"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." I This is the first record of creation or attempt to account for the existence of the heaven and the earth recognized by the Christian world.
"In the beginning." What are we to understand from this language? When was the beginning? Does this language undertake to fix the time when God began the work of creating the heaven and the earth? Is it a record of the material creation? If so did the material out of which the material universe was made begin "in the beginning?" Was the point at which the process of forming the pre-existing material into the form and shape of the "heaven and the earth," the beginning? or was this material brought into existence simultaneously with the forming process? Did the material or substance or matter out of which the heaven and the earth were made exist originally and primarily "in the beginning"?
If so when did the original and primary begin If we may not claim for the material, or matter, a primary but only a secondary beginning, the question nonetheless recurs, When did the material or matter begin? We repeat, in either case, When was the beginning?
