Definition of "in the beginning" [in the beginning]

• With reference to the origin or beginning (adverb)
• Before now (adverb)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "At the close of the fifteenth century and in the beginning of the sixteenth we have a good many printed processionals belonging to different churches of France, England, and Germany."
• "This system of associated or congregate labour in silence by day and cellular separation at night, for which, under the name of the Auburn System, so much excellence has been claimed in American penology, was thus inaugurated at Rome in the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than a hundred years prior to the introduction of the method into use here."
• "The liturgical cycle, that is, the feasts of the year or of the martyrs exerted hardly any influence on the Liturgy, and in this sense it may be said that in the beginning there was neither a"