"In the Beginning"

Approximately one tenth of this blog's content will be dedicated to God.

It all begins with this:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

Bereshit bara Elohim et ha-Shamayim ve'et ha-Aretz

In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

Coupled with verse 2, it is perhaps better translated as "When in the Beginning", but this post and at least one other will focus on the first verse by itself. That is the amazing thing about Hebrew's flexibility - to single out or couple verses together can make small but meaningful changes to what it says, and that is precisely what the authors of the Bible, and the Holy Spirit who inspired them, intended, to make the Bible readable in multiple ways and thus fill each book, each chapter, each verse, each word, and even each letter, full of lessons to teach. One lesson can be learned from the first letter of the first word, this one:

בְּ

It is Bet, which begins bereshit, or "in beginning" or sometimes even just "beginning".

 The first word of the Bible, Bereshit, begins with the Hebrew "Bet". It is shaped almost entirely like a box, save for one opening on the left. All but the one opening is closed off. Because Hebrew is read from right to left, this open side suggests that we shouldn't focus on anything before the Bible. What happened before creation? The ancient rabbis believed that "Berishit" beginning with Bet meant that what happened before creation doesn't matter. 

Why is that?

Because in all likelihood, there might not be anything of meaning to humanity before creation except for God Himself!

It's also because as soon as we open the Bible, we are to close our minds of most influences from outside of it.

This very first word, "Beginning", has a significant placement. First of all, this is where the Bible begins, therefore the first word almost has to be "Beginning". Secondly, the structure is as such in Hebrew that if you were to leave out "Heaven and Earth", you could write it as "God created Beginning,", which answers the matter of God's timelessness. Time is a property of physically existing matter, and as God is not made of the same stuff as matter so much as just being "made out of God", time therefore doesn't have to apply to God, and so when God made matter, God made time. Meaning God wasn't sitting around being bored waiting for something interesting to happen before He suddenly decided to make things. That would imply time applies to God. It doesn't. God just was, and then He made things, creating time with them.

So if creation actually begins with the Heaven and Earth, and in all likelihood, nothing else, because time didn't exist before our universe, what would God have us focus on instead?

The rest of the scripture. Bet closes off all before scripture, setting up the verses as the path you, the reader, are to follow, 

All is in the text of the Bible. Nothing else is to be thought of when reading it. Don't take your own prejudices when reading it. Humble and open your mind to God's teachings, and forget all else, when reading the Bible. Which is a sentiment that will probably upset so many Christians, because many sadly are so tragically "Sola Doctrine", already thinking in terms of pre-determined narratives before atteumpting to think in terms of . Most churches believe that only they and they alone can save, but no one church doesn't have that authority, but rather, only God does, and the Bible is His Holy Word, and any church that honors it can help somebody obtain salvation.