Young's usage of English present tense rather than past tense has been supported by scholars ranging from the medieval Jewish rabbi Rashi (who advised, "you are going to interpret [this passage in its plain sense, interpret it thus: At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was (or the earth being) unformed and void . . . God said, 'Let there be light.) to Richard Elliott Friedman in his translation of the Pentateuch in "The Bible with Sources Revealed" (2002).