I am starting a new way of studying Japanese by using a Japanese- English Bilingual Bible. I think that this will help greatly. I started with the first verse and already have a question. My question is: When hiragana is used verses Kanji is there a different contextual meaning being implied? In the example below why is はじめに used instead of 初めに? Would the context be different if the Kanji was used here? Example: はじめに神が天と地を創造された。