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376 which is commonly translated, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth." Since the Hebrew letters have numerical values, the first letter, Aleph (from which the Greek alpha comes) has the numerical value "one, the first'—the beginning. Why then, scholars and theologians have wondered, does the Creation start with the second letter, Beth, whose value is "two, second"? While the reason remains unknown, the result of starting the first verse in the first book of the Bible with an Aleph would be astounding, for it would make the sentence read thus: Ab-reshit bara Elohim, et Ha'Shamaim v'et Ha'Aretz The Father-of-Beginning created the Elohim, the Heavens, and the Earth. By this slight change, by just starting the beginning with the letter that begins it all, an omnipotent, omnipresent Cre- ator of All emerges from the primeval chaos: Ab-Reshit, "the Father of Beginning." The best modern scientific minds have come up with the Big Bang theory of the beginning of the universe—but have yet to explain who caused the Big Bang to happen. Were Genesis to begin as it should have, the Bible—which offers a precise tale of Evolution and adheres to the most sensible cosmogony—would have also given us the answer: the Creator who was there to create it all. And all at once Science and Religion, Physics and Meta- physics, converge into one single answer that conforms to the credo of Jewish monotheism: "I am Yahweh, there is none beside me!" It is a credo that carried the Prophets, and us with them, from the arena of gods to the God who embraces the universe. One can only speculate why the Bible's editors, who schol- ars believe canonized the Torah (the first five books of the DIVINE ENCOUNTERS Breshit bara Elohim et Ha'Shamaim v'et Ha'Aretz