All Their Cosmos
The ancient rabbis at Alexandria, our earliest translators of Holy Scripture, found their first literary challenge at the first verse of Genesis 2. Their task, let us recall, was to take the inherited Hebrew text and make it intelligible in the Greek language, which was, in fact, their own mother tongue. These men, as well as their readers, normally thought in Greek, using concepts, impressions, and a distinct vocabulary from Greek philosophy, literature, and culture.
So what was to be done at the beginning of Genesis 2? The Hebrew text just sat there, as it were, rather obscure, and begging for interpretive attention: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all their host were finished.” All their what? Something just had to be done with “all their host” (kol-seba’am).
So the rabbis changed it to “all their cosmos” (pas ho kosmos avtón), and that made sense right away. “Cosmos” is a uniquely Greek concept. In fact, as far as I know, kosmos has no adequate equivalent in any other language; even the modern Hebrew word for it is qosmos.
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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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