I had a question from a reader about Genesis 1:1.  The Ancient Roots Translinear Bible (ARTB) uses the phrase, "First, God created . . .".  Most other versions use the phrase "In the beginning".  Other translators use other words.  Why did ARTB pick the word "first"? 

From the reader: My attention has recently brought to the works of Gerald Shroeder, in one of his books he asserts the following: The opening word, usually translated as "In the beginning," is the Hebrew Be'reasheet. Be'reasheet can mean "In the beginning of" but not "In the beginning." The difficulty with the preposition "of" is that its object is absent from the sentence and so the usual English translation merely drops it. Rather than changing the meaning of the Hebrew and ignoring the "of," the 2,100 year old Jerusalem translation of Genesis into Aramaic realizes that Be'reacheet is a compound word: the prefix Be' – with; and raesheet – a first wisdom. The meaning becomes: "With wisdom God created the heavens and the earth." Having obtained your ARTB bible, with which I am particularly pleased with, I wondered if you could give me your opinion on Shroeder's assertion about the meaning of the Hebrew for "In the beginning". 

I am very close to Shroeder's position, but slightly different. Shroeder chose to emphasize the word "widsom" from the notion of "first wisdom", but I have emphasized the word "first". Here's why. In a translinear methodology, I chose the best English word that matched ALL of the occurances of Strong's number 7225. Take a look at the entries that come up when you type in "7225" in the Number box of the "ARTB Bible Search" page on menu to the left.

Genesis 1:1 can work either with "first" or "wisdom". But the next entry, Genesis 10:10 says "His FIRST realm had Babylon . . .". The word "Wisdom" wouldn't work there or in most of the remaining uses. Thus, the ARTB uses the word "first".

A. Frances Werner