day" is, pictographically, and what "waters" is?

Do we know yet that there is no "earth" in Genesis, nor "heavens", but rather "land" and "skies"?

Do we understand yet that "light" and "order" are the same thing?

Do we understand that, read literally, we have no clue as to the temporal length of the first four periods of order - "days" - and only an inference of the later?

Have we come to realize that Jews have no greater insight into what this text means than Christians, that Christians have no greater insight than Muslims, and that Muslims have no greater insight than Chinese Communists, but that the text itself does have multiple literal meanings for every phrase?

When I think about these things, and how they fit with each of the traditions MAYBE but also fit with a certain natural development concept (poetically written in the language of 4000 years ago), I am filled with wonder, which keeps me going back.

It makes me want to share it.

But then I encounter the criticism of others, the challenges. And three things occur within me: first is astonishment, the second is hurt, and the third is the desire to withhold the knowledge, to not cast these pearls before swine (and yes, I consider anybody who aggressively attacks me on spiritual matters to be a pig, by definition).

Contemplating it and speaking with God is a joy. Communicating it with other people can be fun, but it is usually painful. It takes so much TIME to type every word, and to then get criticism and aggression - that makes me not want to bother with the effort.

Not that that has happened here, but in life in general there is so much conflict, about everything. I am well and truly tired of all of it.

What I wrote before was long and complicated, because the complexity of things were written down in a code inspired by God, in words inspired by God, given for purposes.

And given religious zeal for modern science, it is important to get the words as right as possible: some people might reject it anyway, but if they're going to, at least they should be rejecting what God actually SAID, as opposed to rejecting some bad translation and shallow, if very old, tradition.

Mentally, I get fatigued thinking about the communication.

So how 'bout we try something new?

Why don't YOU pick a particular thing we need to discuss about what we've already discussed?
Why don't YOU answer my questions above, to know what we've discussed and what we haven't.

That way we're having a conversation and I'm not just bellowing my thoughts into the blankscreen wilds, in a defensive and pre-irritated state, awaiting the darts.

Ease me into the conversation positively and do not be quarrelsome, and we could move some freight.

Capiche?

 

[Germatria1128]

OK... let's talk about the "spirit hovering over the waters" at the start of it all and the distinction between physical matter, God's laws of Physics, and the rest we cannot see (yet).

I recently finished a fascinating book by Physics / Mathematics Guru Frank Tipler at Tulane University. Steve you will remember Tipler since he wrote the textbook that we had to use way back in the early 80s at the un-college. It was a textbook divided into two hardcovers. The first part kicked our *sses and then the second part really kicked our *sses. Sort of one-two Physics punch. ;-)

Anyway, Tipler's recent book is called "The Physics of Christianity," and it makes Tipler somewhat of an oddity among scientific Academicians -- he's a Christian but he's also BRILLIANT when it comes to Physics.

He suggests that quantum physics REQUIRES a "multiverse"--infinite variations on our own universe -- and that it all started with a "singularity" outside of time, space, and the physical world as we know it--the singularity that created the Big Bang. He also suggests that QM requires that there is a "singularity" that the multiverse is headed to: the Omega Point that ends it all outside of time, space, etc. And thirdly that there is a "singularity" on the edge of all "universes" in the multiverse that "connects" the Alpha, and the Omega outside of time, space.... A sort of "Trinity" so to speak of "singularities"... hhmm.

And that the Alpha singularity represents THE SPIRIT (hovering over the waters), the Omega point represents GOD THE FATHER (endpoint perfection for all, THE "WILL" DRIVING TOWARD KINGDOM COME (Think the Lord's Prayer here), and that the singularity connecting these all along the multiverse is THE SON -- (Begotten, not made, WORD become FLESH that communicates throughout all) -- facilitating the multiverse movement toward the OMEGA POINT.

I am not doing justice to Tipler's arguments but it is extremely thoughtprovoking as he takes fundamental QM precepts and translates them to Christian applications. Christianity as a specialty branch of Physics!

 

[Vicomte13]

OK... let's talk about the "spirit hovering over the waters" at the start of it all and the distinction between physical matter, God's laws of Physics, and the rest we cannot see (yet).

Alright. The first thing we have to do is to decide how we are going to treat the Scripture we are reading. Shall we be literalists? Shall we be "revealed word inerrantists"? Shall we be "culturally contingent interpreters"?

I'm a literalist. Genesis 1 was originally written in ancient Hebrew, using Ivrit pictographs. So that's what we're going to look at to answer your question.

 

[Germatria1128]

Genesis 1 was originally written in ancient Hebrew, using Ivrit pictographs. So that's what we're going to look at to answer your question.

"He picks up Gideon's Bible --Open at page one... " [Jethro Tull, Locomotive Breath]

 

[Vicomte13]

"He picks up Gideon's Bible --Open at page one... " [Jethro Tull, Locomotive Breath]

To proceed, then: if we're going to analyze the quantum mechanics of the Bible, we have to actually READ the Bible. Since the part of the Bible that speaks of these things are all in the beginning of the book of Genesis, mostly Genesis 1. So that's what we have to read.

We speak and think in English, so that's what we have to do, but Genesis 1 wasn't written in English. It was written in ancient Hebrew, which nobody speaks as a native language. Modern Hebrew uses some of the ancient vocabulary, but has completely different verb structure. So, it's literally impossible to read Genesis 1 in the original language. The best one can do is read the ancient Hebrew as a scholar, which is always through the prism of a modern language (there being no speakers of ancient Hebrew on the planet for many centuries).

Now, we know from experience with our own law, in English, that people can read some text like some part of the Constitution (say, the Commerce Clause or the 2nd Amendment), and there will be as many different expressions of "this is what that says" as there are people. We know generically that if a liberal explains a passage of the Constitution, the Constitution will sound naturally liberal, and that if a conservative explains the same passage, it will sound as though it were obviously conservative. We know from experience that this is true of the Bible also - that the same words, read in English, mean different things to different people.

Some thing that if we only go back to the ancient Hebrew that we will overcome the problem. That may be partially true. Where a word has been traditionally translated as one thing but really means something else completely - this is a case where a better translation (assuming one is POSSIBLE) can really change a discussion.

With ancient Hebrew, the most pronounced thing that a good translation can do is teach us that the ancient Hebrew sentences of Genesis are not written with reference to time sequences, but rather, in terms of completed or incomplete actions. That most of the verbs that we translate as "made" or "created" actually mean "began to make" or "began to create" or "was making" - that the action described was not completed as of the time of the comment in the text - this is of theological importance, and it can (and should) change our traditional understanding of the text we are reading.

But with Genesis we have to go even further, for not only was it written in ancient Hebrew, it was originally written in pictographic hieroglphics, and each pictograph ITSELF is a word, composed of letters, and the words themselves mean things, such that each pictographic 'word" is in fact a sentence. THAT level of analysis suddenly quintuples the size of the text.

Traditionalists will say that this is illegitimate, because they don't know how to do it, and because it hasn't been done before by their own teachers, and because it's hard. They might say it is "adding" to the Bible, but it is not.

If we're really going to see what's in Genesis we have to do that.

And if we're going to talk about water and sky, and quantum physics, we have to talk about chaos and abound "Mem".

 

[Shane R]

This Hebrew pictograph concept is interesting and I am willing to see/hear more.

As an aside: how would you respond to a textual scholar who advocated the superiority of the Greek text, the LXX, to the Hebrew text?

 

[Hoghead1]

This Hebrew pictograph concept is interesting and I am willing to see/hear more.

As an aside: how would you respond to a textual scholar who advocated the superiority of the Greek text, the LXX, to the Hebrew text?

What textural scholar ever did that? Doesn't make sense.

 

[Steve Petersen]

IMO, this thread is an example of Christians adapting their mythology to what we know of the universe. Joseph Campbell made this need very clear.

 

[Germatria1128]

sentences of Genesis are not written with reference to time sequences, but rather, in terms of completed or incomplete actions. That most of the verbs that we translate as "made" or "created" actually mean "began to make" or "began to create" or "was making" - that the action described was not completed as of the time of the comment in the text - this is of theological importance

This is actually fascinating to think about -- incomplete action as part of original creation story -- seems to run counter to traditional structure: God saw his [creation] and called it good.... keep teaching...very interesting...

 

[Vicomte13]

This Hebrew pictograph concept is interesting and I am willing to see/hear more.

As an aside: how would you respond to a textual scholar who advocated the superiority of the Greek text, the LXX, to the Hebrew text?

I have encountered such, notably among the Greek Orthodox

My view is this: the oldest complete texts of the Bible are in Greek, dating from the 4th Century (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus), The Dead Sea Scroll fragments are substantial in number, but except for the Great Isaiah Scroll, they are fragmentary. No complete book of the Hebrew Bible can be made that predates the Aleppo Codex of c 990 AD, and the Leningrad Codex of 1010. Of course once upon a time there WERE Hebrew texts, from which the original LXX manuscripts were translated starting circa 150 BC, but those texts are gone (apart from whatever fragments of them remain in the Qumran fragments or the fragments of the Cairo genizah, et al).

So, WAS there a preceding Hebrew text? Of course. Do we have it? No. When we compare the Greek of the LXX Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus to the Hebrew of the Codices Aleppo and Leningradensis, we discover that in places the Hebrew and Greek differ (example: "alma" - perhaps young woman, perhaps virgin - in Isaiah, "parthenos" - virgin - in the LXX). When we look at the Dead Sea Scroll fragments, we discover that variant texts exists there reflecting BOTH the LXX and the Massoretic Text tradition. Both have their ancient Hebrew attestation, partly.

Further, within the Gospels themselves, which were probably written originally in Greek (although perhaps partially drawn from an older source document written in "Hebrew" (Aramaic)), we discover at one point that Jesus reads from a scroll in the synagogue of Nazareth. Now, one might automatically assume that, because this was a Jewish synagogue, the scroll was written in Hebrew, so Jesus was reading Hebrew. Of course, this was no in Jerusalem, but in the more mixed Galilee, so perhaps the text from which he was reading was written in Greek letters instead. There is no way to know. But we CAN know this. A portion of what he read is one of those places where the Hebrew Massoretic Text and the Greek LXX text differ, and the language recorded in the Gospels that Jesus read is that contained in the Greek tradition we have, and not the Hebrew tradition.

Now, there are a few possibilities here. One is that the writer, writing decades after Jesus died, recalled that Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll, and simply consulted the readily available Greek text and wrote it into the Scriptures. Another possibility is that the Hebrew that Jesus was reading on that scroll reflected the Hebrew textual tradition that had been translated into the LXX. A third possibility is that they were all speaking and reading Greek in that Galilean synagogue. If it were Alexandria that might even be probable, but proximity to Jerusalem and the heavy Jewish presence in the Galilee makes it seem more likely that they were reading Hebrew (and speaking Aramaic). In any case, the point stands.

Indeed, throughout then New Testament Jesus quotes the Jewish Scriptures, and when then Scriptures he quotes in one of those parts where there is a difference between the Massoretic tradition and the LXX, the language Jesus uses is from the LXX tradition.

But one time out of ten the version Jesus is using is the MT tradition, or in some cases, NEITHER tradition, exactly.

To me, it is obvious that the divine inspiration of Scripture comes at a "meaning that God meant to convey" level and not a letter-perfect word-for-word level. This is absolutely clear to me because of the truth: no two manuscripts or even manuscript fragments are ever identical. There are several thousand codices and fragments, and no two are identical. So, if God's inspiration is understood to be "letter perfect", then there are 10,000 versions of Scripture, each conflicting, each letter perfect.

Nobody can accept THAT. But if "letter perfection" is the standard of inspiration - that inspiration was God's DICTATION, rather than God's general steering of an author in the way that God steers inspired people in all ages and times, then you ending up having to assert that one PARTICULAR textual tradition or manuscript is THE truest.

If forced to play that game, then it is perfectly obvious that the most authentic text of what Scripture MEANS is the Latin Vulgate, because of the sources Jerome had available to him (all lost), because of his status as a native speaker of both Latin and Greek (thus, he knew the idiom very precisely). Of his access to and ability to speak ancient Hebrew, and access to Hebrew manuscripts no longer existent. The fact that one brilliant mind translated both testaments fully using the best manuscripts at a time that some of the autographs of new Testament material may have still existed, means that not only did he have better sources than anybody since - or before (Christianity was illegal in the early centuries; in Jerome's day it was legal and he had access to all of the great libraries of the East, as yet undestroyed by any conquest) - but also the whole text is filtered through one mind, meaning that the translation of words and concepts is CONSISTENT, book to book. The LXX is famously said to have been commissioned, but that was only the Torah portion. The rest comes to us out of the morass of history and is uneven. All sorts of different people translated different books, and took various liberties, and used who-knows-what source material. With Jerome it's all on the table, all brought together by one mind and therefore consistent, brought together by a native-speaker of both the language of origin and the language of translation (in the case of the Greek), and by direct contact with ancient Hebrew in its sourcelands, as opposed to the haphazard fragments that have come to us.

For this reason, if I had to choose the best overall ancient document that conveyed what the Greek and Hebrew actually SAID into consistent comprehensible language, I'd say the Vulgate. However, there's a problem even there: the oldest manuscript of the Vulgate is an incomplete one dating from about 800 AD. So the same gaps and copyists errors creep in there.

My own approach, then, is to shrug my shoulders and rather lightly dismiss the notion that there is a "best" version. There may be, in the ultimate cosmic sense, but we don't have any way to get at it. Instead, these things become a proxy for asserting the authority of our own denominational tradition. The Greeks say the LXX is best because it's in Greek. The Jews say that the Massoretic Text is clearly the best. Reformation Era Protestants went with the Jews on that, in part to get away from having to use all of the books of the LXX. And so it goes.

I think that the inspired part comes through even into English, because God didn't give dictation but was conveying broader messages. So I think the best way to address these Scriptures is to look at Dead Sea Scrolls (remembering that every one of them differs from every other one), Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (remembering that they differ between them), Vulgate (which has the virtue of being relatively consistent, but which is a translation), Aleppo and Leningrad, and then modern efforts (such as the Patriarchal Text of 1904, the Majority Text, Westcott-Hort, et al). I don't really think it's necessary to do that with most passages...but then, I have a particular hermeneutic for approaching all of Scripture that means I don't have to dwell in a great deal of text - no need to go off on that tangent here.

From having done this sort of exegesis on a few passages, I have satisfied by own mind that, really, a couple of good study Bibles from different denominational angles captures all of the nuances and textual differences that matter. Then I can get down to the Hebrew and Greek and Latin, and English. Between those four there are often nuances, and the odd man out is usually the English, because English is a much richer language than ancient Hebrew or Greek or Latin.

My own bent of mind is to not look for imaged speech but to first of all see exactly what the text SAYS.

I find that reading what it literally SAYS usually - without my having to delve into study materials - tells me from the get go where and how people are going to run away with the words and turn them into wild metaphors. I myself am much more of a simple beast: it says what God intended to say, generally, and should not be vastly expanded to mean other propositions.

For example: "None comes to the Father except through me" simply does not mean "You must worship as a Christian to come to the Father" or even "You must worship me". It means exactly what it says: Jesus is the gatekeeper (or, as he styled himself, the gate) to the Father. He decides who he lets in. WE have decided that means Christians only, but he never said that. Not ever. He lets in who he lets in, for the reasons that he states and his own reasons of mercy. A Christian can be comforted that if he follows Jesus he will be ok. But if a Christian wants to find comfort that some earnest Bhuddist monk living a life of poverty and alms to the poor will certainly be turned away at the gate by Jesus, he's not going to find comfort for that proposition in the Scriptures, because Jesus never said that. "None comes to the Father except through me" means that Jesus decides. We don't get to decide FOR him. And when we interpret it wrong, we end up asserting nonsense that is not in the text.

Mostly, though, I like to stick to the facts and not to argue. I think the text speaks for itself. I become resistant when people seek to graft their own superstructure of tradition upon the text unless they have some basis for doing that. There are certain miracles that have occurred over the course of the intervening 2000 years that add information not in the text. I have examined those miracles as best I can. Most don't persuade me of much, but there are some that do, so I hold certain things as known that were not revealed in the text (which is why I'm a Catholic and not simply a Protestant), but I don't seek to superimpose those later revelations upon the text, because they're not there: they came later.

Here, we're going back to the beginning.

I'm using the Leningrad Codex form of the Hebrew, but then replacing the Babylonian ("Hebrew") letters with the ancient Ivrit Hebrew pictographs. The Babylonian letters are the same letters, but they are so stylized and artistic that the actual PICTURE is lost. The older letters are actual pictures, of things whose words start with that letter, and thus convey both the sound and the thing.

This is essentially useless when speaking of Numbers or Joshua or Nehemiah, but in Genesis 1, where we are reading a sacred poem on creation inspired by God himself, the pictographs support the story and add a great deal of detail.

Some have said that this is gazing at tea lines in a cup. To them, I merely say that they obviously have never actually LOOKED at the pictographs and pictographic sentences, because they are quite lucid, coherent, sharp, and spine-shiveringly revelatory.

 

[Vicomte13]

IMO, this thread is an example of Christians adapting their mythology to what we know of the universe. Joseph Campbell made this need very clear.

I don't think that's what I'm doing.

I think what I am doing is actually reading the text verbatim and literally.
Which means there is no English present. But there are pictures.

 

[Shane R]

What textural scholar ever did that? Doesn't make sense.

Broaden your horizons. There are some out there. I am studying under two such scholars.

The usual line of reasoning is that the roots of the LXX text are more reliable than those of the Masoretic Jewish text, which may have been doctored to cast a negative light on Christianity. The LXX text dates to a time before the rise of Christianity and is therefore more reliable as a representation of the ancient text. In the Christian East, the LXX text was the Bible. Another point that I have heard offered is that Koine Greek, having a significantly larger lexicon than Hebrew, is a more expressive and, therefore, superior language for communicating about God. Before Jerome revised the Latin text with reference to the available Hebrew sources, no one really worried about the Hebrew text.

 

[Vicomte13]

This is actually fascinating to think about -- incomplete action as part of original creation story -- seems to run counter to traditional structure: God saw his [creation] and called it good.... keep teaching...very interesting...

That's it. Each of the "yom" - the "days" of Genesis have God fattening thus and so, but the verbs are left incomplete.

The verbs are all in the imperfect tense. God didn't "fatten the animals" on day 6, he began to. He didn't make the stars on day 4, he began to. Etc.

There are verbs of completion on day 7.

"YOM" =- Y-W-M, Yod, Waw (or Vav) Mem. Yod is the arm and hand - in this case the mighty arm and hand of God.
Waw, Vav, is a tent peg, the thing that links one think to the next in juxtaposition. At the beginning of words, we like to translate this as "And..." As in "And God said...", but really it's a tent peg that links this to that.

In this word, Yom, which we translate as "day", the arm of God is linked to/upon the Mem - the chaos/the waters.

The Yom, the time of "Or" (which is "light" but also "order") is the period of order as God's hand is upon the chaos. God fattens things out of the chaos in periods of order, and that is Yom.

Light, of course, is energy - visible energy - and energy is required to bring order out of chaos.

But bringing order out chaos, making it functional ("good", "that works"), is a "begin to" thing, for dysfunction always is there, entropically returning all to chaos unless the breath of spirit and mighty hand of God imposes the order, sets the bounds of the sea.

Thus the tree of the knowledge of "good" and "evil", is of "function" and "dysfunction", of what works and what doesn't work.

 

[keltoi]

Found it, now to read 3 pages.

 

[Vicomte13]

Found it, now to read 3 pages.

Yep, just three short little pages (LOL)

 

[mark kennedy]

I"ve always posted most often in Origins Theology, as a result I have a lot of notes on Genesis 1. Studied a little and the exegetical approach to Genesis 1 can be fascinating. One interesting study I was doing the term 'firmament' H7549 is a word used to described hammered gold, sometimes used to produce things like the Ark of the Covenant. Anyway, there is a progression of thought that doesn't really come out in the English translation, the text uses three very distinctive words for God's work in creation. Understand, I'm working from the King James Bible and the Strong's Concordance so the textual insights and definitions are based mostly on Textus Recepticus, not the Masorite text so you might get something a little different from Rabbinical traditions.

Just thought I would post up some of my notes from my studies of Genesis 1. One interesting point is that there are three different words used to describe God's activities during creation week. Just hoping someone might take an interest in a more detailed exposition of the text.

Day 1: God 'lets' the light in, thus creating the first day (Gen. 1:4).
Day 2: God creates the upper atmosphere, called the 'firmament' (Gen. 1:7).
Day 3: God seperates the land from the seas and creates plant life (Gen. 1:10).
Day 4: God then, 'sets', the heavenly lights in the visible sky (Gen. 1:17).
Day 5: God creates the birds of the air and marine life (Gen. 1:21).
Day 6: Finally, God creates the beasts of the field and Man (Gen. 1:25).​

The phrase, 'heaven and the earth', is a Hebrew expression meaning the universe. All we really get from this passage is that the cosmos and earth were created, 'in the beginning'. The perspective of creation week is from the surface of the earth, starting with the Spirit of God hovering over the deep (Gen. 1:2). In the chapter there are three words used for God's work in creation. The first is 'created' ('bara' H1254) a very precise term used only of God.

Create ‘bara’ (H1254) - 'This verb has profound thological significance, since it has only God as it’s subject. Only God can create in the sense implied by bara. The verb expresses the idea of creation out of nothing...(Vines Expository Dictionary)​

It is used once to describe the creation of the universe (Gen 1:1), then again to describe the creation of life (Gen 1:21). Finally, in the closing verses, it is used three times for the creation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:27). The word translated, 'made' (asah H6213) , has a much broader range of meaning and is used to speak of the creation of the 'firmament' (Gen 1:7), the sun, moon and stars (Gen 1:16), procreation where offspring are made 'after his/their kind' (Gen 1:25) and as a general reference to creation in it's vast array (Gen 1:31).

Made ‘asah’(H6213) "A primitive root; to do or make, in the broadest sense and widest application" (Gen 1:7, Gen 1:16, Gen 1:25, Gen 1:31, Isa. 41:20, 43:7, 45:7, 12, Amos 4:13). (Strong’s Dictionary). "The verb, which occurs over 2600 times in the Old Testament, is used as a synonym for “create” only about 60 times…only when asah is parallel to bara…can we be sure that it implies creation." (Vine 52).​

Then there is a third term when God 'set' (nathan H2414), the lights of the sun, moon and stars so that their light is reqularly visible from the surface of the earth. In this way the narrative shifts from the very precise word for 'created' to the more general 'made', and then the much broader use of 'set'.

Set (nathan H5414) A primitive root; to give, used with greatest latitude of application (Gen 1:17, Gen 9:13, Gen 18:8, Gen 30:40, Gen 41:41). Elsewhere translated ‘put’, ‘make’, ‘cause’, etc.​

The creation account has great significance for the rest of Scripture and how these terms are used in the original and their natural context is essential to really following the text as it was intended to be understood.

​

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[Vicomte13]

The first is 'created' ('bara' H1254) a very precise term used only of God.​

Create ‘bara’ (H1254) - 'This verb has profound thological significance, since it has only God as it’s subject. Only God can create in the sense implied by bara. The verb expresses the idea of creation out of nothing...(Vines Expository Dictionary)​

It is used once to describe the creation of the universe (Gen 1:1), then again to describe the creation of life (Gen 1:21). Finally, in the closing verses, it is used three times for the creation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:27). The word translated, 'made' (asah H6213) , has a much broader range of meaning and is used to speak of the creation of the 'firmament' (Gen 1:7), the sun, moon and stars (Gen 1:16), procreation where offspring are made 'after his/their kind' (Gen 1:25) and as a general reference to creation in it's vast array (Gen 1:31).

​

Grace and peace,
Mark

Great post, thank you.

When we look at "Bara" - BRA - we will note that it repeats the first three letter of scripture.

The transliteration is usually "Bereshit bara Elohiym et ha'shamayim ve'et ha'aretz", but really in the Hebrew letters is:

BRASYT BRA ALHYM AT...(etc.). In picture sentences, the opening word-sentence repeats itself BRA... BRA...

That word "BRA" (usually transliterated "bara") is often translated as "created", because the actual meaning of the Hebrew word, "fattened" is hard for us. To fatten sheep and cows is to allow them to graze so that they become substantial. To "fatten" a think is to fill it up or make it substantial.

So when we read "Bara" in our traditional English form, we see a sort of woodcarver God creating something (perhaps out of nothing), but in the Torah, "Fatten" as a perfect (completed) or imperfect (incompleted) verb appears 14 times.

First we have it in perfect tense in Genesis 1:1 Elohiym fattened the skies and the land.

In Gen 1:21 we have the imperfect tense "And he will fatten Elohiym the Tanynim (whatever that is...dinosaur? Crocodile? Sea monster?) the great, and all being living [various animals].

In Gen 1:27 he will fatten the human, and then we have the verb in the perfect tense twice.

In Gen 2:3, on the seventh day, we have Elohiym resting from the things he did fatten (perfect tense) in the earlier days. This is poetically repeated in Gen 2:4, in which the "birthings sky and land" fattened (perfect tense), completing the "he will fattens" of the earlier days.

So, the first 7 "fattenings" by Elohiym in Scripture occur in Genesis 1 and 2.

In Genesis 5:1-2 the Genesis 1-2 story is reiterated, now focusing on the "fattening" of the humans at their start. The verb is used three times in the perfect tense here, referring back to something that is completed.

In Genesis 6:7, the distressed Elohiym resolves to wipe away the human which "I fattened" - the beginning of the Flood story.

After Genesis, we find "BRA" appearing again in Exodus, at 34:10. The traditional KJV translation here is:

"And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee."

That second "do", the one in "such has have not been done in all the earth" is really "which not they-did-be-fattened in all the land and in all the nations". Here, the thing being "done" or "fatten" is not a noun "marvel" or miracle", but a pair of verbs that roughly translates as "I will do be performing". The pronoun "which" is what serves as the subject (we would write "that which").

Next we leap ahead to Numbers 16:30. Here, we have the KJV telling us: "But if the LORD make a new thing, and the ground open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down alive into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have despised the LORD."

Here, the Hebrew gets hard, because what is translated here as "make a new thing" is, actually "fed fat, he will fatten", perhaps an idiom.

In Deuteronomy, the verb appears again, as a reprise of the "fattening" of humans at creation (Dt. 4:32)

 

[Germatria1128]

In Genesis 5:1-2 the Genesis 1-2 story is reiterated, now focusing on the "fattening" of the humans at their start.

Every time I look in the mirror I am reminded how well God "fattened" me.

 

[Vicomte13]

Every time I look in the mirror I am reminded how well God "fattened" me.

Now, the thing about "fattened" is that if you apply it to living creatures, that grow and become larger. If you apply it to ideas, they become substantial. Fatten Hydrogen and you have deuterium, then tritium. Fatten it with a different particle, and you have Helium.

 

[keltoi]

Fascinating, much of what you have said confirms my own thoughts, thank you.
I do have to admit that I can't read Hebrew, or Greek, using the original script instead I use transliterations so I haven't been able to see the depth of the language as you have described it.