What we are not justified in doing on the basis of known usage is to read into bara» anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures later metaphysical understandings of the idea of creation, such as
creatio ex nihilo, which is not the sense of Genesis 1:1 f. and is indeed not
found in Jewish religious writing until 2 Maccabees 7:28, where there is undoubted Hellenistic influence.