created the heaven and the earth." Some say that the Hebrew word
bara, which is translated "create," means "made out of
nothing." I venture to object to that rendering, not on the
ground of scholarship, but of common sense. Omnipotence itself
can surely no more make something "out of" nothing than it can
make a triangular circle. What is intended by "made out of
nothing" appears to be "caused to come into existence," with the
implication that nothing of the same kind previously existed.
It is further usually assumed that "the heaven and the earth"
means the material substance of the universe. Hence the "Mosaic
writer" is taken to imply that where nothing of a material
nature previously existed, this substance appeared. That is
perfectly conceivable, and therefore no one can deny that it may
have happened. But there are other very authoritative critics
who say that the ancient Israelite<6> who wrote the passage was
not likely to have been capable of such abstract thinking; and
that, as a matter of philology, bara is commonly used to
signify the "fashioning," or "forming," of that which already
exists. Now it appears to me that the scientific investigator is
wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first origin
of the material universe. The whole power of his organon
vanishes when he has to step beyond the chain of natural causes
and effects. No form of the nebular hypothesis, that I know of,
is necessarily connected with any view of the origination of the
nebular substance. Kant's form of it expressly supposes that the
nebular material from which one stellar system starts may be
nothing but the disintegrated substance of a stellar and
planetary system which has just come to an end. Therefore, so
far as I can see, one who believes that matter has existed from
all eternity has just as much right to hold the nebular