What truths about creation are revealed in the first creation story?

Religious truths may or may not be scientific truths. The most important religious truth in the first creation story is that God effortlessly spoke things into existence in just six days. Compare this to the second creation story, where God's powers are more limited and he could not make living things out of nothing, needing to model them in dirt. As for whether creation of the world itself was from nothing, ex nihilo, many experts in Hebrew have carefully examined the text in Genesis 1:1-2 and agree that the earth was pre-existing.

Yair Zakovitch, Dean of Humanities at Hebrew University, in discussing this passage describes a very important religious truth that is almost invariably overlooked, "The thing to remember about the Bible is that the events and characters are just vehicles to convey messages. The biblical narrative was written to educate our young nation, not so much to tell us what really happened."

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