The case of the missing "and"

This post is a response to Matt Perman's excellent book review of John Sailhamer's "Genesis Unbound". Disclaimer: I have not read Sailhamer's book.

When I printed Permans'review it came out in 41 pages, so I'll be referring to these numbers as I go along.

First things first, re: pages 1-9 of the review, I am not sure as a Young Earth Creationist whether I have a problem with "beginning" in Gen. 1:1 meaning "an extended, yet indeterminate duration of time-not a specific moment." (p. 6) The reason I don't think I have a problem with this is that I understand "the beginning" to include the 6 days of creation in Gen. 1:2-31, not to precede them as a separate, distinct act of creation.

But Perman rightly notes that "The question that this raises is whether "the beginning" includes the seven days of the following verses (1:2-2:4) or whether "the beginning" refers to a period of time that elapsed before the days of creation recorded in Genesis 1:2-2:4. In other words, is Genesis 1:1 ("in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") a title to the entire chapter which summarizes the content of the following verses, or is Genesis 1:1 a distinct act which sequentially comes before the events of the following verses?" (p. 10)

Perman writes, "Sailhamer successfully argues for the second alternative-that "the beginning" is not a title to the chapter but a distinct act of God that occurred in a period of time that elapsed before the six days enumerated in 1:2ff." Perman enumerates three reasons that Sailhamer gives for his conclusion. I will respond to one of these three reasons in this post and the other two reasons in subsequent posts.

Reason # 2 given by Sailhamer (as summarized by Perman): "Second, Genesis 1:1 cannot be a title for the rest of the chapter because the next verse begins with the conjunction "and." But if 1:1 were a title in Hebrew, "the section immediately following it would surely not begin with the conjunction 'and.'"(103). The fact that Sailhamer is considered an expert in biblical Hebrew makes one confident that he knows what he is talking about here."

My response to this reason is that I cannot find the "and" in Gen. 1:2. According to the Masoretic Text (as published online by http://www.blueletterbible.org/), I cannot see an "and" at the beginning of Gen. 1:2. This may be why the NASB begins verse 2 with "The earth was formless and void . . ." I also observe that a number of Bible translations do not include an "and" at the beginning of Gen. 1:2 (e.g., NKJV, NLT, NIV, ESV, RSV, HNV). But this raises the following question: Why do some Bible translations include the word "and" at the beginning of Gen. 1:2 if the Masoretic Text does not contain it (e.g., KJV, ASV, DBY, WEB)? Do readers have any thoughts on this?