Word Study: In The Beginning

QUICK WORD STUDY – IN THE BEGINNING

Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the earth.”
John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word.”
The three English words, in the beginning, are just one word for Hebrew and Aramaic, bere’shith in Hebrew and brasheeth in Aramaic. In the Hebrew and Aramaic text of Genesis God is totally free of the time/space dimension. This is why John starts his book off like the book of Genesis to show that Jesus is also free of the time/space dimension. In the Aramaic brasheeth as well as the Hebrew bere’shith does not mean beginning in the sense we understand it, as a starting point but to express the idea “before time was even considered.” John 1:1 could read from the Aramaic into English: “The Word always was.”