Friday, August 2, 2019

The Waters of Genesis 1 Not Being Created but Preexisting Creation


In my review of Creation Made Free (ed. Thomas Jay Oord [2009]), I wrote the following:

2 Peter 3:5 reflects ancient traditions of the Near East. In the NIV, we read, “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and with water,” showing that the author subscribed to creation ex materia.

In Job 38:3-11, Job argues against creation ex nihilo and in favour of creation from matter--from sea and cloud. It uses the analogy of building--marking the dimensions, stretching a measuring line, setting footings, laying the cornerstones--and reveals an ambivalence toward the sea and a concern that the waters be controlled; concepts that are also found in texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Jewish scholar Gary Rendsburg, in his recent book, How the Bible is Written, notes that, according to Gen 1, the waters were not created; instead, they were preexistent, further supporting LDS theology and our belief in creation ex materia as opposed to ex nihilo:

As we proceed with Genesis 1, the reader notices the appearance of several refrains. For each act of creation (one per day on days one, two, four, and five; two per day on days three and six) the text begins with the phrase וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים wayyo’mer ‘elohim ‘and God said’. Next, once the desired act is accomplished, the text informs us that God saw כִּי־טוֹב ki tob ‘that it was good’ (vv. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). And then finally, we read for each day of creation ‎וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר wahi ‘ereb wayhi boqer ‘and I was evening and it was morning’, plus the appropriately numbered days of creation (vv. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31).

Except wait—the second of these refrains does not occur on day two! And so again the reader of this text must ponder a question, not a linguistic anomaly, but rather a literary curiosity. Why would the author of our text have omitted mention of the fact that God saw the creation of the רָקִיעַ raqia’ ‘firmament’ (named more simply שָׁמַיִם šamayim ‘sky, heaven’; see v. 8) as good? The answer lies in the fact that the object of God’s creative activity on day two was the water. A close reading of vv. 1-3 (especially v. 2) reveals that water was preexistent matter, in the form of the deep (Hebrew תְהוֹם tɘhom)—which is to say, water is never created in Genesis 1, but rather is the dominant presence on the earth, comprised of תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu wa-bohu ‘wild and waste’ (v. 2). This water, in turn, represents the cosmic sea or abyss, which in other ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies (most famously, the Babylonian story Enuma Elish) is symbolized by an evil deity (for example, the goddess Tiamat in said story [note that Babylonian Tiamat is cognate with to Hebrew תְהוֹם tɘhom ‘deep, abyss’, which, notwithstanding the lack of a feminine ending, is a feminine noun in Hebrew). In short, water, in the form of the salt water that cover the surface of the earth, is seen as an evil force. After all, this salt water is of no use: one cannot drink it, one’s animals will not drink it, and one cannot irrigate with it. In addition, the ocean is a potent force, which can wreck ships and destroy coastlines; most of us have witnessed the stormy sea and know its destructive power, and thus can understand why the ancients envisaged the watery mass in a negative light. (Gary A. Rendsburg, How the Bible is Written [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2019], 16-17, emphasis added)

For more on the debate about creation ex nihilo vs. ex materia, see: