robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (06/01/84)
References: Yaqim Martillo's discussion of the first verse of Genesis includes many possible interpretations of the words that do NOT mean "In the beginning", in the sense of "In the beginning of everything". It has always fascinated me that the idea of a total "beginning" seems to be a manmade concept that is not found in nature, but is rather a concept we force upon the world to try to understand it. (I regard the perfect circle as another manmade concept that really doesn't exist in nature, although there may be counterexamples.) It is easy to see how the concept arose, during a period in history when some small animals and other objects seemed to come into being by spontaneous generation. While almost everyone will admit that every event has antecedents, yet many people want to believe in a "beginning" that had no antecedents at all. This seems to be inductive reasoning of the weakest kind. I believe that most careful interpretations of genesis do not support the concept of a "total beginning". - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) allegra!eosp1!robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison princeton!eosp1!robison