p. 77 | CREATE | AdventAI

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 29, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 5

CREATE

“What is the meaning of the term ‘create’ in Gen. 1:1?” “W. P.”

Ans. The most consistent criticism we have met on this question is that given by Dr. Clarke, which we quote below:—

“‘[Created] caused existence where previously to this moment there was no being. The rabbins, who are legitimate judges in a case of verbal criticism on their own language, are unanimous in asserting that the word ברא, bara, expresses the commencement of the existence of a thing, or egression from nonentity to entity. It does not in its primary meaning denote the preserving or new forming things that had previously existed, as some imagine, but creation in the proper sense of the term, though it has some other acceptations in other places. The supposition that God formed all things out of a pre-existing, eternal nature, is certainly absurd; for if there had been an eternal nature, besides an eternal God, there must have been two self-existing, independent, and eternal beings, which is a most palpable contradiction.’”