Why does the New American Bible and many other Christian Bibles start off with?

orchidmg: Why does the New American Bible and many other Christian Bibles start off with?
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”

But in the torah, it says that YHVH created the heaven and earth..”

I’ve always tried to figure out what the plural heavens referred to and now I just found out that the Hebrew bible says a singular heaven.

Why the mistranslation? Anyone know this?

Answers and Views:

Answer by duke nukem
what is YHVH?

Answer by MosesGirl78
because the Muslims have a different god than christians

Answer by oldguy63
Because the heavens (firmament where the birds fly) was not created until the second day. And the third heaven talked about by John did not exist until Jesus rose from the dead and went to prepare a place for us.

Answer by River Euphrates
‘To-may-to’, ‘to-mah-to…’

‘Heaven’, ‘Heavens….’ – lets call the whole thing off!!

Answer by It’s so clear now!
There are 3 heavens mentioned in the Holy Bible.
1. The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven, where the birds fly. Revelation 19:17
2. The second heaven is the starry heaven, containing the sun, moon, and planets etc. Revelation 6:13
3. The third heaven is the dwelling-place of God. Matthew 6:9

Answer by Galactic Emperor
In 1970, the New American Bible (NAB) was first published. It is an English Bible translation that was produced by members of the Catholic biblical scholars in cooperation with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The original languages were translated into English by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine according to the principles of Vatican II for use in the liturgy.

Answer by EvangelistPaul (SFECU)
You are absolutely right. In Genesis 1:1 the correct translation should read “Heaven”. God only made one heave in the beginning. And then, later on, He split that heaven up into two heavens.

Thus, when you get to chapter two and verse one, we read, “thus the Heaven’s….

It’s pretty sad when the very first verse in many bibles today is wrong. That’s why I stick with the KJV only.

Answer by Bill C
You are mistaken on both. Gen. 1:1 in transliterated Hebrew says

B’reshit bara Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz.
בראשית ברא אלוהים את השמים ואת הארץ

So it says Elohim (God) not YHVH. As for singular or plural heaven, the Hebrew word for heaven has no singular form. There are a number of nouns in Hebrew that have no singular form. These include heaven, water, life and face. These are always plural, even when only one is being spoken of.

So these are not mistranslations.

Answer by fourcrynoutloud
Take a look at the very first words of the book of Genesis. Note very carefully that the Hebrew culture, at the time of this writing, was not monothestic, but rather, polytheistic. Will your priest, minister or preacher tell you that? No. But you can find out for yourself with a simple dictionary.

The Hebrew word for God is el; the plural is elohim, gods. What is the first sentence in the Bible?

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

Here is Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew (transliterated into the Latin alphabet, of course):

“Bereshith bara elohim,” etc.,

“In-beginning created (the) gods (the) heavens and (the) earth.”

In the same chapter the word “elohim” (gods) is used thirty times., Those gods are the ones who created the ‘universe’ in 6 days.

To clarify, here is the translation of the Hebrew text of Genesis 1. Notice how Jewish and Christian ‘fathers’ don’t bother to tell you what the original text says. They would like you to believe that a single god created everything. But, they messed up big time and actually translated it properly. In plain English, the translation reads ‘let us make man in our image’:

Here are three examples of the Hebrew plural gods mentioned in Genesis: 1. “And-said elohim (gods), let-US-make man (adam) in-image-OUR, after-likeness-OUR” (1:26).

2. And when “adam” had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, “the Lord God” said, “Behold, the-man has become like one of US, to know good and evil” (3:27).

3. And when the Tower of Babel was being built: “The Lord [Heb. Yahveh] said … Come, let US go down,” etc.

When speaking of the Hebrew deity, Yahveh, elohim, (gods) is used in the Hebrew texts, The plural elohim is used 2570 times. It is always falsely translated to the singular “God”, thus falsely making us believe that this text was written at a time when the Hebrew people were monothestic, when it clearly is the case (written at least 2570 times, no less!) that they WERE NOT.

In the three Genesis verses above, there are three different designations of the Hebrew deity or deities: elohim, (gods), falsely translated “God”:

Lord God (Heb. Yahveh-elohim); and Lord (Heb. Yahveh). Yahveh is the proper name of the Hebrew God, which, in English, is Jehovah.

Yahveh-elohim is a Hebrew “construct-form” which is translated to “Yahveh-of-the-gods.” Invariably these personal names were falsely translated “Lord” and “Lord God,” respectively, for purposes of pious fraud.

First Man, First Woman

There was no first man “Adam,” according to the Hebrew text. The word adam in Hebrew is a common noun, meaning man in a generic sense and in Genesis 1:26, it states:

“And elohim (gods) said, Let us make adam (man)”; and so “elohim created ha- adam (the-man); … male and female created he them” (1: 27).

In the second creation story, where man is first made alone:

“Yahveh formed ha-adam (the-man) out of the dust of ha-adamah-the ground” (2:7).

Man is called in Hebrew adam because he was formed out of adamah, the ground; just as in Latin man is called homo because he was formed from humus, the ground. Early Christian father Lactantius stated it as ‘homo ex humo’ (‘man from the ground’, or ‘dust’ as it commonly stated today).

The forging of the name Adam from the Hebrew noun adam into a mythical proper name Adam, was after the so-called Exodus. The fraud in the forging of fictitious genealogies from “in the beginning” to Father Abraham.

And this wasn’t done by Christians, but rather by early Hebrew priests. Nonetheless, early Christians took this deception and used it for their own newly forged religion.

Who has a Soul?

In Genesis 1 is the account of the creation of the elohim-gods-on the fifth day, of “nephesh hayyah” which is “the moving creature that hath life,” and of “nephesh hayyah-every living creature” out of the waters (1:20, 21); and on the sixth day of “nephesh hayyah-the living creature” out of the ground (1:24); and he gave to ha-adam-the-man dominion over “kol nephesh hagyah-everything wherein there is life,” (1:30.)

The Hebrew text states that all animal living creatures are by God called “nephesh hayyah,” literally “living soul”.

In Chapter 2 is the history of ha-adam made from ha-adamah; and, in contrast to these lowly “living creatures” (nephesh hayyah), Yahveh-clohim “breathed into his nostrils nishmath hayyim — (living breaths), and ha-adam became nephesh hayyah-a living soul”. (2:7)

In Hebrew everywhere you read the word nephesh it simply means soul, and hayyah (living) is the feminine singular adjective from hai, life.

In the original Hebrew texts, Man was created exactly the same as the other animals. All had or were ‘nephesh hayyah’ or living souls.

Remember, tho, that the reason there are two creation stories is because two culture’s stories of creation were woven together by the early Hebrew priestcraft.

Answer by arthvader
Today we say sky and the Spanish say heavens. It doesn’t really matter. We just have to understand the truths that the prophets were trying to teach.

You have to remember that there were different accounts of creation that had to be reconciled. Each party had its own agenda. The Yahwists might not have been any better than the priests, but at least they seemed to honor the prophets. The Priestly faction might not have been any better than the Yahwists, but at least they honored the priesthood and the importance of the Lord’s revealed laws.

I find your assertion to be most intriguing. In Genesis 1, Elohim commands the creation, and in Genesis 2, Jehovah obeys and carries out each stage of the creation. The Lord does not even make an appearance in Genesis 1.

However, like I say, two rival traditions had to be reconciled, so none of this is definitive. However, the translation of the word God, when it was not substituted for another holy name in the King James Bible, was consistent through the first five chapters of Genesis. It speaks of Jehovah, yes, but it does not call him God until Genesis 6. Until then, the word God was used exclusively for Elohim.