BibleProject - The Greatest Elohim – Ancient Cosmology E3

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

The biblical authors often use creation imagery that clearly didn’t come from Genesis 1. Did they borrow from the creation accounts of other cultures? In this episode, join Tim and Jon for a deep dive into Genesis 1:1-2 and discover its similarity to other ancient cosmologies, plus one key difference: Yahweh is infinitely greater than all other gods.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (0:00-9:00)Part two (9:00-26:00)Part three (26:00-40:00)Part four (40:00-50:00)Part five (50:00-56:30)Part six (56:30-end)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.L. Michael Morales, Tabernacle Prefigured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and ExodusGeorge Landes, Creation Traditions in Proverbs 8 and Genesis 1John Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation AccountShow Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Synth Groove” by An Awesome Supporter“Feather” by Waywell“Luvtea” by Autumn Keys“Bloc” by kv“Mind Your Time” by me.soShow produced by Dan Gummel, Zack McKinley, and Cooper Peltz. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Try to think about nothing. What image comes to your mind? Seriously, think about nothing. What does it mean to not be a thing? Maybe you think of pitch darkness. Maybe you picture yourself floating in the vacuum of space. Ameless lost. The thing is, we live in a universe of things, of stars, of dirt, of trees, of clouds.

But before, there were things. What was it like for there to be no thing? I think if we could sit down with like these biblical authors and help them see our cosmology, I think they would want us to equate the dark waters of to home with our modern concept of nothingness. Hey, this is John at Bible Project, and we're walking through a series looking at ancient creation stories. The ones in the ancient Near East of Israel's neighbors, and the one found in the Bible in Genesis 1 and 2.

This week, we're gonna jump into Genesis 1 and read through the first four lines in the beginning when God created the skies in the land. What were things like? Well, there was darkness over the deep abyss. The deep abyss, that's the deep chaotic ocean, and in Hebrew, it's the word to home. The to home, the depths are going to play an important role in the symbolic geography of the biblical story. The deeps become associated with all sorts of negative chaos.

And so it's this first usage in the opening sentences of the Bible that establishes that basic picture. The Tahom is something that is opposed to the good order that God wants for this world. And then, suddenly, the Spirit of God is there, hovering over the Tahom. But this time, it's not called Tahom. This time with God in the equation, we find a neutral word for waters. So waters in the Tahom are two ways of referring to the same reality, but waters is neutral. In fact, waters are good. Water brings life. So these two lions are perceiving the waters from two different

points of view. When darkness is over the earth, those waters are to home. The chaotic, threatening, disordering waters. But when God's spirit is in the mix, the power of God's invisible presence. Those same waters become the canvas from which God creates life. And he does it not with an epic battle, but simply with his word. Today on our podcast, we dive deep into the first four lines of Genesis, because in these four lines is an entire universe. In fact, it is our universe. Thanks for joining us.

Here we go. We need Genesis chapter one together, right? Yeah, actually all we're gonna read is the first two sentences. Was that all we're gonna read? For this video all we need to work with is the first couple sentences. And then we'll allude to some other things in Genesis one. I wanna read more. All right. That would be quick.

If we just read two sentences, it won't exactly do. Well, I've got quite a bit to show you. Okay, all right, great. If you listen to the last episode, I'm sorry. So let's do a quick recap of those stories. The metal help us. Keep this fresh as we read in Genesis. Yeah.

First when we looked at was the Egyptian story of Atum. And the story is he comes out of just water. The waters of nothingness. He arises from them. The waters recede from him. He makes himself be from the waters. He's the primeval mound that emerges from the waters. Right, and he's like this egg of sorts,

of which everything else, then, he's like embryonic. Everything evolves up. Beginning coming from the waters. Yeah, self-generating emerging from the waters of nothingness. Yeah, so that's the Egyptian kind of creation story. And then we also looked at the Babylonian creation story, which is a continuation of the Samarian civilization. The civilization.

Civilization. But what's happening in the Babylonian one is there's a chaos dragon. That's right. The gods of old established the order of heaven and earth out of the waters. So heaven and earth comes out of the waters. This whole old guard of gods. That's right. Heaven earth come out.

Yeah. And you've got the fresh water and the salt water mingling and out of that emerges. That's the Samaritan one. That's how the Babylonian one begins with Tiamat, ocean saltwater and up to the freshwater mingling and all the gods develop out of that and then you get the first order. Okay, so you get the freshwater god and the saltwater god, they get jiggy and then they generate all the other gods

which creates the whole world order. And then humans are part of that. But what happens is that order is now in chaos and the chaos is represented by the saltwater. Yeah, the ocean. Like the ocean taking the water. Which makes sense if you live in the Mesopotamian plains, you're used to floods, and you know the danger of the ocean coming and just taking over.

That's right, you know the danger of the flood waters of the rivers, and you observe at the coast, there's just chaos waters beating on the beach every moment of every day. And in there, ancient psyches, they know of times when tsunamis have come and just take it over things. And so the chaos waters of the saltwater tiamont, there's a story of her and this just horrid of bad guys, demigod kind of terrible creatures of the night. Coming to just battle and just take over, it's just this image of just the apocalypse. And you get this hero named Marduk, who battles Tiamat.

He comes in, singles her out, nets her up. She's the chaos waters, but then she's also depicted as a dragon for him. Yeah, that's right. And in their imagination, there's sea dragons that live in the chaos waters. And this one gets netted up, is mad, is like gonna through the net, rip open Marduk

with like swallow him whole, but he's ready for it and he's summing the wind gods or the wind and he's riding a chair yet. Storm chair yet, yeah, Storm class. Because he's awesome. I don't know how to hold on. And then as she opens her mouth to eat him, the wind gusts in, exposes her like belly in her heart,

opens her throat, passageway through Marduks, shoots an arrow, right into her gut, splits her open, destroys the chaos. And then, filets the chaos open. Yeah, and filets her. And reestablishes the world order. Half of it goes up into the sky, half of it stays on the land. So now Mardu is because he won that battle

against the chaos dragon, he now is the God that matters. And he is the patron God of Babylon. He's the one that everyone with the Babylonians are like, hey, he's the reason why Babylon exists, and he's our God. Yeah, so it's a way of portraying Babylon and its God as the hero, as the establishment of order and the upholder of creation itself,

as long as you pay your taxes. So we got two ancient civilizations who were both contemporaries to Israel. In fact, they both show up in Israel's scriptures. Yeah, these relights spent a few generations in slave and exiled in Egypt. And their oldest ancestral origins, Abraham's family traces its roots to ancient Mesopotamian Babylon and

that's where the Israelites ended up exiled. So these civilizations who are their neighbors and At times captors have these dominant stories of how the world came to be and why it came to be the way it is. That's right. So with those in mind, let's then look at how the Israelites told their story or the story of creation. And what we'll find is the Israelites, picture of the cosmos, their cosmology,

has certain things in common, common assumptions, but also important differences that are gonna stick stick out in greater contrast and two. Start here. It's the prologue to the seven days. So Genesis one is structured with kind of like a prologue statement. It sets up what's about to happen and why. Then you get the sequence of six days that are set into parallel columns. We'll talk about that later. And then the cap with the seventh day, that brings conclusion to what the prologue did.

Genesis 1 is a seven-day structure. So you got the prologue, you got the seven days. And then there's a little outro, and that was how God created them. It's like a level log. So here's the opening four lines and how they proceed. It's not poetry, but it is poetic. How the first four lines and how they proceed. It's not poetry, but it is poetic, how the first four lines work. It's not poetry, but it's poetic. Well, it's not poetry.

It doesn't bear the features of human poetry. I mean, people poetry got it, okay. But they are four poetic lines in the four pros lines that have a lot of electricity in between them, all at you, performer reading. And these are very familiar lines. In the beginning, oh, this is, what translation is this? Well, this is my translation.

There's two ways you can translate the first sentence of the Bible. Already we're off to it. Say the one you know. In the beginning, God created the heavens in the earth. Okay. Another way it could be translated is. In the beginning of God's creating the skies in the land. But the difference is that of. What's that of? In the beginning of God's creating the skies in the land, now the land was wild in waste.

Okay. In the beginning God created the skies in the land. That's how I'm familiar with it or heavens and earth. In the beginning of God's creating the skies in the land. Okay. We'll talk about later. It feels weird. It's not good English.

It's not good English. It's great Hebrew. In the beginning of God's creating the skies in the land, and the land was wild and waste, and darkness was on the face of the deep abyss, and the ruck of God was hovering on the face of the waters. Yes. Okay, so the opening line of the Bible has really odd grammar and what grammar nerds called syntax. There's two options. One is it's a complete sentence, which is what our

traditional translations do. And the beginning, God created, heavens in the earth, the sky is the planet, period. And if this first time you've been listening to the skies in land, heaven and earth, yes, same idea. The heavens, me, heavens are the skies. Period. And if this first time you've been listening to the skies in land, heaven and earth, same idea. The heavens mean the sky's the sky's and the earth doesn't mean globe, it means the land. So you opt for skies and land because that's. I think it gets us into the world picture a little more. So either the first sense of the Bible is a complete sentence.

In which case you have to say, okay, so the sentences that follow, what's their relationship to that opening line? Because if sky is in the land means everything, then the whole universe has created everything under me and everything over me. Oh, it's done. Oh, I see. It's done. What's the rest of the chapter about? I always read it as a summary statement. Yeah, that's right. So people who translate it, think it should be translated as complete sentence, take it as a heading or a summary. Now, oh, okay, well, how did that happen? Now, let's get into it. Now, let's get into it. What you have supporting that is in Hebrew narrative,

there's a verb type that indicates that this next line is the sequentially next thing that happened. In other words, they have a way of building into their verb forms, that this verb is the next thing that happened after the previous verb. We don't have that in English. Nope, there's a unique way in Hebrew. Also in Hebrew, they have a way to mark a sentence as outside the narrative sequence,

and as giving you side information, or sometimes pausing the narrative and giving you background information, or flash backing sometimes, They have a way to mark this. So every line of verse two is outside of the narrative sequence after verse one. The standard way to start a Hebrew narrative sentence is the word and and then the verb, a certain form of the verb. A Hebrew sentence is... They start with the verb first and the verb and then the subject of the verb. So it'd be, and was the land wasting wild? No, because every line in verse two is different.

If you want to mark a line in Hebrew as standing outside the narrative sequence, you do and then a noun and then the verb. So in English word order really matters. We always have to have the noun in front of the verb, but else you sound like Yoda. Yeah. Wild was the land. Whereas we would say the land was wild.

We put the noun in front of the verb. In Hebrew, you can do both. And what order you put it in is really important. It's a marker. It's a marker for the sequence of events. Correct. In other words, everything in verse two is actually transporting you back

into the time of verse 1. So, let me try paraphrase. paraphrase would be, in the beginning God created the skies and the land. Now, the land, when God created it, let me back up and tell you about the state of the land before God created it. In other words, verse 2 is backing you up into the time of verse 1, and now unpacking the state of the land. God created the skies in the land. Oh, how did he do that?

Let me tell you, here's what the land was like. It was wild and waste. But that's how I have been reading it. In the beginning, God created the skies in the land. What was the pre-created state of things? What did God begin with? How did we get there? What did God start with?

The land. Let me tell you, the land was wild and waste. That's did God begin with? How did we get there? What did God start with? The land. Let me tell you. The land was wild and waste. That's what God started with. Wild and waste and darkness was on the face of the deep of this. That's how things got started. So let's just stop right there. So Genesis 1, 1 and 2 assumes that the pre-creation state is a dark, watery wasteland.

Which is very similar. That's how every other ancient near- Eastern cosmology conceives of the pre-creation state. Yeah, specifically here, Egypt and Babylon. And that doesn't refer to it as a wasteland or dark in the one we read, which just was vast waters

that represented the pre-creation state. So this is an example where the biblical authors share in common an assumption about the non-existence. They all describe the pre-creation nothingness as just waters. Here, dark abysmal, deep waters. But waters aren't nothing.

Not in our cosmology. Yeah. In our cosmology waters. Waters are hydrogen and oxygen. Correct. That's right. Combined. Yeah. The existence of H2O is contingent on other things that preceded it. Yeah. Like stars.

By millions and billions of years. Yeah. But that's how we see the world. But that's how we see it. And we should not impose that upon their cosmology. By saying the waters represent nothing, I'm actually restating their cosmology in my terms. No, okay. How would you their cosmology in my terms. How would you restate it in their terms?

I think the pre-creation state. Creation is about God bringing order. That's the important distinction we talked about last time too. Creation isn't about making something exist when it didn't exist. Correct. That's our modern concept of what it means for something to exist. To be created. But for them, creation

is taking something that has no meaning or order and giving it meaning and order. So the pre-created state of everything for them was just water. Watery disordered water. That's the state of nothingness. And I think if we were to ask them, well, what preceded that? I don't think they'd have a category for it. All the ancient cosmologies begin with the watery nothingness. That is their concept of nothingness. I think in their worldview,

this is creation out of nothing. Their worldview in our language. Yes, that's great. If we put their worldview into our language, it's creation out of nothing. It is that concept, but their concept of nothing was totally different than outer because of their world picture. In the beginning God created this guy's in the land.

Summary. How's that gonna happen? How to go down? Okay, the land was wild in the west. There's land. Yep, and then what it's called in the next two lines is the waters of the Deepa Byss and the face of the waters. First it's land, then it's referred to as a deep abyss. I've been picturing waters on land. So like there's land, but it's in a deep abyss. It's like the ocean floor. Yes, not that they even knew about the ocean floor down there. No?

No, if anything, the waters are what's under the land. This is the thing that's going to become land, because when the dry land emerges from the waters, it's still uncomfortable. So it's referring to land because it's going to become land. It's going to become land. That's going to become land. Not because it is land. That's right. Because on day three, God's going to say, let the waters be gathered and let the Yabashah,

the dry land appear. Let me try this way. In the beginning, God created the disguise in the land. Okay, how that happened. All right. Well, what we're going to see become land at this point, began as. It's wild and waste. Wild and waste, namely.

Darkness over an abyss and its waters. And the Spirit of God, the Rua of God, is hovering over it. Okay. You got it. So, the relationship between the first line and the second line, what they have in common is the word land. In the beginning God created the skies and the land. Now the land, let me tell you about how...

Tax began with the land. That isn't technically land yet, but it will be. Yeah. It began in the pre-creation state is wild and waste, which means uninhabited or sorry, disordered, wild and uninhabited. And each of those in turn is going to get taken up in the sequence of the days. Days one through three is going to dress the wild, ordering it, separating skies and land and dry land from the waters.

Days four through six are gonna inhabit it with creatures. And then in Hebrew, wild and waste has a cool. It rhymes, yes. Tohuvavohu. So the land was Tohuvavohu. Unordered and uninhabitable. Doesn't have the same zing. No.

Uninhabited. Oh no. I like wild and waste. That's ever at Fox. That's his translation. Yeah, it keeps the same kind of zing. No, uninhabited. Oh no. I like wild and waste. That's ever at Fox. That's his translation. Yeah, it keeps the same kind of zing. Wild and waste. Yeah, you get the alliteration. So that line, and the land was wild and waste, is also has some parallelism with the following line. And the land was wild and waste, and I'm now comparing the two. There's four lines. We just compared the first two. Now I'm gonna compare the second and the third line

The land was wild and waste and darkness on the face of the abysmal waters. Oh, what is the land that's wild and waste? Bysmal waters. It's dark abysmal water. Yeah, there's abysmal mean abysmal. It means the deep deep waters Okay, the Hebrew word for abysmal waters is the word to hum, to hum. And I'm pointing at the name Tiamat on the board behind me, which is the chaos waters. Chaos waters. God dragon that needs to be defeated. Semitic scholars, the Semitic languages debate this, but there has been a long standing and I think defensible position that the origins of the word abyss in Hebrew to home comes from Tima is related to the Akkadian noun for Babylonian

Tamatu to home Tamatu. It's the same sequence of Consumance. So I'm not saying that the abyss is Tiamat for Genesis 1. What I'm saying is they're shared languages in terms of cognate and the word for chaos waters in both. Oh, lo and behold. Well, and if you were a Babylonian reading their creation story, you'd be like, oh, so God was hovering over what we think of as the chaos. Yeah, what the Babylonians call a goddess, Tiamat. Here is just the pre-ordered state of the land. Yep, that's right, the deep waters. And once the land emerges on top, the Tahome is the waters under the land.

Mm-hmm. Also, just in terms of Hebrew word play, because authors are constantly pinging words off of each other. The word Tahum, the first three letters there, that's the word for a bis, begins with the same three letters as Tohu, Wild, Disordered. So when you're reading in Hebrew and these two consecutive lines, the Wildness of the land is linked with the waters of the abyss in the next line. It's almost like the land was wild in a abyss, and the darkness is over the face of the

earth. Yeah, so right now the picture's negative. It's visible. In Egyptian cosmology, the waters at the beginning are neutral and atum just emerges out of them. In Babylonian cosmology, the waters begin as neutral, but then they become diabolical in Tiamat and her assault on the land. And so here, I do think the biblical authors phrasing things to bring up that negative portrait. He's winking at his Babylonian neighbors here

with describing the land with a word that rhymes with Tiamat. To home. So a couple of other things that God's going to do is speak to the to home, the abyss waters that are dark and roiling, and they pose no threat to God. Like Marduk really has to face down Tiamat. It's an epic battle. Yeah, she might swallow them. No such resistance from toom here in Genesis 1. However, what's interesting is the Tahom

remains a dangerous threat throughout the biblical story. So I've just charted here just a few examples, but the Tahom keeps reappearing throughout the biblical story. The word occurs 36 times in the Hebrew Bible. The next time it occurs is in the flood story. It's where the flood comes from. Yeah, so in Genesis chapter 7, verse 11 11 in the 600th year of Noah's life, the fountains of the Tahome burst open and the windows

of the skies were opened. So here in Genesis 1 God is going to put a cap on the Tahome with the land and he's going to seal off the waters above. And then the flood story is the de-creation of those boundary lines where the skies end to home break out again. So Tahome's a and then the flood story is the de-creation of those boundary lines, where the sky is in to home break out again. So to home's a threat in the flood story, but it's a threat that God has allowed. Next, it is 15, when God overcomes the armies of Pharaoh. It's the to home that covers over them as they sink to the depths like a stone. I thought it was a river.

What? The Red Sea? It's almost as if it's a river. What? The Red Sea? His opposite. It was a river. Oh, maybe because it's the Jordan River. Oh, you're saying it of the Jordan River narrative. Yes. So here, it's in the Red Sea, and it's the Tahome. The God allows to cover over.

And it's a poetic depiction. Look at Psalm 71. It's interesting. The poet addresses God and says, you who have shown me many troubles and distresses, you will revive me again and bring me up from the to-home of the land. Because under the land is the to-home. Under the land is the grave. And it's referred to as the to-home.

Yeah. So in the biblical cosmology, we'll get into this in another video. Underneath the land is the underworld, it's the grave, it's the pit, and it's the realm of to-home. Of the chaos. There's just more ocean in there. Yeah, and it's the realm of Tahom. Of the chaos waters. There's just more ocean in there. Yeah, because it's the ocean under the waters. And why do you think there's ocean under the waters? Because I can understand why they think

there's fresh water under the... Oh, sorry, not ocean. Because Tahom is the saltwater creature. Teammout is saltwater. Yeah, here Tahom is just the waters underneath. Well, you know there's waters under there because they pop up down then in springs and river heads. Right. So the point here is that to home will become a way a biblical poet can speak about death.

Think in opening sentences, then of Genesis, you have darkness, disorder, the abyss of the deep, which will become synonym for the underworld and death itself. And these are the threats to creation order. And God's all he's going gonna do is speak to them, to overpower them. And we've talked about this before. It's very intuitive to think of the deep, as a chaotic threat, because there's a lot of monsters in there, and storms, and it's not your place. It's not. You can't live. Place for humans. You're in there, yeah, you're gonna die. And we talked about how in Revelation where they talk about it. There is no mercy. There's, you're gonna die. And we talked about how in Revelation,

where they talk about it. There is no mercy. There is no more sea. Correct. And this is why. Because it represents death and disorder. And disorder. Yeah.

Oh yeah, okay, here's an interesting summary then. So my point of going through these examples is that the to-home, the depths are gonna play an important role in the symbolic geography of the biblical story. The deeps become associated with all sorts of negative chaos, disordered things. And so it's this first usage in the opening sentences of the Bible that establishes that basic picture.

The Tahome is something that is opposed to the good order that God wants for his world. The uncreated state. The uncreated state. That's right. God wants for his world. The uncreated state. The uncreated state, the threat. So the poet of Psalm 71 can talk about a close brush with death as an encounter with Tahom, or the flood story, or overcoming Pharaoh, is God unleashing the Tahom on his enemies. That's the basic idea. Das ist ein Gatier. 1 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 Let's compare lines three and four.

We're still in verse two. We're now we're going to look at, and darkness was over the face of the Tahom. Darkness was over the face of the Tahom, but the next line is matched. And the spirit of God was hovering on the face of the home. Darkness was over the face of the Tahom, but the next line is matched, and the spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters. So those two lines are constructed in almost precise parallelism. You have darkness on the face of Tahom, spirit of God on the face of the waters. So waters in the Tahom are two ways of referring to the same reality, but waters is neutral. In fact, waters are good.

Water's bring life. So these two lions are perceiving the waters from two different points of view. When darkness is over the earth, those waters are to home, the chaotic, threatening, disordering waters. But when God's spirit is in the mix, the power of God's invisible presence,

those same waters become water. Ready to get ordered. And water is good. Water gives you life. Because the word for water, they're different than the word to home. Correct. The word waters is the word hamaiam. So if we're depicting this visually, you're right.

It's not a globe. We're just looking at, like the Egyptians and the Babylonians, the pre-creation state of the waters. From one perspective, it's darkness, and when the powers of darkness are over the waters, it's the abyss of uncreation and disorder. But when the Spirit of God is over those same waters, then you call the waters by a different Hebrew word,

Hamaiam, and Hamaiam bring life. They bring life and growth and vitalization to thirsty people. So the visual picture has not changed. Just what's hovering. It's two perspectives. Powers of darkness versus the spirit of God. The abyss versus the waters of life.

That's cool. Yeah, it's totally cool. So this is significant because the waters are gonna play a key role in the next creation story in Genesis 2, about the waters coming up out of the Eden mountain that are gonna go out from Eden and then water the rest of the world. And the waters come up as a fountain to create the garden, right? Correct, yeah that's right. So here's two scholars combating on the waters here in Genesis 1. First is again a Michael Morales. He says water is commonly conceived

in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature as a symbol of the oppositional forces of life, an ambiguous symbol of life and death. Water is symbolic of death when it's uncontrolled, whether you have too much in a flood or too little is in a drought. But it's also a symbol of life when it's controlled, it provides growth and fertility. So the waters are a perfect symbol of life or death, of order and of disorder. This summarizes the movement from Genesis 1, 2, where the waters are dark and abysmal,

to the waters of Eden and chapter 2, which describes the river coming up out of the land. The land sits on top of the waters. Yeah, which we haven't got to yet. We haven't got to yet, And then the waters now control go mountain water, Eden. So from Genesis 1, the chaotic waters of the dark abyss to Genesis 2, the fruit-defying

rivers of Eden means creating fruit. That's one of those fancy words you kind of know what it means immediately, but it's still really hard to find. Fruit-defying. So there's the important statement. In the Hebrew Bible, this decisive control of the waters is the prerogative of God, who sovereign over death and life.

In this sense, the deep abyss of Genesis 1 signifies the negative threatening aspect of the waters. Well, the spirit of God hovering over the waters represents the positive aspect of water under God's control. So again, think back in Egyptian storytelling, the waters are a neutral pre-creation reality. Yeah. They actually are responsible for creating everything. They're the immaterial gods. The thing out of themselves. But Atum himself, the God that is their creator, emerges out of the waters.

Oh, that's the Egyptian one. In the Egyptian. The waters are primary. In Babylonian cosmology, you have the waters out of which come the old gods who establish the world. And then the waters are so powerful, they threaten the world. The Teamat comes out and threatens everybody.

So in Genesis 1, the beginning, out of the gate, you have all these lines about God and the waters. The pre-creation state is waters. The waters are abysmal and dark, negative, but then God's first appearance is he's in the midst of the waters by a spirit, and then all he has to do is start talking, and the waters do exactly what he wants them to. It's precisely an opposition to these other cosmologies,

or in dialogue with them that Genesis 1 starts with all the stuff about the waters. I mean, does that ever occur to you? Why does Genesis 1 start with all the stuff about the waters? What's it about? Why are we talking about things this way? It's really easy to skip over it and not even ask why the waters because there's no category for it.

So one of the things to notice is that in their neighborhood, if you can tell you're crazy, the water is before the God. The God comes out of the water. Out of the waters. In both Egyptian and Babylonian cosmologies, correct. And in this one, there's God. God is primary. He exists. He exists. And the water exists. Right, because the water is their concept of nothingness. Of pre-ordered creation. Pre-creation, nothingness. And the thing that's going to come and bring order

doesn't come from the waters. It's already separate. Yeah, correct. The waters. In other words, the dark waters of the abyss in this cosmology aren't a thing. They're no thing. Thingness is that which God orders.

He keeps saying that, but it's so hard for me. It is hard. The dark waters is the absence of order. I get that. There's the absence of order. And where there is disorder, there is nothing. Oh, there is disorder, there's nothing. There's no thing within this cosmology.

Well, not from our cosmology. Where there's disorder, there's no life, there's no meaning, and if that's what you mean by nothing, no life and no meaning, and if that's what they mean, and we're saying that's nothing, wouldn't it be better for us to just say no life and no order instead of nothing? So what's underneath this, this is what John Walton,

I think, hebrewbiboskov would say, is it's the philosophical word. We're dealing with this conflict of ontologies. So your ontology is what you think constitutes existence. What does it mean for something to have existence? To be. And in our modern cosmology, to be means to materially exist. And in these cosmologies, to exist is to exist within a cosmological order.

Yeah. Meaning. So, in that sense, I think if we could sit down with like these biblical authors and help them see our cosmology, I think they would want us to equate the dark waters of to home with our modern concept of nothingness. You think so? Yeah, I think they would say the thing that we mean by the dark waters is what you mean by nothingness. What do we mean by nothingness? Well, that's a great question. I don't even know if I understand the concept of nothing.

I mean, I think we intuitively think we do, but you break it down and what does that mean? It just, it means the absence of a thing. Because the absence of something is not something. Yeah, that's right. Nothing is not a thing. That's right. Anything in the universe, even the empty vacuum of space, is a reality that exists within space.

That's the closest thing we have to nothing is that. The closest thing we have to nothing, that is the vacuum of space. But even that is the thing, because it exists within the universe, which is itself a thing. If you took out everything else in the universe, all other matter, and you just had the empty vacuum of space, it's still a thing. Well, the empty vacuum of space is just what's left over after the big bang, things have expanded so far.

It's the space between things. It's the space between things, which is itself a thing. Because it's space. Part of the space time continuum, which is a thing. I see. Right? Because if you put something there, in that space, it would be subject to gravity or additional forces. Okay. So even there, it's a thing because it's connected to space continuum.

Yeah. Yeah. Our closest contact with nothingness would be to reach the edge of the expanding universe, right? And to see what the universe is pushing out into. Oh, yeah. We should just go do that. Yeah, yeah, don't.

Here, glipsin' in nothing. You know that NASA probe January 2019 just passed, it's like four billion miles away, and it just passed ultimate douleur, whatever, that. Oh, I haven't been paying attention in the last few minutes. Yeah, it's an ice object floating out four billion miles away. It just passed it. Is it orbiting our sun? That's an ice object?

Ah. It's inside the orbit of our Sun. Oh, good question. It's past Pluto. Pluto orbits our Sun. Pluto orbits our Sun. I'm not sure. It's cool. It's two pieces of ice that have merged together.

Two spheres that have merged. What's this one called, satellite? I forget the satellite name, but it passed Ultima... New Horizons. New Horizons, is the name of the probe. And yeah, here's the thing. Oh, it's sent back a photo? Yeah, it took a photo of it as it passed it at 36,000 miles an hour. Oh my God.

They described it as two bullets passing each other in space. Is it speeding up as it goes? Oh, I don't know the answer. But it's some kind of frozen ice rock ball. Ultima Thule. Yeah. We've got to name that. I think each of those is one of the name of the spheres.

One is Ultima, the other one is Tulay, I think. Tulay? Tulay? Tulay? Yeah. We're getting there. We'll get to the edge of space eventually then. Yeah, totally.

Edge of space time. All to say, I think this is important. To me, some reason it seems important to not use the word nothing because that then presupposes our paradigm. And the whole point is we're trying not to do that. And the whole point is we're trying not to do that. Okay, all right, I'm with you. Let's stop using the word nothing.

Disorder, absence of life. What the waters present is the impossibility of meaningful human life and love and community existing. That's what the waters are in the way of. Well, yeah, I mean, where are humans going to live if all you got is waters? Right. There's no place. And I think also this isn't an idea of waters where there's like some cool like rain life underneath

necessarily. It's just like... No, the dark abyss is like... It's nothing. I said it! I can't get away from it. Yeah, that's right. Oh man. Yeah.

But where the Spirit of God is, the abyss becomes... It says the transform. God's Spirit transforms it into waters. And waters, wow, God can deal with that. But actually hasn't changed. It's just what's changed is... Whether or not God's involved. God was not involved. Okay, so that deal with that. But actually hasn't changed. It's just what's changed is. Whether or not God's involved. God was not involved.

Okay, so that's so interesting. So you've got this state, the image that the Biblical authors have is water. But let's take that away and just think of just pure chaos, where there's no life and there's no order. And what's the best thing we have for that? It's a good question. I'm not sure it exists in our universe.

But I think like a black hole gives you the same kind of visceral like what goes in will not come out. There's no order. Yes. We just don't know. It's just sucks in life. It sucks in everything. Nothing gets away.

I mean, it's the scariest thing I could think of. Yeah. It's so funny I was talking about black holes with Paxton who's seven and he looks at me and goes, is there any black holes close to us? I'm like, no, don't worry. No, we're near us, he's like, okay, good. I'm like, good.

Yeah, totally, that's great. But so you're picturing this thing that's just chaos, lifeless, the absence of life and order. That's one possibility. That is at state, that's its natural state. Then you add to it, dots, presence. And now all of a sudden, that thing is full of potential. Correct. A state of disorder and unproductivity can, with the mind of this beautiful being, become full of potential. The presence of that being. Yeah. The absence of potential, but with

this being, the one who can ring life out of death and make things that are out of what is not, that's the portrait. And you think that's what I should be sensing when I read those lines. That's what the dark chaotic waters. Darkness was on the face of the Adipa Bess. Yeah, whoa, nothingness. Sorry, sorry. Disorder.

Disorder and unproductivity and chaos. Meaninglessness. Meaninglessness. Meaninglessness. But then the spirit of God is now over the face of the... Not waters. Waters. Oh, now the abyss is waters. God has power over the abyss to transform it into something that can. Has all this potential for life.

Dude, these are the opening lines of Genesis. What's the rest of the book going to be about? Stupid humans making horrible decisions. The need God's presence. That reduce people, relationships, and communities into states of death, disorder, and violence. And in every iteration of characters in the book of Genesis, you see God taking their stupid decisions

and doing judo, redirecting it and bringing the waters, the life-giving, something out of the chaos. The whole point is, a natural state is to be unproductive and disordered. Yeah. And he's in the beginning state. And the God orders it. Yeah, God orders it. And the humans keep disordering it.

And the God reorders it. That's right. And it just keeps going in these cycles. And so, all of a sudden, every state of order and beauty is a sheer act of the generosity and grace of the creator. It all comes out of these first two lines in here. There's a universe, literally a universe, in these opening lines. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

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1 tbc 1 tbc You know, to get to that insight, you don't have to spend a lot of time in the Egyptian and Babylonian. They don't have to. It just adds a little more 3D. But we spent like an hour and a half going through. We've been doing this all day. This is quote from George Landis, another scholar who's done a lot of work in this comparative cosmology stuff with the Bible. He has a question, is Genesis 1, 2 describing the waters as dark and to home the abyss? Is Genesis 1, 2 intentionally alluding to the motif of God's conflict with the rebellious

waters? Or is the idea simply of God's control and authority over the waters for the purpose of utilizing them in creation? In other words, am I supposed to see God in conflict with Abyss? Is the Abyss an opposing force? Or is that just his canvas? Exactly. Since we can perceive no other clues to suggest the writer may have had in mind the more violent concept, it's best to see that God's moving about the waters, moving above the waters in power to direct an order. So it's not a battle, it's his canvas.

Disorder is God's canvas, it's a canvas. It's God's canvas. For Marduk, disorder is a threat that he has to deal with. For Yahweh Elohim, it's just his neutral canvas. He can make the abyss work for him. So does he. And that is like the ultimate kind of power. Yes, that's right.

So to be able to go to something that is in complete disorder and turn it into potential. Yeah, so that's what he goes on to say. In contrast to the Babylonian conception where TiamAT has to be slain and annihilated before the cosmos is created, the biblical picture doesn't portray the destruction of the waters or the abyss. Rather, they're control and ordering by Yahweh within the created cosmos. Then he notes, and he says, also has a similar connection to Egyptian creation traditions, except in Egypt, the God emerges out of others.

So the portrait is that God can make the unproductive state of disorder work into his purpose to bring about ultimate order. It's not a threat to him. If you think about it, however, these opening lines are the only thing that create plot conflict in Genesis 1. In other words, there's no challenges or tensions within the chapter.

Yeah, and then you just watch God doing his thing. It's like watching Bob Ross paint. Yeah, there's no conflict. Yeah, I thought yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha be here in its ordered state. That's the plot conflict is the potentiality of non-existence. Yeah, the plot conflict is if a creative, powerful being didn't do anything, we wouldn't be here. All you have is this order. This order. Which in their cosmologies, the chaotic, dark waters. But Yahweh Elohim doesn't emerge from those waters there, his canvas. So,weh Elohim doesn't emerge from those waters. They are his canvas.

And he sure doesn't have to fight them. So the phrase in the beginning, how do you read that? The beginning of what? Yes. Jean-Selhamer has done the important work here, but he sheath. In Hebrew, there is a word for a more specific point of time that begins a sequence, the word techila.

Re-sheet refers to an unspecified period of time that begins a sequence, it's the word techila, Rashid refers to an unspecified period of time. It can be used to refer to long periods of time. Job can refer to the whole period of his life before he is suffering as his Rashid. Just a previous period of time. Yep, the previous period of time before the time that is the main focus. That's the Rashid.

When it refers to time. It's most regular usage is referred to unspecified periods of time. So in an unspecified period of time before what we know as now and how things exist now, God created. And there, when we think of the word created, we think of bringing something out of nothing

into material existence. But in the ancient mind, creation was an act of bringing order out of disorder. So in an unspecified time, previous to now, God brought order to everything, blow us, and everything above us, the land and the sky. How did that come to happen? Yeah, what was the state? What was the canvas with which God began? Tohuvava, wild and waste, dark abysmal waters.

But for Yahweh that wild and waste, dark abysmal waters aren't to whom they're how I am. It's not a problem. They're waters. It's not something to fear or dread. It's a canvas for potential of life. So how did God bring that potential out of the dark waters? And God said, and here we go.

He spoke to it, and it does what it wants. It obeyed his, yeah, that's why we've used the phrase a royal artist, God's depicted as the royal artist. Because a king, all he has to do is say, hey, do this, and the thing will get done. Yeah, that's right. And the artist is the, in artist. Yeah. Yeah. So the first thing And the artist is the, in artist. Yeah.

Yeah. So the first thing that God does is to address the darkness. Darkness was the first thing that defined wild and waste. Yeah, darkness was over. Yeah, that's right. And so God Himself becomes the ultimate source of light. And He calls the light day. God becomes a source of light, what do you mean?

Oh, God says, let there be light. Let there be light. Let there be light. And what is the light day. God becomes a source of light, what do you mean? Oh, God says let there be light. Let there be light. Let there be light. And what is the light? God called the light day, a period of time. And now the darkness is already there. Yeah, it's already there. And now the darkness is contained within an ordered system

that he's determining by providing light. So the darkness, he called night. And there was evening and morning. So all of, so the darkness he called night, and there was evening and morning. So all of a sudden, the darkness isn't a chaotic force. It's just a period of time that gets it's, say, so you've got the water, you've got darkness hovering over, the perpetual darkness. Spirit of God comes over to that,

and then he contains the darkness to one period of time, night, and the rest of it now has light. And what you're saying is, what is that light? The only other thing in the equation is the presence of God himself. So I'm supposed to as a reader be thinking that the light is God himself.

I think so. It's sure not the sun. It's not the sun because the sun gets created in day four. Yeah, that's right. The sun becomes an image of God's light. And before John, the visionary in the book of Revelation is tracking with all this. Actually, so is Isaiah.

Isaiah depicts the new creations. He says, God himself will shine seven times brighter than the son ever did. In the new creation. And then John, the visionary picks up that line. So we're classes. Totally. John the visionary is just like, yeah, we don't need the son.

Yeah, we have to create her. He's really great. And even just within, it means that darkness will serve God's purpose within an ordered sequence. So darkness is contained and now you serve my purpose, which is to proceed the time when I bring light. That's the whole story of the Bible even right there in day one.

A period of darkness, the God allows as the vehicle through which he brings about the light, right? I mean, why does John 1 begin the light in the beginning? What's the word? The word is with God, and the word was God. He was the light. He was the light of men. Yeah, and the light comes into the darkness.

Yeah, that's right. And the darkness can't overcome it. So darkness and or understand it. Yeah, that's right. And then you go, oh, so God's in control of the sequence of darkness and light. I mean, even when there's sequence times of darkness, God's not lost control of the thing. When he says, let there be light. He's not saying, let there be me now. No. In a way, he's just saying, let darkness now be contained to just the night.

Yeah, and it fits within order and a sequence of time. Let there be order to time. Yep, time. Yeah, an order of darkness and night and gods, the one who chose. Because everything else when he says let there be, he's providing something other than himself, right? Let there be a separation between the waters, let there be vegetable or whatever, plants and stuff and the sun and the moon stars. This one would let there be light would be the only time where it's not actually anything he's putting into place.

Correct. He's not making photons. There isn't a thing being made here. It's rather God's let there be light. And then he establishes that darkness will only get the time allotted for it in sequence of day and night. And day and night are not things either. They're periods of time. They're meaningful for humans.

It's a powerful theological statement about God's will for creation, that in its natural state, apart from his presence, exist in disorder and darkness. 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5, Oh, this is interesting. God saw on day one after the light and darkness. He pronounces it good. Day two. Let the waters be separated from the waters from the rakia, from the dome. And God does not call anything good on day two. Oh, he doesn't. The day three let the waters recede to their place,

let the dry land emerge. God saw that that was good. And day four gets like two goods, right? No, day three gets two goods. Day three gets two goods, because then the vegetation comes. That's also good. Totally.

Yeah. Sayon Alhamdulillah, John Sayon Alhamdulillah, the first one who pointed this out to me. And he thinks that it's because day one was a net gain for humanity on the gain for humanity. On the way to humanity. Light.

Yeah. It's good. Order time. Day two, waters from the waters. Well, that... Yeah, that's the problem. We need that, but... Because the flood came from those two areas.

Yeah. There's no net gain for humans on that day, as such, because what humans need in the water is land and food on the land. And so you get double good on day three to make up for the no good on day two. And there's seven goods in the story, right? There's seven goods in the story. Yeah. So the water separated from the waters.

Again, this is where Babylonian is looking for this lane teemat. You play the dragon and the dragon is the waters. So the same idea. Same idea, but God's not fighting anybody. All he does is speak and the waters do what he says. It's a single horizon, the chaotic waters, and then God separates it. Some waters go above the sky down.

That's why it's blue. That's why waters come down from it. That's why it's blue, because it's water. And then there's gonna be the waters down below, and that's day two, and then day three, the dry mound emerges like, ought to. Wait, what does he create this skydome? Day two. Let there be the waters down below, and that's day two, and then day three, the dry mound emerges like autumn. Wait, what does he create this guy dome?

Day two. Let there be the sky dome in the middle of the waters. Ah, and then it can... And then let it separate the waters above from the waters below. And so if you're new to this, because we haven't talked about ancient cosmology, the ancient view is that above us is a dome, and you use words, no globe, that's helpful. In the sense of like some big overarching dome. But then above that is waters.

It gets through sometimes, that's white rains. And how to get up there? God separated the primordial cast waters and put some up there. Right, let's day two. Water separated from waters. It wasn't necessary, but not a net gain. Yeah, I think. I say I'm a view of why there's no good on day two. And then day three is not too dissimilar from our Egyptian neighbors as

Atum the the mound arising up out of the waters. Yeah. So on day three at God's command. Yeah, God's not emerging the waters God commands to dry land to appear as the waters recede. And this is the land, Genesis 1, 1 was referring to. Yeah, we finally got to it. We finally the land, yeah, that's right. And so idea is the waters are receding from it, and in the world picture, the abysmal waters are still underneath it.

So it's envisioned as a mountain disc now floating on still underneath it. So it's envisioned as a mountain disc now floating on waters underneath it. And therefore the pillars of the earth, Yahweh founded the earth on pillars, real common image in the Psalms. So it's first thing, dry land. And then the second thing on day three is let the earth bring forth,

cause to go out, vegetation, plants, yielding seed, and fruit trees. I wonder if fruit trees are going to be an important play an important role in the story. And it's already that pun intended, they're being seeded right here on day three. So days one through three are wild. The wildness has been ordered. It's been ordered. Days one through three. And now you've got land floating on top of stilts. Yeah suspended. Suspended on top of chaos waters. And the cast waters have been split in half and some are above the sky dome. And then there's vegetation on the water. There's the water surrounding the disc and then the water's under the disc under the land. And there's vegetation on

the land and it's all good. It's no longer wild. That's right. It's still waste. It's still uninhabited. It's no longer wild. Man, see, right, every part actually days one through three, each one resonates in conversation with the Egyptian and Babylonian. The pre-creation state, the separating of the water.

The pre-creation state is similar. It's the same, but what's different is God doesn't emerge from it God exists apart from it and God doesn't see it as a threat that he has to battle. He sees it as an opportunity. Yeah, that's right So his first step to bring order is to contain the darkness within a period and then to generate the source of life into the darkness, which is his light. He contains the darkness and then he separates the chaotic waters in half, which our Babylonian

neighbors would recognize like, whoa, you got to what Marduke did. Yahweh, Elohim didn't even break a sweat. Now I know, Elohim didn't even break a sweat. Yeah, Mardu kind of like, right is sky chariot. And like, take all the wind and blow it down the throat of the Tima and then shoot an arrow, split it in half, inflate open. And that was a hard day's work. It was a day's work. Yeah, God's day's work is just to speak in it was so.

It's such a contrast. And then day three, let the waters below the heavens gather and let the dry land appear. And your Egyptians are going, wait a minute, autumn is the dry land. Our God is the dry land. And your God just speaks to the dry land and the waters. It does what he wills.

So even day three. And it's not referred to as a deity in any way, the land. The dry land, no. Or anything else. And the only thing arguably, and we haven't got to it, we're talking about is the day for binks. Correct. Yeah, that's right.

So, let's put a cap on this. Psalm 74. Here's how we know Genesis 1 is crafted and worded with an eye towards all of these other cosmologies. Multiple times in the Hebrew Bible, Psalm 74 is a classic example. You find an Israelite poet accessing and drawing upon these battle of creator versus the dragon stories. So Psalm 74 is like Martin, exactly. Yeah, yep. So Psalm 74 begins with the lament from a we saying, oh God, why have you rejected us?

Why are you angry? And he goes on to say Jerusalem's been destroyed. But us is real in excess. That's Israel. Jerusalem's been destroyed. Mount Zion in perpetual ruins. The enemy has damaged everything in the temple. They lifted up axes, smashing with hatchet and hammers,

burning your temple to the ground. Verse 9, we don't see any signs. There's no prophets to explain what's happening. We don't know how long. How long no prophets to explain what's happening. We don't know how long. How long will the adversary revile us and your enemy? Why do you withdraw your hand? Verse 12, yet darkness. Tohu-vah-vah-hu. He's screaming it.

Yeah, and then he says, but God is my king from a vault. So within biblical faith, even you look into the face of the most horrendous disorder, and you remember, you know, this is the natural state of things to go this way. The Electoral Device is where it bends up. Yeah, it shouldn't be surprised. And this poses no ultimate threat to God's royal creative power. He works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth, and then here's the line. You divided the sea by your power.

You're like, oh yeah, yeah, it's Genesis 1, right? The waters in the water? And then you split open the sea. Split. Yeah, you broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. Yeah, I don't remember that in Genesis 1. Yeah, you crushed the heads of Leviathan, which is a serpent reptile figure.

Which is in Genesis 1. Yeah, Genesis 1 has a C monster. He's made his entire- He's one of the water swimmers. Yeah. But there's no talk of God crushing him. No, so here within this poem, we're remembering this poet's conceiving of creation within the Babylonian type of terms.

What else is it? It's an Israelite biblical poet drawing on the Babylonian Marduk combat. But But putting Yahweh in the place. But Yahweh is in the role of Marduk. And then look, you broke open springs and torrents, you dried up ever flowing streams, yours is the day, yours also is the night. Seems like he's going back and forth between the Hebrew one and the Babylonian one. Yeah, and he's making the Babylonian cosmology work for his Yahweh etiology. So he's putting Yahweh in the place of Marduk, and he's making the Babylonian cosmology work for his Yahweh theology. So he's putting Yahweh in the place of Marduke, but then he's also saying, listen, but Marduke did overcome Tiamat.

He has more powerful than Tiamat, and so he's saying, listen, even yours is the day, but yours is the night. That's very similar to Genesis 1, where the night is contained now within Yahweh's purpose. So he's remembering that creation was like a battle. But we would just got done saying creation is not like a battle. Not according to Genesis 1. So why is he referring to it as a battle? Yeah. These can both be contained within the same Bible, and that's fine. With the framers of the whole Hebrew Bible. They're both perspectives that are valuable, apparently. But so the psalmist here is recognizing in the Babylonian mythology, our Christian story,

that Marduk had to slay the dragon, and that was a battle, and then split open the dragon, which is similar to splitting open the sea. And he's saying, you know, God's the one who ultimately really did that. But in Genesis 1, the way you did that wasn't a battle. It was artistry. Yeah. Actually, you know what? Whatever I said a few minutes ago, I think I want a nuance. Okay. This is just occurring to be right now. It's very helpful. I think even here in Psalm 74, we're getting the core claims of Genesis 1 still worked out even here. In the Marduk story, in the Babylonian cosmology,

I mean, things could really fall apart if Tiamat gets her way. I mean, she's got her horde of armies of scorpion men. Yeah. I mean, it's terrible. It's so rude. And Marduk's like, if he doesn't step in, and Genesis 1 comes along and is just like,

nope, not only are the waters not ultimately a threat to God, they're a threat to creation, in terms of nothingness, but they're not a threat to God. And he contains the darkness and puts a cap on the abyss, and it makes it serve his purpose. There's something similar here, I think. We're saying, listen, Jerusalem just got destroyed by the Babylonians.

Is this a moment like Marduk? Like, oh, you're being threatened, Yahweh. The Babylonians? Because the Babylonian God is Marduk. Yahweh is here. The Babylonian God is being threatened. Marduk looked like it is one. It was Yahweh.

And then in verse 12, the poet says, you know what? No, no, no, no, no. Genesis 1. My God is the actual king. And the sea monsters, you know what? No, no, no, no, no, no, Genesis one. My God is the actual king. And the Bsi monsters, right, that Marduk fought, you crushed them. But then he says, yours is the day, yours also is the night. Babylon's unleashing chaos here in Jerusalem must serve some purpose within your order of light and darkness. I think that's what he's saying. That's beautiful. Even this darkness is something that because you are the ultimate power in the universe,

it must serve some role in your purpose. It's not a threat to you. It's because you've allowed it this time of darkness. I think that's what he's saying. I get that. Why then does he say that Yahweh broke the head of the monster in the waters? Because he didn't. He never did that. Well, in a way, when he separated the waters from the waters. Because that's the same kind of thing that Shema was doing. Yeah, totally. I think he's saying you're Marduk and more than Marduk. I see. You're God who you think just won against our God. His decisive victory that made him the supreme God in your mind was him slaying the

sea dragon and separating it, the waters. But our God is the one that did that, but it wasn't actually a battle. It was just him saying, so breaking the head of the monster was him just saying, let the, yeah, let the water separate from the water's and he's not referring to the Seamonster in day five correct within Genesis one the concept is the waters are just waters the obey God's command And where does the sea monster that the Babylonians fear fit in the gods world in Genesis one? It's just just yeah, it's just swim around and from day five. Yeah with the other fish Yeah, it's yeah, he's creature. In Psalm 74, the sea monster is

being brought up in the Tiamat role as a face to the chaos. I see. And the poet says, no, even this isn't an ultimate threat to you. But all the same, you do have to, you can see here, Genesis 1. Genesis 1 doesn't have any sort of violence associated with God, separating the waters. But Marduk does when he does it. And so the psalmist here is saying, that Marduk breaking the Hadamonchus stuff, our God did that. Yeah. And when Genesis 1 is writing this cosmology, the way that it is,

it's actively aware of this kind of the Babylonian. Yeah. And choosing a different way to frame things to show that their God has no rivals. I love that line, the day is yours and also the night. Also the night. That's a very similar way of saying Yahweh contains the darkness in Genesis 1. He allows it, a period, and it can fit a purpose, but ultimately he's the author of light.

And gosh, so many mysteries, but so many profound images here. So there you go. There you go. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we're gonna look at the second creation story in the book of Genesis. The first narrative and the second narrative in Genesis aren't coordinated and juxtaposed in a nice linear sequence.

They're actually describing the similar type of story, but from a different angle of perspective. So Genesis 1 is giving you from chaos and disorder to order and cosmos in the 7-day time frame, and it begins with pre-creation chaos waters. Here it's just one long bay. There's no time markers in Genesis 2, and the chaos is not an ocean water, but it's a desert. People have noticed this for thousands of years.

The humans come last in Genesis 1. Humans come first in Genesis 2. If you'd like to submit a question for our upcoming question response series, we'd love to hear from you. Record yourself asking the question, keep into about 20 or 30 seconds and let us know your name, and where you're from, and you can email it to infoatbipelproject.com. And in your email, if you can transcribe your question as well, that would be really helpful for us.

Today's show was produced by Zach McKinley and Dan Gummel, our show notes by Lindsay Ponder and the theme music from the band Tense. Bible project is a nonprofit and our mission is to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. So we have all sorts of resources to that end and they're all free because of the generosity of thousands of people just like you. So thank you for being a part of this with us. Gide, my name is Meg, and I'm from a little country town in New South Wales, Australia called Canamble, but I currently reside in Sydney. I first heard about Bible project through the read scripture app

and immediately fell in love with it. I use the Bible project for my teaching and Bible studying moments through my church, and I also use the resources to encourage and expose people to the Bible through my work at Scripture Union. My favourite thing about Bible project is probably the podcast. I often find myself wanting to engage and talk back at Tim and John with whatever they're discussing, whatever series we're on, laughing and just expanding my heart and knowledge of the scriptures.

And it's a strong encouragement and uplifting part of my day. Mondays when the Bible Project podcast comes out here in Australia, so it's a good start to the week. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We're a crowd-funded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, podcasts, classes, and more at Bibleproject.com. you