Non­fic­tion

In the Begin­ning of: A New Look at Old Words

Judah Lan­da
  • Review
By – September 28, 2012

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, the review­er has nev­er real­ly under­stood the need to try to rec­on­cile cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic notions of cos­mol­o­gy with the first few chap­ters of Gen­e­sis. But this book deserves to be con­sid­ered on its own terms. 

As the sub­ti­tle sug­gests, the author uses tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish tech­niques of lin­guis­tic analy­sis to devel­op trans­la­tions of vers­es from Gen­e­sis that both dif­fer from the King James ver­sion and don’t con­flict with the pic­ture that sci­en­tif­ic research and recon­struc­tion paints of cos­mo-gen­e­sis and bio-gen­e­sis. Per­haps the great­est depar­tures from the tra­di­tion­al read­ing of the first chap­ter is the trans­la­tion of yom” as era” and the sug­ges­tions that the order­ing of the eras in the cre­ation sto­ry isn’t chrono­log­i­cal and that the eras over­lap. I find the author’s ideas to be inter­est­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly convincing. 

The author uses a some­what idio­syn­crat­ic but nonethe­less clear translit­er­a­tion scheme when quot­ing Hebrew text in Roman char­ac­ters. Appen., index.

Zvi Siegel is a one-time the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and cur­rent soft­ware engi­neer, who hopes to return to physics some­day. In the mean­time, he spends much of his free time reading.

Discussion Questions