http://custance.org/Library/Volume6/.../Chapter2.html
When we look to the most ancient Hebrews themselves, who
were well exercised in and conversant with the peculiarities of their native tongue, we find that in this particular instance they all interpreted it by the disjunctive particle but, and none of them by the copulative and. Thus it was rendered by the first interpreters of the text, the Jews of Alexandria, nearly three hundred years before the Christian era:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but . . . earth. . .
..........In the same sense it was understood by the learned Jew, Josephus, who thus paraphrased the passage:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but, the latter not coming into view.
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