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Home › Library › Philology › In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth

始めに神は天と地を創造された hajime ni kami wa ten to chi o sōzō sareta In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth

始めに神は天と地を創造された (hajime ni kami wa ten to chi o sōzō sareta), in the beginning God created heaven and earth, is Genesis 1:1 in a form no Japanese Bible read here prints character for character. It is the 1955 colloquial Bible's sentence with 始 written for はじめ and one と dropped, one character from the Bible of 2018, and its first nine characters are in print in a translation of 1924.

Japanese Scroll of In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth (hajime ni kami wa ten to chi wo sōzō sareta) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth (hajime ni kami wa ten to chi wo sōzō sareta)

始めに神は天と地を創造されたhajime ni kami wa ten to chi wo sōzō sareta

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Abstract

始めに神は天と地を創造された, in the beginning God created heaven and earth, is Genesis 1:1, and no Japanese Bible read here prints it character for character. It is the 1955 口語訳's sentence, はじめに神は天と地とを創造された, with 始 for はじめ and the second と dropped; the 聖書協会共同訳 of 2018 is one character away, 初 for 始. The Meiji Bible of 1887 read 元始に神天地を創造たまへり, and the sentence's grammar, 神は and then 天と地, was in Japanese print from 1922, before any Bible read here used it.

Overview

The sense. The first verse of the Bible: in the beginning, God, and the making of heaven and earth.

The words. 天地 is cited from 756 [1]; 創造, in the sense of God making the universe, is first cited from 箕作麟祥's 泰西勧善訓蒙 of 1873, and in its general sense from 中村正直's 西国立志編 of 1870–71 [2].

The text in English. Genesis 1:1: the King James reads the heaven and the earth; the American Standard, the New International, the English Standard and the New Revised Standard all read the heavens and the earth [3].

The historical record

1852 and 1919. The Chinese Bibles beside the Japanese. Two Chinese translations stand beside the Japanese wording, read here for what they share with it, not as its source. The Delegates' Version of 1852 reads 上帝創造天地 for the opening of Genesis [4]; the Union Version of 1919 reads 神創造天地 [5].

1887 and 1907. The Meiji Old Testament. The Meiji committee's Old Testament of 1887 reads Genesis 1:1 元始(はじめ)に神(かみ)天地(てんち)を創造(つくり)たまへり, in the 1907 旧新約全書 printing [6] and again in the 1937 引照附 printing [7]. Where 始めに神は天と地を創造された has 神は … 創造された, the Meiji Bible has 神天地を創造たまへり, with 創造 read つくり.

1922, 1924 and 1931. The sentence without the Bible. Before the colloquial Bible existed, Japanese writers already wrote Genesis 1:1 with 神は and then 天と地. Giovanni Papini's autobiography, translated by 新居格 in 1924, has 「始めに神は天と地を作つた。」 [8], the first nine characters of 始めに神は天と地を創造された exactly. The National Diet Library's next-generation full-text search surfaces the same grammar twice more, each from its snippet only: a 1922 translation of Strindberg's A Dream Play, 世の始めに神は天と地とを虛無から創られたのだ [9], and a 1931 Old Testament primer, 始めに神は天と地とを創造し給うた [10]. Those three are every book the search finds on 始めに神は天と地 [11]; the grammar was in Japanese print from 1922, thirty-three years before the first Bible read here that uses it.

1955. The colloquial 口語訳. The Japan Bible Society's colloquial translation, the whole Bible in 1955, reads はじめに神は天と地とを創造された at its own verse-search endpoint [12]. The Japan Bible Society's own list of the wordings it revised in 1975, 1984 and 2002 does not touch this verse [13]. 始めに神は天と地を創造された is this Bible's sentence with 始 for はじめ and one と dropped.

1970, 2003 and 2017. The 新改訳. 新改訳 first appeared in 1970; its 2003 text reads 初めに、神が天と地を創造した [14] and its 2017 text はじめに神が天と地を創造された [15]: 神が for 神は.

1987. The 新共同訳. 新共同訳, published September 1987, reads Genesis 1:1 初めに、神は天地を創造された [16].

2018. The 聖書協会共同訳. 聖書協会共同訳, published December 2018, reads 初めに神は天と地を創造された [17]: 始めに神は天と地を創造された with 初 for 始, and every other character the same. Of the six Japanese texts of this verse read here, this is the one a single character away.

A reading

始めに神は天と地を創造された is the 口語訳's sentence with 始 for はじめ and the second と dropped, one character from the 聖書協会共同訳 of 2018, and no Bible's exactly. Its first nine characters stand in a translation of 1924, and its grammar in print from 1922: Japanese writers wrote the verse this way before any Bible read here did. The Meiji Bible's 元始に神天地を創造たまへり is how the verse read in the Protestant Bible from 1887 until 1955.

Sources not seen

The Catholic フランシスコ会訳 and バルバロ訳, two twentieth-century Catholic translations still in copyright, with no public verse-search endpoint. Their text of this verse would show whether the Catholic church's modern Bible differs from the older Bibles read here.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「天地」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/天地
  2. 「創造」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/創造
  3. Genesis 1:1, Hebrew text and English versions, at biblehub.com. https://biblehub.com/text/genesis/1-1.htm
  4. 創世記, 聖經 (委辦譯本或稱代表譯本), 1852, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/聖經_(委辦譯本或稱代表譯本)/創世記
  5. 創世記, 聖經 (和合本), 1919, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/聖經_(和合本)/創世記
  6. 旧新約全書, 1907, scan 5 (Genesis 1:1). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992555/1/5
  7. 舊新約聖書 引照附, 1937, scan 7 (Genesis 1:1). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1030419/1/7
  8. パピーニ自叙伝 終りし人 (Giovanni Papini, tr. 新居格), アテネ書院, 1924, scan 23 (Genesis 1:1). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/983321/1/23
  9. 夢幻劇 (August Strindberg, tr.), 1922, from the National Diet Library's next-generation full-text search on 始めに神は天と地 (Genesis 1:1), its snippet only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/962333
  10. 旧約史要, 1931, from the National Diet Library's next-generation full-text search on 始めに神は天と地 (Genesis 1:1), its snippet only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1055724
  11. National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 始めに神は天と地, searched again 26 September 2026: 3 books to about 1949, of 1922, 1924 and 1931. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=始めに神は天と地
  12. 口語訳, 日本聖書協会, at the publisher's verse search (Genesis 1:1). https://www.bible.or.jp/read/vers_search.html
  13. 聖書語句訂正一覧（口語訳聖書）, 日本聖書協会, the 1975 · 1984 · 2002 revisions. https://www.bible.or.jp/read/si_word_correction/jc_word_correction.html
  14. 新改訳 第三版, 新日本聖書刊行会, 2003 text, at the publisher's verse search (Genesis 1:1). https://www.seisho.or.jp/biblesearch/
  15. 新改訳2017, 新日本聖書刊行会, 2017 text, at the publisher's verse search (Genesis 1:1). https://www.seisho.or.jp/biblesearch/
  16. 新共同訳, 日本聖書協会, 1987, at the publisher's verse search (Genesis 1:1). https://www.bible.or.jp/read/vers_search.html
  17. 聖書協会共同訳, 日本聖書協会, 2018, at the publisher's verse search (Genesis 1:1). https://www.bible.or.jp/read/vers_search.html

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Not yet reviewed.