Friday, December 18, 2009

Alternate Genesis Translation

I was using StumbleUpon for philosophy today and I came across an interesting article. Here it is:


It says that the opening verses of Genesis should not read "God created the heavens and the earth" but that "God separated the heavens from the earth". You can read it for yourself. The translator is probably not even aware how perfectly that fits with Mormon cosmology. Don't we say that God organized the world out of unorganized matter instead of creating it?

I really like the whole separating the heaven from the earth idea. It seems to imply that the spiritual and the worldly were originally one thing (all spirit is matter, isn't it?). Going further, it also seems to imply that to be 'complete' and to return to that original state of onneness (something very mystical), we must have part of both worlds, part heavenly and part earthly (something very Mormon).

3 comments:

  1. In my view that doesn't necessarily mean that God didn't do any creating. I could see that He organized the matter into his creations.

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  2. I think that the words creating and separating should be used interchangeably.

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  3. I once used the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to translate Genesis chapter 1 back into Hebrew from the KJV. Instead of using the modern literal word, I studied the roots of the words and used the appropriate concepts. It is amazingly closer to the Book of Abraham, the concept of Heavenly parents who procreate, and intelligence being eternal in nature but still involved in impregnating and gestating spirit children than any English translation I have ever seen. Very detailed in the spiritual creation process. Very mystical. I can post it, or parts of it if you would like to discuss.

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