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The first day. On the first day, God created the world together with water and atmosphere. Although the Torah, in the Creation as in other topics deliberately employs brevity and ellipsis (see the Talmud, Hagigah 11b), Jewish tradition is that God created a complete universe, out of nothing (Exodus 20:11, Isaiah 40:28; Maimonides' "Guide," 2:30; Nachmanides on Gen. 1:1). This is one of the meanings of Genesis 1:1 (Targum, Gen.1:1; and Rashi commentary, Gen.1:14), though the verse has further meaning as well (Rashi, Gen.1:1).Note:

According to tradition, there is only one Genesis creation-narrative, with ch.2 serving as an expansion of the brevity of ch.1, not a separate set of events (Rashi commentary, Gen.2:8).While Judaism has always seen the Torah as an intricate tapestry that nonetheless had one Divine source, some modern authors such as Wellhausen (the father of modern Biblical-criticism, 1844-1918) have suggested artificially chopping up the narrative and attributing it to various authors, despite the Torah's explicit statement as to its provenance (Exodus 24:12, Deuteronomy 31:24). This need not concern believers, since his claims have been debunked one by one, as Archaeology and other disciplines have demonstrated the integrity of the Torah. No fragments have ever been found that would support his Documentary Hypothesis, which remains nothing more than an arbitrary claim, whose falsehood has been pointed out:


http://religion.answers.com/theory/debunking-the-jepd-documentary-hypothesis

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=1131(a Christian author)


And see also the wider picture:

http://judaism.answers.com/hebrew/does-archaeology-support-the-hebrew-bible

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10y ago

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