The first scripture of Genesis says that god created the Heavens and Earth....

Question

...what was the person who wrote that refering to when he said "God".

Answer 1

Scriptures are mans personl experience with spirit. Some are Holy and some not so Holy. It is for spiritual delelopment and instruction it should be as such only. Once we begin to attach authority to it, the words of gods or anything beyound our personal experience we distort and make it unworthy of consideration.

There is no doubt that the spirit is always trying to reach us, very seldom are we receptive with complete understanding. It is up to each one to interpert and evaluate this personal experience for all who seek God will find God. In this is all that we can know as it is personal to us, as God is the source of all personality.

This quote from the Urantia Papers says it better the I can; P.1768 - §1 "Nathaniel, never permit yourself for one moment to believe the Scripture records which tell you that the God of love directed your forefathers to go forth in battle to slay all their enemies--men, women, and children. Such records are the words of men, not very holy men, and they are not the word of God. The Scriptures always have, and always will, reflect the intellectual, moral, and spiritual status of those who create them. Have you not noted that the concepts of Yahweh grow in beauty and glory as the prophets make their records from Samuel to Isaiah? And you should remember that the Scriptures are intended for religious instruction and spiritual guidance. They are not the works of either historians or philosophers.

P.1768 - §2 "The thing most deplorable is not merely this erroneous idea of the absolute perfection of the Scripture record and the infallibility of its teachings, but rather the confusing misinterpretation of these sacred writings by the tradition-enslaved scribes and Pharisees at Jerusalem. And now will they employ both the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures and their misinterpretations thereof in their determined effort to withstand these newer teachings of the gospel of the kingdom. Nathaniel, never forget, the Father does not limit the revelation of truth to any one generation or to any one people. Many earnest seekers after the truth have been, and will continue to be, confused and disheartened by these doctrines of the perfection of the Scriptures.

Answer 2

There are at least different 3 redactors (authors) of Genesis alone. Most biblical scholars now say this.

Fundamentalists would say it was God himself who wrote it so the writer (god) was referring to himself.

Answer 3

The Hebrew word there is "elohiym"; it's actually a plural of "elowahh," which in turn is a prolongation (for emphasis) of "el" which is a general word for a deity, equivalent to "God" in English and related to "Allah" in Arabic.

The thing about stories describing gods is that the only real source of more detailed meanings is the stories themselves. In this case, the story describes God as the creator of all things, with some breakdown into phases of creation and categories of things (especially living creatures).

Incorporating this story into the compiled mythology/theology/history of a people (in this case, the Bible of the Jews) extends the description, by implication, to include the rest of the descriptions in the whole text.

Answer 4

He was referring to the information that some wise man had given him.

Answer 5

He was referring to the creator of course.  

Answer 6

Apparently, I have read somewhere, that Moses wrote Genesis in retrospect.

Since he also wrote the Ten Commandments he must have been referring to the divine essence that first gave him information. Something he would quite naturally have referred to as 'God' because the concept was not new.

It would seem that man, from the dawn of civilization, has had an understanding that there are energetic forces at work that we cannot explain; good and bad.

The concept of God's, Goddesses and one God have arisen from these ideas.

What God truly is remains a mystery that we still strive to explain, However. we must give 'it' a name that everyone can understand; whether we choice to accept the idea or not is another matter.