This Translation of Hebrew Bible Compelling

The difficulties of translating the Hebrew Bible begin with the first word of Genesis. The King James Bible of 1611 translates Genesis 1:1 as “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Almost all succeeding versions have followed this formulation. But, as it turns out, the Hebrew word bereshit, traditionally rendered as “in the beginning,” has long been misconstrued. For grammatical reasons, this term has to be understood as a conjunction. Thus, in Robert Alter's new translation, we read: “When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said, ‘Let there be light.' ” In place of the stark solemnity of the King James Version we have a passage, with clauses hovering like God's breath itself, that suggests the turbulence of the first creation.