In the beginning -what?

1. There are two concurrent presentations in the Creation story, but one is favored.                                                                                             a. Split scene presentations - two different perspectives at the same time. This forces us to interpret and reconcile, and In this way, we own the final story. It actively enrolls us and makes us buy into the story and its assumptions.                                                         b. Sergei Eisenstein, 1898-1948, Russian filmmaker: Battleship Potemkin - 1925, awarded as the Greatest Film of all times in Brussels World Fair 1956. Socialist realism required all writers to focus on big, bold historic events and discouraged individual stories; therefore to express themselves filmmakers stored to the Montage technique.
2. Deliberate grammatical violations and surprises,                                                                                                                                                            a.The grammar does not require to start with the preposition Bet (Ibn Ginach, Sefer Hasheroshim)                                                b. Reishis is in possessive form but possessive to what is not stated (See Rashi). Leaving out "in the beginning" of what is surely significant.  I follow here with a discussion of how genitive differs between Hebrew and Indo-European languages. In Hebrew, it is the possessed object that changes, in the European language, it is the possessor.                                           c. There are other examples of a possessive form without indicating by whom or what they are possessed, but it is not common, see Hosea 1,2.
3. These grammatical irregularities lead some to conclude that there was no Creation, but what is being described is the formation from eternally pre-existent matter. They are Ibn Ezra ibid, Kuzari 1:63-67, Gersonides in The Wars of the Lord, Part 6, and perhaps Maimonides in Guide 11:13. You can add to these the Aleinu Prayer, which speaks of theShaper of the beginning ( Yotser Bareisht). This is not the majority opinion, but it is important.
4. There are two very different ways to read the first verse, and at the same time!  Consonant with our approach, our question then is why does the Torah present two mutually exclusive Creation stories in the very beginning and at the same time and uses this "split-screen" technique.
5. Conclusion: The simultaneous presentation of these different views is to indicate to us that the main question that should concern us is, "Where is God". Is he a distant Creator, who made the world and set it in motion and then absconded and let it run by itself, the Deist view, or is he within the World, personal and right here with us? The Scripture favors the 2nd view, as we see in the next verse, where the spirit of God is fashioning, shaping, drying the waters and causing things to come into being, on Earth and not in Heaven. We will later discuss how the Scripture sees God as being both in Heaven and on Earth, spanning both.
6. Through this presentation, the Bible teaches us that there is Creation from nothing, but not at the expense of the involved Creator continuing to interact with the World and with us. From its perspective, it is more important for us to understand that this Deity that is being introduced to us in the beginning, is an active and involved one, one that we can deal with and worship, and this is the basis of religious life, than how Creation actually happened, from nothing or from something.
7. Reference the book God of Old by James Kugel.