# Sources behind the first creation scenes

This is the first passage dossier for *Before the Word*. It distinguishes the earlier texts from the new book's cosmology. It supports writing now while leaving voice, divine identities, and deliberate reversals to the author. The readings cover Genesis 1–3, John 1:1–18, Proverbs 8:22–31, Job 38, and one selected Coptic creation passage. They do not constitute complete readings of those five works.

The biblical translation inspected is the **New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE)**. Its publisher describes the edition as the revised Old Testament released in 2011 together with the 1986 New Testament. Chapter pages do not credit individual passage translators. The Coptic selection is **Bernard Barc's French translation**, hosted by Université Laval; its displayed header does not supply a revision date. These are identified modern translations, not independently collated original manuscripts. [USCCB, edition information](https://www.usccb.org/offices/new-american-bible/revised-edition-information).

## CN-01 — Genesis 1:1–31: making distinctions

Speech orders the world through separations and successive acts. Light appears before the heavenly lights, and humanity receives a shared divine image. The NABRE notes discuss the translation of *ruah* and the six-day literary pattern. A Mother existing before this speech, or a torus governing it, is a deliberate feature of our fiction. The note should identify that addition plainly. [Genesis 1, especially 1:2–5, 14–19, 26–27 and notes](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/1).

## CN-02 — Genesis 2:1–25: breath, work, and company

The seventh-day conclusion leads into a garden account organised around human formation, tending, prohibition, naming, and companionship. Its arrangement differs from the preceding chapter. We need to decide how the novel lets those accounts speak to each other. Lilith's presence belongs to the author's revision; this passage supplies no named Lilith. [Genesis 2:1–25; notes [2:4], [2:7], [2:9]](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/2).

## CN-03 — Genesis 3:1–24: knowledge and its consequences

The story links eating, opened eyes, shame, accusation, changed relationships, and exclusion from the life-giving tree. Its serpent is not named Satan in the passage; the NABRE note distinguishes subsequent Christian interpretation. The new book's account of refusal must show what a character knows, chooses, and risks. That moral argument is the author's work. [Genesis 3; especially 3:1–7, 16–24 and note [3:15]](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/3).

## CN-04 — John 1:1–18: the Word enters a human life

The prologue joins cosmic creation to incarnation and testimony. Its notes preserve choices about punctuation at 1:3–4, darkness at 1:5, and the reading at 1:18. Those differences should survive in the working record. Equating the Word with the Knowing Child would be a particular choice in this novel, not something established by a shared title or creation theme. [John 1:1–18, NABRE and footnotes](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A1-18&version=NABRE).

## CN-05 — Proverbs 8:22–31: Wisdom has a voice

Wisdom describes existence before the earth and delight beside its maker and among people. The NABRE note on 8:30 records competing understandings of the word rendered as artisan. A scene can make that ambiguity consequential: different speakers may understand her as maker, companion, or child. Making her the author's Mother requires an explicit creative identification. [Proverbs 8:22–31 and note [8:30]](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/proverbs/8).

## CN-06 — Job 38:1–41: who gets to ask the questions?

The divine speech moves through construction, birth, weather, stars, and animal hunger, challenging the reach of human knowledge. The edition marks uncertainty in particular astronomical and animal terms. Our narrative may question the speaker's authority while retaining the scale of the imagery. Its measuring lines are poetic language, not supplied values for a modern equation. [Job 38 and footnotes [38:31–32], [38:36]](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+38&version=NABRE).

## CN-07 — A particular Coptic account: thought before speech

The inspected passage of the *Apocryphon of John* describes an invisible first principle, the manifestation of Barbelo, and an unfolding of powers in which silent thought precedes a word-linked creative act. This is one text's account. It provides a meaningful disagreement with a fiction that makes the Mother absolutely first. The novel may retain that disagreement as an attributed witness. [Bernard Barc, *Le Livre des secrets de Jean*, NH II 2,25–7,15; PDF pages 1–3](https://www.naghammadi.org/sites/naghammadi.org/files/uploads/traductions/nh-ii-1-livre-des-secrets-de-jean.pdf).

## Decisions the opening needs to make

- Establish what the narrator can know about events before ordinary time, and which claims come from later witnesses.
- Distinguish the Mother's own identity from every source figure brought into conversation with her.
- Give each changed number or physical model a declared function: literal rule of the fiction, symbolic pattern, or a character's interpretation.
- Make moral revisions change actions and consequences. A new definition of wrongdoing needs a scene that puts it under pressure.
- Label a disagreement as deliberate mystery, competing testimony, or editorial error before trying to reconcile it.

No historical date of creation is established here. The composition and manuscript dates also remain separate research questions. The first novel can carry its own convictions while the Codex explains which earlier voices it is answering.
