# בּראשׁית בּרא - construct state?



## nili95

It seems to me that many if not most 'Christian' translations render the opening verses of Genesis as something akin to:

[KJV] In the beginning God created ...​
Meanwhile, translations such as those by Everett Fox, Robert Alter, Richard Elliot Friedman, and the JPS offer something more like:

[JPS] When God began to create ...
[Fox] At the beginning of God's creating of ...​
I'd appreciate your thoughts.


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## amikama

It's not a construct state: neither word is a noun. בראשית ("in the beginning") is an adverb, and ברא ("created") is a verb.


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## shalom00

Rashi does consider it a constuct state in one of his interpretations of the verse.


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## nili95

amikama said:


> It's not a construct state: neither word is a noun. בראשית ("in the beginning") is an adverb, and ברא ("created") is a verb.



That said, I can only assume that the JPS translators, along with Alter, Fox, and Friedman, were pretty good at recognizing parts of speech and nevertheless concurred with ...



shalom00 said:


> Rashi does consider it a constuct state in one of his interpretations of the verse.



I was just wondering if philology has shed any new light on the question.


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## shalom00

Rashi gives an in-depth explanation why the verse cannot be understood simply as it is, and there are words that are not explicitly written and have to be implicitly understood.


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## elroy

shalom00 said:


> Rashi gives an in-depth explanation why the verse cannot be understood simply as it is, and there are words that are not explicitly written and have to be implicitly understood.


 Can you elaborate (or provide a link to the explanation)?


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## shalom00

Try these two translations of Rashi on Genesis1:1:

Bereishit - Genesis - Chapter 1 (Parshah Bereishit)
Rashi on Genesis 1:1


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## Drink

Also Ibn Ezra's commentary is insightful here (expand the מקראות גדולות box here). He gives an example where בראשית is clearly used as a construct state with a noun (Jeremiah 26:1: בְּרֵאשִׁית מַמְלְכוּת יְהוֹיָקִים), and in case you wonder how a construct state can be used with a past tense verb, he gives two clear examples where a construct state is used with a past tense verb (Hosea 1:2: תְּחִלַּת דִּבֶּר ה' בְּהוֹשֵׁעַ וַיֹּאמֶר ה' אֶל הוֹשֵׁעַ; and Isaiah 29:1: קִרְיַת חָנָה דָוִד).


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## GeriReshef

nili95 said:


> It seems to me that many if not most 'Christian' translations render the opening verses of Genesis as something akin to:
> 
> [KJV] In the beginning God created ...​
> Meanwhile, translations such as those by Everett Fox, Robert Alter, Richard Elliot Friedman, and the JPS offer something more like:
> 
> [JPS] When God began to create ...
> [Fox] At the beginning of God's creating of ...​
> I'd appreciate your thoughts.


The way it is written in Hebrew lacks the article (b*e*reshit without rather than b*a*reshit with), so the traditional translation (and the way most native Hebrew speakers understand it) - is problematic.
Another option is to read it as "breshit bro elohim" ~= in the beginning of the creation by the God of..

Some of the previous answers gives traditional Jewish interpretations of the text (eg Rashi).
I would say that one should take it cautiously: from religious perspective they are perceived as the undoubtful truth and as a holly source of information, but from more modern and scientific approach - they lacked a lot of knowledge that we have today.
Just in order to give you a non Jewish biblical example: did king Davis look like the famous statue of Michelangelo? Probably not, and we now have much more information about how the Israelis looked like thousands of years ago. So doesn't the statue have any value today? It surely has because it shows us how the Bible was interpreted some hundreds of years ago, and it is a masterpiece from art perspective, etc.


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## nili95

GeriReshef said:


> ... Some of the previous answers gives traditional Jewish interpretations of the text (eg Rashi). I would say that one should take it cautiously: from religious perspective they are perceived as the undoubtful truth and as a holly source of information, but from more modern and scientific approach - they lacked a lot of knowledge that we have today.



Hence my reference to Alter, Friedman, Fox, and the NJPS.


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## nili95

amikama said:


> It's not a construct state: neither word is a noun. בראשית ("in the beginning") is an adverb, and ברא ("created") is a verb.



Just thought I'd add that Professor Shlomo Karni, in a 2011 article in Torah Musings, focused on the fact that בראשית (as rendered by the Masoretes) is an adverb and suggests: 

_Originally, God created the heavens and the earth._
_And the earth was without form and void ..._
_God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light._
It seems like a simple solution, but I'm left to wonder whether there's a difference in connotation between ...

Originally, God created ... [and]

God originally created ...


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## Drink

Hmm... He seems overly focused on exact correspondence between the English grammar and he Hebrew grammar. It's a little odd really. Using the word "the" in English is not "changing" the Hebrew to "ba-", and using a gerund in English is not "changing" the Hebrew word to "bero", it's just finding a way to phrase what was said with proper English grammar (since in English you certainly can't say either "in beginning" or "in the beginning of G-d created").

Anyway, his interpretation of the word as an adverb is certainly possible, but he makes it out to be the only option, which completely untrue as evidenced by the examples given by Ibn Ezra that I quoted above.


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## shalom00

Rashi and Ibn Ezra support their interpretations with parallel forms found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.


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## nili95

Drink said:


> Hmm... He seems overly focused on exact correspondence between the English grammar and he Hebrew grammar. It's a little odd really. Using the word "the" in English is not "changing" the Hebrew to "ba-", and using a gerund in English is not "changing" the Hebrew word to "bero", it's just finding a way to phrase what was said with proper English grammar (since in English you certainly can't say either "in beginning" or "in the beginning of G-d created").
> 
> Anyway, his interpretation of the word as an adverb is certainly possible, but he makes it out to be the only option, which completely untrue as evidenced by the examples given by Ibn Ezra that I quoted above.





shalom00 said:


> Rashi and Ibn Ezra support their interpretations with parallel forms found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.



Yes. Ibn Ezra is particularly helpful in this regard.

One additional point/question. We are viewing Gen 1:1-3 through a Masoretic lens, but this is a relatively recent edit. I have read (but have not confirmed) that both the Samaritan Torah and St. Jerome's transliteration suggest the ב in בראשית vocalized with a קָמַץ (qamatz). Perhaps we are simply dealing with a scribal anomaly that folks like Rashi and Ibn Ezra feel compelled to justify.


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## Drink

nili95 said:


> One additional point/question. We are viewing Gen 1:1-3 through a Masoretic lens, but this is a relatively recent edit. I have read (but have not confirmed) that both the Samaritan Torah and St. Jerome's transliteration suggest the ב in בראשית vocalized with a קָמַץ (qamatz). Perhaps we are simply dealing with a scribal anomaly that folks like Rashi and Ibn Ezra feel compelled to justify.



First of all, the Masoretes didn't "edit". They simply wrote down their oral pronunciation tradition. And same thing with the Samaritans. If the traditions diverged, who's to say it's the Samaritans who got it right? After all, the Jewish pronunciation is more conservative overall.

Second of all, Rashi and Ibn Ezra are not "justifying" anything. They are merely giving actual examples of this sort of construction from other places, which clearly shows that there is nothing unusual about it. So why are we compelled to "justify" it by proposing alternative vocalizations when it's perfectly acceptable as it is?


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## nili95

Drink said:


> First of all, the Masoretes didn't "edit". They simply wrote down their oral pronunciation tradition. And same thing with the Samaritans. If the traditions diverged, who's to say it's the Samaritans who got it right? After all, the Jewish pronunciation is more conservative overall.
> 
> Second of all, Rashi and Ibn Ezra are not "justifying" anything. They are merely giving actual examples of this sort of construction from other places, which clearly shows that there is nothing unusual about it. ...



Sorry. You seem to be reading more into "edit" and "justify" than was intended. Clearly, I should have been more careful with my wording.



Drink said:


> So why are we compelled to "justify" it by proposing alternative vocalizations when it's perfectly acceptable as it is?



If my reading is correct, Ibn Ezra was not justifying a construct (pun intended) acknowledged as "perfectly acceptable as it is." Rather, he was defending his interpretation by noting that there exists similar examples elsewhere in the Tanakh.

L'Shalom ...


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## Drink

I think we're still disagreeing.

Ibn Ezra was not defending his interpretation. That would imply he first had an interpretation and then defended it by finding examples. Rather, he was giving his reasoning for his interpretation, meaning that those examples helped him arrive at that interpretation.

But the point I'm making here is really this: If those other examples exist, then *why are we questioning the possibility that בראשית is a construct?* It's not proof that it _is_ a construct, but it _is_ proof that it _could_ be a construct and that we should not find it being a construct to be unusual.


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## nili95

Drink said:


> I think we're still disagreeing.
> 
> Ibn Ezra was not defending his interpretation. That would imply he first had an interpretation and then defended it by finding examples. Rather, he was giving his reasoning for his interpretation, meaning that those examples helped him arrive at that interpretation.
> 
> But the point I'm making here is really this: If those other examples exist, then *why are we questioning the possibility that בראשית is a construct?* It's not proof that it _is_ a construct, but it _is_ proof that it _could_ be a construct and that we should not find it being a construct to be unusual.



OK.


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## rushalaim

nili95 said:


> בּראשׁית בּרא - construct state?


No, it is not any construct state! See Deuteronomy 11.12 where is used both ברשית _"in the beginning"_ and אחרית _"in the end"_.


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## Drink

rushalaim said:


> No, it is not any construct state! See Deuteronomy 11.12 where is used both ברשית _"in the beginning"_ and אחרית _"in the end"_.



What it says is this:

מֵרֵשִׁית הַשָּׁנָה וְעַד אַחֲרִית שָׁנָה

Both ר(א)שית and אחרית here are constructs: from *the beginnging of* the year until *the end of* the year.


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## nili95

rushalaim said:


> No, it is not any construct state! See Deuteronomy 11.12 where is used both ברשית _"in the beginning"_ and אחרית _"in the end"_.



With an exclamation point (!), no less. Oy vey!

By the way, I believe that the the word in Deuteronomy 11:12 is *מרשית*, not *בראשית* (which you manage to misspell). Kudos for seamlessly melding such certainty with such sloppiness.


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## rushalaim

Drink said:


> What it says is this:
> 
> מֵרֵשִׁית הַשָּׁנָה וְעַד אַחֲרִית שָׁנָה
> 
> Both ר(א)שית and אחרית here are constructs: from *the beginnging of* the year until *the end of* the year.


Read your Rabbinic translation uses not any construct! קדמין and רישא for ברשית ; and סופא for אחרית


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## Drink

The Targum Onkelos says: מֵרֵישַׁהּ דְּשַׁתָּא, וְעַד סוֹפַהּ דְּשַׁתָּא. Even though the translation itself does not use constructs, this is a pretty normal way for it to translate constructs.


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## rushalaim

Drink said:


> The Targum Onkelos says: מֵרֵישַׁהּ דְּשַׁתָּא, וְעַד סוֹפַהּ דְּשַׁתָּא. Even though the translation itself does not use constructs, this is a pretty normal way for it to translate constructs.


I mean קדמין in Genesis 1.1 is not construct.


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## Drink

rushalaim said:


> I mean קדמין in Genesis 1.1 is not construct.



Oh that's what you meant. Yes, the author of the Targum apparently didn't see it as a construct.


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## nili95

I'm sitting here with Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (edited by E. Kautzsch) and A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (by P. Jouon and T. Muraoka). Each book emphasizes that the construct state is typically between two nouns, and each book acknowledges exceptions to the 'rule.' One would think that Genesis 1:1 would be first among the many exceptions noted ... 

... and one would be wrong. Gesenius offers *Section 130: Wider Use of the Construct State* but makes no mention of this verse. The other grammar, in its Section 129.p3 writes: "With pure substantives (rare): Ho 1.2 ...Possibly also GN 1.1 ... _At the beginning of God's creation of the heaven and the earth._" It then notes: "[1] So already Rashi, who, as supporting evidence, mentions e.g. Ho 1.2."

My question is: "Why the apparent reticence?" Why do we not read something akin to: " The construct state is not always between a noun and a noun. One need only look at the opening verse of Genesis ..."

The question is likely unanswerable, but one possibility is that Gesenius and others are treading carefully because of the possible theological implication involved. This is, obviously, little more than speculation on my part. I'd love to hear another explanation.

Shabbat Shalom.


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## Drink

Shavua tov!

I think you're overthinking it. Gesenius clearly recognizes that there is more than one interpretation of Genesis 1:1, and so avoids making a definitive statement. This is as opposed to the other cases, such as Hosea 1:2, where it hard to dispute that it's a construct.

The fact that there is a theological implication is likely irrelevant to Gesenius.


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## nili95

Drink said:


> Shavua tov!
> 
> I think you're overthinking it. Gesenius clearly recognizes that there is more than one interpretation of Genesis 1:1, and so avoids making a definitive statement. This is as opposed to the other cases, such as Hosea 1:2, where it hard to dispute that it's a construct.
> 
> The fact that there is a theological implication is likely irrelevant to Gesenius.



Shavua tov.

As for the rest, (a) I do occasionally overthink things, and (b) from what little I've read, I suspect that there were very few theological questions deemed irrelevant by this man.


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## Drink

nili95 said:


> (b) from what little I've read, I suspect that there were very few theological questions deemed irrelevant by this man.



Perhaps you're right. I have not studied him in depth.


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