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)
