How do you know that God made the universe and everything in it when the Bible only says he made heaven and earth?

Answer 1

A:There are two, quite different creation accounts in Genesis, but what they do have in common is that they do not say that God created even the earth itself.

In the first creation account, Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a ( up to first sentence of 2:4), there was a pre-existing watery chaos. 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.

In the second creation account, Genesis 2:4b to 2:15, there was pre-existing dry land, but God had yet to make it rain for plants to grow. A spring arose and God took some moist clay and made Adam.

In both creation stories, the basics were already there - the waters, the dry land, the wind and therefore the air. Many experts in Hebrew have carefully examined the texts and confirm that this is what they say. The biblical creations were not ex nihilo. Beliefs about creation changed around the second century CE, when the concept of creation ex nihilo began, and tradition has since held that Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." 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 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." Modern belief is that God created the world from nothing, but that was not what was written in Genesis.