The Bible certainly teaches creation out of nothing. Consider some scholarly commentary on the opening verse of Genesis:

“In the beginning” The concept of “the beginning” in this passage refers to an absolute beginning of time. Henri Blocher (pronounced blosh-AE) writes, “All the ancient versions, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus, the Targum of Onqelos, interpreted it in this way, as of course do most modern translations. The apostle John confirms it when he echoes the prologue of Genesis in that of his Gospel (Jn. 1:1).”^[1] Wenham concurs, “The contexts here and in Gen 1 suggest ראשׁית refers to the beginning of time itself, not to a particular period within eternity.”^[2]

“Created” (bara). Waltke writes, “A telic verb (i.e., die or sell) only finds meaning at the end of a process. The Hebrew term bara, meaning ‘to create,’ only refers to a completed act of creation…, so it cannot mean that, in the beginning, God began the process of creating the cosmos.”^[3] A telic verb in Hebrew speaks of completion. In English, if we said, “He died,” this would be a telic verb. But if we said, “He lives in New York,” this would not. It would be the case of an ongoing action (i.e. continuing to live).

Henri Blocher writes, “If the beginning mentioned in the opening verse is to be taken in an absolute sense, and if ‘create’ is a verb of such force, are we to speak of creation out of nothing, ex nihilo? …The verb bara contains… the idea of creation ex nihilo, since it is never connected with any statement of the material. Without the idea being expressed clearly, we can say that the usage of the verb points in the direction of the notion of being produced from non-being.”^[4]

[1] Blocher, Henri. In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984. 62.

^[2] Wenham, G. J. (1998). Genesis 1–15 (Vol. 1, p. 14). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

[3] Waltke, Bruce K. Genesis: A Commentary. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI, 2001. 58.

[4] Blocher, Henri. In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984. 63.