Rewrite and format the following commentary (on “was” of Genesis 1:2) keeping as many of the same words as possible:

The simplest description of what “existed” before the first day of Creation. To translate “became,” or “came into being,” in order to import into the verse an allusion to the nebular hypothesis for the origin of the “solar system,” is an expedient not to be entertained by any scholarly interpreter. It is sufficient to remind the reader that the ancients were entirely ignorant of the Copernican theory of the solar system; and, ex hypothesi, could not have comprehended Laplace’s nebular theory. It violates every canon of interpretation to assume that simple words, like “earth,” “darkness,” “water,” &c., were intended to convey to the Israelite reader not the meanings which the Hebrew equivalents everywhere else conveyed, but those which could only be understood after the scientific theories of the nineteenth century had transformed men’s conception of the universe.