At Creation, “Let There Be Light”
Bereshit: this is the other word my optometrist and I discussed, yesterday. There is speculation about how it should be translated because we cannot know what happened before God’s first thought.
Rabbi Jonah taught in the name of Rabbi Levi that the world was created with a letter bet (the first letter in Genesis 1:1, which begins בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, bereishit bara Elohim, “In the beginning God created”), because just as the letter bet is closed at the sides but open in front, so one is not permitted to investigate what is above and what is below, what is before and what is behind. Similarly, Bar Kappara reinterpreted the words of Deuteronomy 4:32 to say, “ask not of the days past, which were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth,” teaching that one may speculate from the day that days were created, but one should not speculate on what was before that. And one may investigate from one end of heaven to the other, but one should not investigate what was before this world. Both Rabbi Joḥanan and Rabbi Eleazar (or other say Resh Lakish) compared this to a human king who instructed his servants to build a great palace on a dunghill. They built it for him. Thereafter, the king did not wish to hear mention of the dunghill. Similarly, the Mishnah taught that one should not teach about the Creation to more than one student.
You can see why this is so fraught. And every version of English translation starts Genesis 1:1 as “In the beginning…” I’ve written about this before, here and here:
When I first realized that the start of Genesis was echoed in the beginning of John’s gospel in the New Testament, I wrote the following poem.
In-beginning
A beginning, we are told, is the start:
Recognizing the initial fiat
Can be more confusing than the lead cart
Horses must follow; amen — so be it.
Either the word be said or all hidden:
Truths only halfway told lead to defeat,
Yet, in Genesis 1:1, who’s kidding`…?
Put wisdom into the principle seat.
In beginning was the Word, so says John:
Could this be our clue to dig deeper still
And make sense of the past, long gone?
Lend your spiritual ear and get your fill:
Listen to the sound current of our earth,
You will know God’s First Breath gave us our birth.
Cryptic Code
There are some who think that God’s first word may have been ‘just’ him breathing. That’s an interesting thought. Why I’m sharing this idea now is that the beginning of life was his breath, just like ours is.
I think that was my first clue to the mystery of JHWH’s name.
Cryptic Code
Symbolic words conceal from prying eyes
Yesterday’s truth wrapped up in parable:
Meanings which help to spiritualize
Beginners, to make life more bearable.
Of course, the intent may be to mislead,
Like in the case of the word ‘atonement’:
Insiders see clues outsiders misread;
Could be a tone meant and/or at-one-ment.Consider, now, Jehovah’s Hebrew name,
Initialled: can you hear His Holy Breath?
Maybe the Greek equivalent’s the same:
Becomes, in fact, the birth of Life and Death
As “I am the Alpha and Omega”.
Listen to His Voice, It speaks: ΙΑΩ.
Or, in my words, “No Thing”. Herein lies the mystery of Creation.
cdsmiller17 
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven’s broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water’s fathomless abyss?
There was not death — yet there was nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound — an ocean without light —
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
(Stanza 1 from the Secret Book of Dzyan,
as quoted by Madame Blavatsky in her book, The Secret Doctrine.)
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