As if the idea of God speaking all-that-is, seen and unseen, into existence were not contentious enough in the academic/scientific world, we must confront the concept of "the beginning".
Genesis 1:1 states that God created the heavens and the earth "in the beginning", if you adhere to the Greek translation (the Septuagint). If you go with a Masoretic vocalization (how the Masoretes used hundreds of years of oral tradition to apply vowel sounds to ancient Hebrew), you get "In a beginning", which some believe indicates this is the account of "this" beginning, but that it was one of many "beginnings" God performed. I suppose it is reasonable that an infinite God with no beginning and no end COULD have created other universes. But, if so, the Bible does not tell us about them, and it would be inappropriate for us to speculate on that. Goodness knows, we have our hands full simply trying to understand the written revelation He HAS given us. I only mentioned the "a" beginning interpretation because it appears in some writings on the subject.
Still others place Wisdom present at creation, based on other scriptures, and translate b'reshit as wisdom, since b'reshit was used as a synonym of the word "wisdom". Several first century Aramaic translation of Genesis 1:1 open like this: "With wisdom did God create and perfect the heavens and the earth." I wrote on this topic about 10 months ago, after studying Proverbs 8, a proverb of King Solomon, where he personified Wisdom and proclaimed Wisdom as the first creative act of the Creator God, whom John 1 and Hebrews tell us was Jesus Christ himself. You can read that blog post here: http://resplendentdaughter.blogspot.com/2017/09/gods-first-creation.html
However, I made one possible mistake in that post by claiming that Genesis 1:1 does not mention "wisdom" as being the first created entity. If, though, you embrace the Aramaic translation, the presence of Wisdom is implied. Very interesting....Seems even the Jews themselves can't fully agree on the very first word of Torah (b'reshit). Our God is mysterious!
The Hebrew word b'reshit (or bereshit) has as its root the word "rosh" (as in Rosh Hashanah, for example - - head of the year, beginning of the year - - Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year....). Rosh means "head, chief, summit". B'reshit begins with the Hebrew letter "Bet", which alone means "house" and is composed of 3 Vavs (see graphic above). Added together, the 3 Vavs equal 18, the same value associated with "chai" (L'chaim) or "life". The first letter of the word (Bet), and the last letter together form the word "covenant". The four letters in between form the word "fire". This connotes within the word b'reshit that the act of creation by God was a covenant of fire.
The scientists who debate the age of the universe can be divided into "Old Earth" scientists and "Young Earth" scientists. If you interpret Genesis 1-11 literally, as do I, you would subscribe to the belief that our universe (not just the Earth) is quite young, between 6000-7000 years old. I ran across two interesting scholarly articles which cite several proofs (in addition to the Bible) of this "Young Earth" position. Here are the links:
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/evidence-for-a-young-world/
and
https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/age-of-the-universe/deflating-billions-years/
Fascinating stuff!
Additional Sources:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Bereshit/Zohar/zohar.html
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Glossary/Word_of_the_Week/Archived/Bereshit/bereshit.html
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Bereshit/Fire/fire.html
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/Parashah/Summaries/Bereshit/bereshit.html
http://kehillatisrael.net/docs/dt/dt_bereshit.html
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