Genesis 1:1, Did God Create the Universe?

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

//In the beginning. The Greek word translated “beginning” can be either a verb or a noun; either “beginning” or “began.” It’s a toss-up. Either our Bible starts with “In the Beginning, God created …” or it starts with “When God began to create …” In the first, we have creation ex nihilo, out of nothing. But in the second, when God begins to create, the formless void of the earth is already there. Creation is the act of bringing stability to chaos.

This second interpretation actually fits better with other stories of creation in the Bible. For example, the book of Job, chapter 38, describes creation as a struggle between God and the primordial forces of chaos. God overcomes and controls a monstrous personification of the formless, watery deep that existed before the world began.

Psalm 74 also envisions creation as establishing cosmic order out of chaos:

It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter. –Psalm 74:13-17

In Proverbs chapter 8, God has a co-creator (wisdom), and this version of creation is reflected by the prologue of John’s Gospel (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”). But, again, the creation is a matter of setting boundaries for the sea, and fixing the foundations of the earth.

By all accounts, then, we have mistranslated Genesis 1:1. God did not create the universe; he merely brought order to a chaotic existence.