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 meqjah between the two walls of the old pool." The Jerusalem bible translates the term meqjah as '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 Ones said, 'Let the waters gathered by the wall form a reservoir so 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 land would have appeared.
