Archaia. 483 



the " deep or the material from which the sea and atmosphere were 

 afterwards formed." This, we think, an error into which our 

 author has been led by the view he takes of the relation of the 

 first verse to the whole narrative. That verse he considers as 

 delineating the first step in the great work of creation. In 

 page 61, he says : " The history opens at once with the assertion 

 of a great fundamental truth, — the production from non-exist- 

 ence of the material universe by the eternal self-existent God.'' 

 Now we are constrained to say with feelings of profoundest 

 reverence for the text itself, that fascinating as the above doctrine 

 may be, and nobly eloquent as the expressions are which our 

 author, in page 339, has founded upon it, we yet cannot see 

 that it directly expresses the doctrine of creation from non-exist- 

 ence which the above quotation alleges. In our view the first 

 verse, but states in general terms that which the subsequent nar- 

 rative gives in detail — that, in short, it is a brief prologue or 

 proem. The conjunction " and" of the second verse does not pre- 

 sent any grammatical hindrance to this idea, for there the vav 

 (and) is, as Gesenius remarks " continuative of* discourse." It 

 indicates a consecution of sentences more than a relation of 

 words. This consecutive use of vav is very remarkable in the 

 whole of the narrative ; it stands at the beginning of every verse 

 but the first and in the twenty-sixth verse has been rendered "so" 

 by our translators. There is therefore no grammatical reason 

 why we may not regard the first verse as the proem of the sub- 

 lime record of creation. 



If further we look upon the first verse as an answer to the ques- 

 tion : Whence came this earth and that heaven ? What form 

 of speech could be a more natural reply than that, " In the 

 beginning, God made the heaven and the earth," 



Viewing the first verse in this relation, it cannot be alleged that 

 the words "heaven and earth" are there used in a sense, different 

 from that in which they are defined in the eight and tenth 

 verses. The meaning of the verse would then be that God, in 

 the beginning made this dry land and that expansion which were 

 at first in a void and formless state. In this view the words 

 succeeding the prologue will be the first step of the narrative in 

 which the prophet.describes the first aspect of those elements which 

 by the power of the Divine Word, afterwards became " heavens 

 and earth." If we, for example, were describing the process which, 

 as geology informs us, stratified rock is formed, we would say that 



