Creation of the World

Primary source

• Jewish Publication Society, The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation, 1917, Genesis 1:1The 1917 JPS rendering, before the construct reading entered the JPS text.

  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

• Jewish Publication Society, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, Genesis 1:1, note aThe later JPS Tanakh adopts the construct reading and footnotes 'In the beginning God created'.

  When God began to create

The tradition itself

• Rashi, tr. M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, Pentateuch with Rashi's Commentary, 1929, Rashi on Genesis 1:1Rashi reads bereshit as construct ('at the beginning of God's creating') and denies the verse states what was created first.

  the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation