Does the English translation of the Bible accurately reflect the Hebrew?
The Hebrews think differently than we do. One of the major differences is that we commonly think in abstract thoughts while the Hebrews commonly think in concrete thoughts. An abstract thought is a word that has no basis in something that can be seen, heard, smelled, felt or tasted. A concrete thought has a basis on something that can be perceived by the above listed five senses. To demonstrate the differences we will look at two words from the English translation; “create” and “believe.” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The word “create” is usually understood as “to make something out of nothing.” This concept is abstract and therefore a foreign concept to the ancient Hebrews. Just a few verses later we can easily see that this idea is wrong. In Genesis 1:26 it states that God “created” man but, according to Genesis 2:7 God did not “make man out of nothing” because it states that he “formed” the man out of the ground. The Hebrew word translated a
