Bereshit Rabbah

English

Rabbi Yitzḥak began: “The beginning of Your word is truth…” (Psalms 119:160) – Rabbi Yitzḥak said: Right from the beginning of the creation of the world [it can be seen that] “the beginning of Your word is truth” – “in the beginning, God created.” “But My Lord God is truth” (Jeremiah 10:10), “All Your righteous laws are eternal” (Psalms 119:160) – as each and every edict that You decree upon Your creations, they accept the judgment upon themselves and receive it faithfully, and no person can come and say that two authorities created the world: “God [Elohim] spoke [vaydaberu]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God spoke [vaydaber];” “God [Elohim] said [vayomeru]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God said [vayomer]”; “In the beginning God created [bare’u]” is not written here [in plural], but rather [in singular], “God created [bara].”

The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · sefaria-midrash-rabbah

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 1:7 (Vilna numbering) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The rabbinic answer to this crux, and it is a grammatical argument made three times over. R. Yitzḥak reads Ps 119:160, 'the beginning of your word is truth', of the opening of Genesis: from the beginning of the creation of the world the head of your word is truth, 'in the beginning God created', and the Lord God is truth (Jer 10:10). Then the point: no creature can come and say that two authorities created the world — vaydaberu Elohim is not written here but vaydaber Elohim; vayomeru Elohim is not written here but vayomer Elohim; bereshit bare'u Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim. Three verbs, all singular, against a noun that is plural in form. The observation is exactly Abelard's at the Paraclete seven hundred years later and Ibn Ezra's at Lucca, and the three of them draw three different conclusions from it. Note what the argument is aimed at: not idolatry in general but shtei reshuyot, two authorities — the dualism the same midrash elsewhere calls minut — and the verse is being used as a proof text against it.

Threads

• ← parallel · Peter Abelard
  The star thread of the site. Both ask why the plural noun Elohim takes a singular verb, in the same words. R. Yitzḥak: 'bereshit bare'u Elohim is not written here, but bara Elohim' — and therefore no creature can say that two authorities created the world. Abelard: 'unde autem dictum est Eloim creavit, non creaverunt? ut videlicet ad plurale nomen singulare verbum referretur; quatenus insinuaretur in tribus illis personis non tres creatores, sed unum tantum debere intelligi.' One grammatical fact, seven hundred years apart, no contact, and the same conclusion drawn about the verb — one creator — from opposite conclusions about the noun.
• ← echoes · Abraham ibn Ezra
  Ibn Ezra's closing clause is Bereshit Rabbah's argument reduced to a grammarian's note: 'for this reason Scripture says bara and not bare'u.' What the midrash offers as a refutation of two authorities, he offers as the expected concord of an honorific plural — the same reading with the polemic taken out and a comparative philology of Arabic, Hebrew and the vernaculars put in.
• ← echoes · Babylonian Talmud
  The same anxiety twice, once as exegesis and once as translation history. R. Yitzḥak proves from the singular verbs that no one can say two authorities created the world; the elders before Ptolemy move the divine name to the front of the sentence — 'God created in the beginning' — so that bereshit cannot be read as the subject of bara, that is, as a power that made God. Both are defending the first verse against a reading that finds more than one maker in it.
• ← parallel · Bruno of Segni
  Both refuse a plurality of creators in the same words and against different opponents. R. Yitzḥak: no creature can say that two authorities created the world. Bruno: was he speaking to the angels? God forbid — for otherwise there would be not one creator but many, whereas God alone is the creator of all. The premise is shared exactly; what Bruno does next with it, and the midrash cannot, is find the second and third persons in the same verses.
• ← parallel · Augustine
  Both texts open their treatment of Genesis by fencing it against a dualism, and both do it before expounding a word. Augustine sets out the catholic faith first, because many heretics drag the Scriptures to their own opinion, and ends by ruling that nothing in the creature belongs to the Trinity except that the Trinity made it. R. Yitzḥak rules that no creature can say that two authorities created the world. The heresies are not the same and the manoeuvre is identical: the first verse is made to exclude a second maker before it is made to say anything else.
• ← parallel · Targum Onkelos
  Phase 4. The targum removes the difficulty the midrash has to argue about. Where the Hebrew has the plural-looking Elohim with a singular verb, Onkelos writes YY — the Tetragrammaton, which is not plural in form — so that no reader of the Aramaic could raise the question of two authorities at all. R. Yitzḥak has to answer it three times from the verbs.
• ← echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same proof twice in the same compilation, once as exegesis and once as a disputation. R. Yitzḥak at 1:7 observes that the plural-looking Elohim takes singular verbs — not vaydaberu but vaydaber, not bare'u but bara — and concludes that no creature may say two authorities created the world. R. Simlai at 8:9 is asked by the minim how many divinities created the world and answers with the same verb: baru Elohim is not written here but bara Elohim. What 8:9 adds is the occasion. The grammatical observation this crux is built on is, in its own tradition, an answer given to opponents who had asked the question out loud.