Re: barah, br'

Murphy (gmurphy@imperium.net)
Tue, 01 Apr 1997 07:37:14 -0500

Jan de Koning wrote:
> I agree, that in the true
> sense of create, only God can create. We still hear of painters creating a
> work of art.

We introduce no confusion within the appropriate range of
discourse when we speak of a painter "creating", but this is not the
case when we are talking about the creation of the universe. To speak
both of natural processes and of God "creating" the cosmos will
inevitably lead to sloppy theology or to anti-theology. We have enough
control of our language to introduce a new English (or Dutch, or German)
word which will, in principle, reduce the ambiguity. If a verb related
to br' is introduced for this purpose, we need not bring with it from
the Hebrew all its possible connections.
George Murphy