What does the creation of heaven and earth mean to christians?

Answer 1

Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It all seems so straight forward - God created everything. But then, the influential eleventh-century Jewish scholar, Rashi, said that Genesis 1:1 should really be read, "When God began to create" or "In the beginning of God's creation ". Properly translated, this does not say that God created the heaven and earth. So what does it say?

Various biblical scholars give quite similar translations, with E.A. Speiser, (Genesis): "When God set about to create heaven and earth - the world being a formless waste, with darkness over the seas... God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." There is a consensus that in the first creation story of Genesis the earth already existed - the ocean was already present and a wind moved across the surface. The seas rested on the dry land, which appeared on day 3 when God gathered the waters together.

So, Rashi and the biblical scholars tell us that "God created the heaven and the earth" is really a mistranslation. The sentence was really an introduction to the creation narrative and says when God set about to create, the earth already existed.

For more information on this account, the second creation story and some related issues, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 2

The King James Version of The Bible opens with Genesis 1:1 saying, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. " This is the traditional English language translation. But as long ago as the eleventh century CE, the influential Jewish scholar, Rashi, said that Genesis 1:1 should be read, "When God began to create" or "In the beginning of God's creation ". E.A. Speiser, in Genesis (the Anchor Bible series), goes further and translates the sentence as: "When God set about to create heaven and earth - the world being a formless waste, with darkness over the seas... God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." In other words, this creation story begins with a pre-existing world, and God's first act of creation was to create light.

So, tradition says that in the Book of Genesis, God created heaven and earth. However, properly read, it merely says that the world was pre-existing and that God created what were then believed to be minor additions - sun, moon, stars, the firmament - and the life forms that would inhabit the earth.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 3

The creation story in the bible, and in the book of Genises , clearly tells us christians that god created us, and we should worship him alone, and not what he has created.