Verse
nine gives additional justification for the acceptance of
our alternative translation. The term 
meant an 'accumulation of water', but not one of such vast
extent as was envisaged by the Jerusalem Bible, where the
translators had in mind the accumulation of oceans.
In Isaiah
22:11, we read:"In the middle you made a meqjahbetween
the two walls of the old pool." The Jerusalem bible translates
the term meqjahas 'reservoir'! A single word is unlikely
to have been used for both the vast accumulation of all the
oceans, and for a humble reservoir formed from an old pool.
If the
separation of the waters refers to the making of a reservoir,
we can be confident that the whole of the first chapter of
Genesis is an account of the establishment of Kharsag - the
Garden in Eden - and does not refer to the creation of the
universe.
| JERUSALEM
BIBLE |
(ALTERNATIVE
GENESIS) |
|
God
said, 'Let the waters under heaven come together in
a single mass, and let dry land appear'. And it was
so.
|
The
Shining Onessaid, 'Let the waters gathered by
the wall form a reservoirso that dry land appears'
(below).
|
The old,
mountain-girt, lake-bed on which the plantations of Kharsag
were eventually made, had no outlet for surface water; in
the rainy period, it must have been flooded by the in-flowing
river. The construction of the dam, and the accumulation of
water in the reservoir, would have allowed the lake-bed to
dry out - and so dry landwould have appeared.
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page GEN 1:10
