I heard this (about God the Renovator) on Radio New Zealand National on presenter Jim Mora's panel - a great discussion programme which occurs on weekdays at 4pm, where various panelists and Jim tackle all sorts of topics, both relevant and obscure.
The panelists on Wednesday the 13th October were Finlay MacDonald (columnist and editor) and Gordon MacLaughlin (writer and journalist).
One of Thursday's topics concerned the mistranslation of the opening sentence of Genesis. Jim opened the topic.
It seems that, according to Ellen van Wolde (author, old testament scholar, and member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Scientists), there has been a phenomenal mistranslation in Genesis, the first book of the modern bible. According to van Wolde, the problem lies in the translation. She has based her research on fresh new analysis of the original Hebrew texts. However van Wolde went further, she also studied the opening text - "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" - in relation to the Old Testament as a whole, and in relation to other Mesopotamian creation myths. Ellen van Wolde concludes that the verb “bara” does not mean to create – but means to separate in space. “God schiep niet, hij scheidde” – “God did not create he separated”.
He (according to the original writers of Genesis) brought an order out of a kind of formless chaos, using what was already there, the heavens, the land, the creatures, all of which had already been created. It seems that when you look back at the traditions of the world in which the old testament was originally written that this was a perfectly normal way for high gods to behave - they gained their position by conquering the forces of chaos. Doctor James Harding (a local biblical scholar) who popped onto the radio for a cameo moment, pointed out that "the idea that God created out of "nothing" only gained currency amongst Christians in about the second century AD".
"Bit of a comedown isn't it" said Finlay MacDonald (this guy was a great panelist), "from creator to sort of renovator, don't you think?"
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