According to the book of Genesis the earth was in the begging a formless void and it was created by God in this way, and that formless void is expressed in the Bible through the formula “Tohu vav bohu”. Why would God have created the earth as a formless void first instead of an organised planet ready to receive life? At first glance it doesn’t make any sense. I try to answer this question using the established solutions in the religious literature. 

What meaning can the affirmation that planet Earth was without form when it was created by God have? Was it not spherical? Was it like a pile of cosmic material thrown randomly into  space and looking like an asteroid but with the difference that it was submerged under water? Did God in the beginning create a pile of matter in the middle of water? It is what the Bible says about the initial creation of the earth. In cosmos, all planets and stars are naturally organised into spherical bodies. Before reaching a mature stage, in the solar system, planets were rotating piles of gases which cooled and solidified. Nevertheless, being in the stage of floating gases, the earth couldn’t have been submerged in liquid water because in those conditions the rotating gases which later generated the planets of the solar system, couldn’t have taken the form of spherical celestial bodies.

Was the earth a kind of strange asteroid in the middle of a primeval ocean or was it a spherical planet from the beginning of its creation by God? From the way in which the book of Genesis describes the creation of the earth, under the primeval sea, the planet couldn’t have followed the usual course to become a spherical celestial body being shapeless and submerged in water.

Why are the planets spherical? The following text explains why celestial bodies having a certain dimension become spherical:

“One of the effects of mass is that it attracts other mass. When you have millions, and even trillions of tonnes of mass, the effect of the gravity really builds up. All of the mass pulls on all the other mass, and it tries to create the most efficient shape… a sphere. For smaller objects, like asteroids, the force of gravity trying to pull the object into a sphere isn’t enough to overcome the strength of the rock keeping it in shape. But once you get above a certain mass and size, the strength of the object can’t stop the force of gravity from pulling it into a sphere. Objects larger than about 1,000 km in size are able to pull themselves into a sphere.”

[1]

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The earth couldn’t have first been a pile of matter similar to an asteroid, and from this matter became a spherical planet, because an asteroid is much smaller than a planet and asteroids don’t become planets. The quantity of matter formed by dust and gases had to be of sufficient dimension from the beginning so as to constitute the future planet. In its solid form planet Earth was never a formless void in the sense of a shapeless pile of matter as the book of Genesis says.

Why would God have created a heap of formless matter as a planet, such as the book of Genesis says that He did? Planets are big enough to determine by gravity their spherical shape. Under the action of gravity such a big quantity of matter, as was that of the earth, would have been made into a sphere even if at the beginning it was only a formless pile of gas.

If God created in the beginning a pile of gas and dust and this is the meaning of the expression “formless void” used by the book of Genesis, this gathering of matter couldn’t have evolved into a spherical planet because that compound would have been under the waters of the primeval sea, according to the Bible. A rotating pile of gas under water doesn’t make sense. Whoever says that science and religion don’t diverge about the creation of the earth is wrong, they are very far from one another. Only on the third day did the dry land appear from under the waters of the primeval sea in the book of Genesis.

“9 And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1; 9-10 NRSV)

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In the Bible the initial heap of cosmic matter was covered by the waters of the primeval sea and the book of Genesis doesn’t say when and how it became a spherical planet. How could the earth have transformed itself from a heap of matter into a spherical planet under water? The alleged phenomenon would have needed to happen before the separation of the waters and the creation of plants. If that was correct it would mean that in the first two days of creation when the earth was still under water it would have been transformed from a pile of matter in a spherical planet. This is very unlikely, it is an absurd scenario imposed by the narratives from the book of Genesis.

When someone thinks of the earth at the beginning of its existence, in the biblical perspective, he or she must not think to a sphere but to a heap of matter, regardless of how deformed, covered by water. Why would God have created all other planets and stars spherical and only created the earth formless at the beginning? On the fourth day of creation the sun, moon and stars would have been created as functional spherical celestial bodies, if not they couldn’t have given light which was the purpose of their creation. If the creation of sun, moon and stars had begun and ended in that day there wasn’t enough time for their evolution from piles of gases to solid celestial bodies. This again is a contradiction between science and the book of Genesis, the former postulating a long process in the formation of the stars and planets but the latter proposing that they were created from the beginning in the form that they are today. We can find at this point a discrepancy in the stories of creation from the Bible which say that the earth wasn’t created from the beginning as a spherical planet as it is in our time but a shapeless pile of matter unlike the sun, moon, stars and all other planets in our solar system. Why would the earth have been created as a less complete celestial body in comparison with other planets if from the beginning it was destined by God for a higher mission? It is what the Bible says but it doesn’t make sense.

When speaking about evolution one shouldn’t think only to the biological evolution which allowed the human species to emerge from less evolved biological beings, because evolution is a general concept which speaks about phenomena within the perspective of their dynamic in time. Time is of the essence for evolution. Things didn’t come to be what they are at once from a process of divine creation, but they evolved from less developed to more sophisticated beings.

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  The stars and planets followed the same rule. They didn’t come to be what they are in a so-called ready-to-go manner from one day to another but they followed many stages before being what they are at the present time. This ready-made manner of creation is contrary to the way in which the study of cosmos shows us that the universe works.

Evolution cannot be negated as a process and is visible all around us. Even an individual human being evolves in his or her lifetime from a baby to an adult and finally rolls downward toward physical decay. Stars also continue to evolve all the time from piles of gases to celestial bodies and after a long period of time they die. This evolution is real and visible, it isn’t a trick of the sciences in order to trap faithful people and the solution isn’t to be blind to it and to deny the evidence. Today, different stages of the formation of stars can be observed in the sky, starting with piles of gases on their way to becoming stars and ending with stars which have exploded, changing dramatically their form.

In another interpretation, the place occupied by the earth would have appeared to be a formless void because it would have been covered by water, and the water would have been like a universal formless void. In other words, the primeval sea would have had no boundaries and would have covered everything, and for this reason the earth also would have looked like a formless void. Everything was a formless void, a sea without a form or without a defined contour covering everything, earth, and the place for the sky.

If we want to get an image of what the Bible says about the beginning of creation, that picture is totally confused and the only point of reference is a mythological one which is contained by the alleged presence of the primeval sea at the time.

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   That primeval sea is a common element for Jewish mythology and for other mythologies of other nations in that epoch. It means that God would have created the life on Earth fighting against the authority of a mythological personage symbolised by the primeval sea, the latter being the symbol of evil in many cultures.

Tohu va bohu shouldn’t be seen as referring exclusively to the physical form but also to the function of the earth at that stage. Being formless or shapeless, the earth would have also been empty, unpopulated. There are two elements in the expression tohu va bohu, used by the book of Genesis in order to emphasise the degree of the decay in which the earth would have been at that time.

There is also the opinion that by formless it should be understood that the earth was insufficiently organised to be a suitable environment for life. This of course cannot change the clear reference to the lack of physical shape of the earth at that date of creation..[2]

This is another way of avoiding what the Bible says. The spherical form isn’t sufficient for the existence of life, consequently the two conditions mustn’t be confounded. All planets are spherical; they aren’t formless but nevertheless many are insufficiently organised to be a suitable environment for life. One condition refers to the physical form and the other to other necessary conditions for the existence of life.

The word “tohu” refers firstly and fore mostly to the physical shape and not to the deficient functions of a certain planetary environment, and recognises that the first condition for matter to be able to host more evolved life is to be organised as a spherical planet. “Bohu” would refer mainly to the functional characteristics such as emptiness or desolation.

The origins of the Jewish people are in Mesopotamia and Abraham came from Ur, a city situated on the banks of Euphrates. For this reason, one shouldn’t be amazed by the closest relations between Mesopotamian culture and Jewish culture, including their mythologies. The words “tohu” and “bohu” are not Hebrew but most likely they are Sumerian words. In the Sumerian language nouns commonly end in -u but in the Hebrew language -u is a verb ending.

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Tohu and bohu are nouns, not verbs, therefore their origin is rather Sumerian, showing the influence of that mythology on the book of Genesis.[3]

“The Gap Theory”, suggests the angels were created “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1), rather than during or after the creation week, and that Satan and his demonic followers had fell prior to Genesis 1:2. Chalmers grounds this theory in the reinterpretation of words used in Genesis 1:2, and their relationship with other passages of scripture.” In this understanding, Genesis 1:2 could, or should read: “But the earth became or “had become” without form and void.” The expression “without form and void” has been translated from the Hebrew phrase “tohu vav bohu.” The words tohu and bohu are also found in Isaiah 34; 11, but they are interpreted in the sense of confusion (tohu) and emptiness (bohu). Thus “tohu” can also mean “confused”, and “bohu” can mean “empty”. “Confused” and “without form” share in common a lack of order, in a place where there should be order. Perhaps, then, the text could be read as follows; “But the earth wasin disarray, andempty.”[4]

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Jeremiah 4:23-26 also uses the phrase “tohu va bohu”. This is the biblical text:

23 I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. 24 I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. 25 I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. 26 I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger. (Jeremiah 4; 23-26 NRSV)

What is interesting, though, is that it refers to cities, and what’s more it seems that these cities had received judgment from The Lord – “all the cities thereof were broken down (in disarray) at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger”.

In the eyes of those who spiritualise the expression “tohu va bohu”, perhaps these cities represented the homes of the angels who had fallen. The word “choshek” has been interpreted, in most translations of the Bible, as “darkness”, and when we read it we assume this is a natural darkness (i.e. before the creation of natural light), but the word “choshek” is also used in Exodus 10:21 to describe the darkness The Lord brought upon Egypt, which was so dark it could be felt. Thus, again, in this kind of spiritualised interpretation, Genesis 1:2 could be read: “Butthe earth was in disarray, and empty; and spiritual darknesswas upon the face of the demonic realm.”[5]

Allegedly, according to the Gap Theory, Satan brought in disarray a previous order of the earth, about which we know nothing. God came on the first day of creation and started to restore it. If the darkness brought by Satan was physical and not only spiritual it means that there had already been a physical light on Earth previous to that darkness, and before the creation of the light on the first day, according to the book of Genesis chapter 1.

The Gap Theory implies that before darkness was light on Earth, but the book of Genesis doesn’t say that and doesn’t allow us to infer that. In order for Satan to bring disorder a previous order had to exist, but that order necessarily entails the existence of physical light.

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Spiritually speaking, light means order and darkness means decay. At the same time, a physical light, not only a spiritual one, was needed for the existence of a previous order. Such a light would have been created by God and would have been mentioned by the Bible.

Spiritual light and material light are two very different things and they mustn’t be confounded. If physical darkness and disorder came together, nothing like that is actually said by the Bible. But what is darkness? It is the absence of light, no more and no less. Satan couldn’t have annihilated the alleged physical light which God would have created in the beginning before the first day of creation. Spiritual darkness can be generated by the absence of God but physical darkness must be related to a physical light.

In the process of biblical creation, the sun wasn’t in place until the fourth day according to the book of Genesis and a previous order, presumed by the Gap Theory, had to be realised in a physical darkness or under a provisional light. Another provisional light without sun would have been needed; one that would have been switched off by Satan, but such a hypothesis looks very improbable. Two provisional lights, one before the earth, would have been brought to chaos by Satan, and the other one from the first day of creation until the fourth day when the sun would have been created is an absurd theory. Nevertheless, a physical light created by God couldn’t have been switched off by Satan, but He didn’t create such provisional lights.

As a matter of fact, the order in the creation couldn’t have been completed before the sixth day. The creation couldn’t have been finalised at the beginning of it and the order couldn’t have been fully in place from the beginning. What order would have been brought in disarray by Satan? It would have been only a partial, incomplete order and without human beings who were created on the sixth day of creation.

The Gap Theory is in contradiction with the creation in six days. In the economy of the Bible, the state of “tohu va bohu” was God’s creation, and not Satan’s creation. Satan couldn’t have destroyed something which the Bible doesn’t allow us to presume would have existed, an order before the first day of creation.

The representatives of a spiritual interpretation of the expression “tohu va bohu” maintain that: 

“It is clear, then, that the angels were created before ‘the beginning’, and that Genesis 1 is not a history of the origins of the entire cosmos, but just of our world – the ‘physical realm.’ If Satan and his followers have rebelled against The Lord, then they have sinned. They can no longer be in his presence and thus they have ‘fallen from the sky like lightning.’ Where did they land when they fell? The Lord cast Satan and his followers into a hell from which he withdrew his presence. The earth was in disarray, and empty; and spiritual darkness was upon the face of the [demonic realm] The Lord created Earth and withdrew his presence from it, but then upon this he created the Earth we know, as is described in Days one to six. Thus Satan and his followers live in the deep, the abyss, the demonic realm, ‘underneath’ the good but fallen creation we inhabit.”[6]

The Bible doesn’t contain any information about what happened in the “heavens” in the beginning and how and why Satan succeeded in upsetting God, and why he was cast out from heaven. At the same time, we really don’t know, from the narrative of creation, exactly in what moment Satan was thrown out from the sky. Was it before or after the creation of light? Satan fell from the sky like lightning so he probably fell after the creation of light because it is improbable that he had been the first light of the creation. That would set Satan’s fall after the creation of light in the first day and not before it.

“18 He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” (Luke 10; 18 NRSV)

I don’t find merits in the theory by which the expression “tohu va bohu” would mean a void and an emptiness brought to the earth by the evil angels. The Gap Theory must completely disregard the text from Exodus 20; 11 in order to become sustainable. At the same time, this theory doesn’t have enough support in other biblical texts.

The narratives from the book of Genesis tried to describe literally the origins of the universe and there isn’t anything which must be read beyond the written text. 

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   All creation including the creation of heavens was made in six days, according to the Bible. For this reason, it is difficult to maintain that anything at all was created before the six-day period of time.

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20; 11 NRSV)

“It is vital to believe in six literal days for many reasons. The foremost reason is that allowing these days to be long periods of time undermines the foundations of the message of the Cross.”[7]

Ken Ham also argues that the second part of the text contained by 2 Peter 3; 8 cancel the first part and the provision that for God one day is like one thousand years is annihilated by the assertion that one thousand years are also like a day..[8]

“8 But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” (2 Peter 3; 8 NRSV)

    How can one know if the seven days are to be considered literally or not? One argument is about the regular successions of evenings and of the mornings. As long as we don’t have another option for the interpretation of the words “morning” and “evening” we cannot give but a literal interpretation of the days of creation. Another argument is based on the meaning of the Hebrew word used for “day” in Genesis chapter 1 which is “;yom”. The meaning of the words, in the Bible depends on the context in which they are used. Every time the word “yom” is used with a number or with the phrase “evening and morning”, everywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word “yom” is used with a number and also with the phrase, “evening and morning”. The most reasonable conclusion is to say that “yom” in Genesis chapter 1 means ordinary days.

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➤

In the biblical stories of the creation, the universe had been created by God inside a huge expanse of water when there was no sky or earthly atmosphere. On the second day of creation waters were separated and, according to the biblical texts, part of them remained “above” the sky and the other part covered the earth. According to the book of Genesis, the waters from “above” must be still there, but in reality they aren’t there and that also questions the accuracy of the stories of creation. We know for certain that such waters from “above” don’t exist and the idea of the primeval ocean or sea is an invention which circulated widely amongst the ancient mythologies. This observation, by itself, is a reason to invalidate the factual truth of the stories of creation from the Bible. Surely, the world wasn’t made in the depths of a universal ocean and such an ocean never existed. This is a misconception based on mythological grounds.

Who created the primeval sea? Because God didn’t have any reason to create the primeval sea, it should be considered as always being there without a beginning. Metaphorically, when God brought light over darkness and when He separated the waters which were above the sky from the waters from under the sky, He established order, replacing a previous disorder which was depicted by the expression “Tohu vav Bohu”.

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 God being the guarantor of order and justice in the universe, He couldn’t have created disorder hence that previous state of disarray wasn’t created by Him.

Besides what the book of Genesis says explicitly about what was created in the period of six days of creation, it is also presumed that a primeval sea had been there also and planet Earth was submerged in it in the beginning of its creation. The dome of the sky, which separated the waters from above and the waters from below, had been created on the second day of creation, according to the book of Genesis. In order to understand what sky really means in the context of the biblical narratives one has to understand first where the place for the so-called waters from above was.

In point of fact, there are not big quantities of water hanging loosely in outer space. In the account of the book of Genesis, before the creation of the dome of the sky, in its place was the primeval sea, in which the earth would have been submerged. From the biblical account, we don’t know how big and how deep this primeval sea would have been but we know that it would have occupied the place for the entire earthly atmosphere and for outer space.

When God started the Flood He would have opened the “windows of the sky”. Those “windows” would have been at the limit of the earthly atmosphere in order to allow rain to come to the earth. If they were in outer space it wouldn’t have been possible for a huge quantity of rain to come over the earth as the Bible says that it happened. A primeval sea surrounding the earth at the beginning of creation was never there, contrary to what the Bible says, and if it was there the light couldn’t have been created on the first day of creation as the book of Genesis maintains, because the existence of a functional light presupposes empty space.

At the same time, the existence of the primeval sea is a necessary supposition if we have to understand the separation of the waters from “above” from the waters covering the earth. The book of Genesis chapter 1 also assumes the existence on the first day of the creation of a light which couldn’t have travelled too far under waters and couldn’t have generated the first morning and the first evening. At the same time, the Bible speaks about “windows” of the sky from which God let loose the first rain on Earth with the occasion of the Flood. Those “windows” and an important amount of water couldn’t have been either at the limit of the terrestrial atmosphere or in outer space because that space isn’t filled with water.

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It was either a primeval sea at the periphery of the earthly atmosphere or in outer space, or God created the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day in that space. Both options don’t go together unless one admits that on the fourth day God would have created sun, moon, and stars again under the waters, but that would be absurd. If the earthly atmosphere was surrounded by the deep waters of a primeval sea, which would have been separated on the second day of creation from the terrestrial waters, then the light from the celestial bodies created on the fourth day couldn’t have reached the earth. The author of the biblical texts didn’t know anything about the circulation of the water in the atmosphere, hence how rain is produced on Earth.

According to the book of Genesis, God would have created the light in a period of time when the earth was covered by the sea waters and before the creation of the sky. This is widely impossible if one considers how the oceanic waters are understood by sciences to have appeared on Earth:

“The huge volume of water contained in the oceans (and seas), 137 × 10⁷ cubic km (about 33 × 10⁷ cubic miles), has been produced during Earth’s geologic history. Earth gradually changed the properties of its atmosphere, producing a gaseous mixture rich in carbon dioxide (CO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and molecular nitrogen (N₂). Photodissociation (i.e., separation due to the energy of light) of water vapour into molecular hydrogen (H₂) and molecular oxygen (O₂) in the upper atmosphere allowed the hydrogen to escape and led to a progressive increase of the partial pressure of oxygen at Earth’s surface. The reaction of this oxygen with the materials of the surface gradually caused the vapour pressure of water vapour to increase to a level at which liquid water could form.”[1]

 It is hard to accept that waters were created in darkness if light is considered to have had an important function in the formation of the oceans. In the book of Genesis it is written that before the creation of light, darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

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 Before the creation of the light, waters would have covered everything but in darkness, according to the Bible. Someone could reply that God said, and miraculously the waters came into existence. If so, where is this written in the texts? No mention of the creation of water is given in the book of Genesis.

If God did everything despite the laws of nature, why did He set all those laws in place to govern nature? God governs nature through the laws of nature, not chaotically as the book of Genesis says.

In order to understand nature as God’s creation we need to understand the laws of nature and through them to understand God. If miracles are understood as God’s intervention against the laws of nature, those miracles are an exception because nature is governed by laws and without them nature cannot function predictably and cannot be known by humankind. The most extraordinary miracle is the existence of the laws of nature and the possibility for humankind to know them. God wouldn’t have denied this extraordinary miracle by acting randomly and unpredictably during the creation of the universe.

Some scientists maintain that water had come to Earth brought by meteorites, but not even the meteorites would have been created until the fourth day, and that is obvious because all the celestial bodies were created on that day according to the book of Genesis.

The link between chaos and waters is a mythological motif and doesn’t have anything to do with scientific explanations. The motif of the primeval sea which would have occupied the entire universe at the beginning, is widespread in ancient cultures. In several mythologies waters symbolising chaos have been seen as the beginning of all things, and this fact makes the connection between biblical narratives and other mythologies very obvious:

“In Mesopotamian Religion (Sumerian, Assyrian, Akkadian and Babylonian), Tiamat is a chaos monster, a primordial goddess of the ocean, mating with Abzu (the god of fresh water) to produce younger gods. It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is ‘creatrix’, through a “Sacred marriage” between salt and fresh water, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations. In the second “Choaoskampf” Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.”[2]

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Some biblical scholars see a connection between Marduk’s slaying of Tiamat and the biblical account of Yahweh’s conquering the primordial sea-monster Leviathan.[3]

It is not difficult to see the connection between chaos and waters, they went together in the Mesopotamian religion and they were linked also in the Jewish account of creation. Both mythologies had tried to explain the same thing, the origins of the earth. Tiamat is at the same time a chaos monster and a goddess of the ocean, so waters in the Mesopotamian religion were a symbolic indication of chaos. The same symbols were reiterated by the Jewish narratives of creation. Waters brought chaos later on by generating disaster and death, when the Flood is said to have happened. For the Egyptians also, waters had been linked with disorder:

“All the Egyptian versions of the creation myths have in common the idea that the world had arisen out of the lifeless waters of chaos, called Nu. This element was likely inspired by the flooding of the Nile River each year; the receding floodwaters left fertile soil in their wake, and the Egyptians may have equated this with the emergence of life from the primeval chaos. In Heliopolis, the creation was attributed to Atum, a deity closely associated with Ra, who was said to have existed in the waters of Nu as an inert potential being. Atum was a self-engendered god, the source of all the elements and forces in the world, and the Heliopolitan myth described the process by which he “evolved” from a single being into this multiplicity of elements. Atum appeared on the mound and gave rise to the air god Shu and his sister Tefnut, whose existence represented the emergence of an empty space amid the waters.”[4]

 Several mythologies used the same symbols in order to narrate the apparition of the earth and the book of Genesis contains them also. Beside the book of Genesis, there are other biblical texts which refer to the creation.

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   They are probably older than the book of Genesis and they strengthen the hypothesis that the stories of creation from the Bible are a transposition of other Near-Eastern myths. Those biblical texts are found in Psalms, the book of Job and the Prophets. For example, in Psalm 74 is written:

“12 Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth. 13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. 14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food* for the creatures of the wilderness. 15 You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up ever-flowing streams. 16 Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries* and the sun. 17 You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter.” (Psalm 74; 12-17 NRSV)

 According to this Psalm, God had divided the sea by His might, He had broken the heads of the dragons in the waters, and He crashed the heads of Leviathan. Many heads, not just one – a monster of the sea. Reading this passage, one may think that they resemble the Babylonian story of creation:

“In the beginning, neither heaven nor earth had names. Apsu, the god of fresh waters, and Tiamat, the goddess of the salt oceans, and Mummu, the god of the mist that rises from both of them, were still mingled as one. There were no mountains, there was no pasture land, and not even a reed-marsh could be found to break the surface of the waters.”[5]

 Apsu and Tiamat had initially parented two gods and finally they had a great-great son named Ea, who became the most powerful of all gods. Following Apsu’s intention to kill Tiamat’s children, Ea found out about that plan and he had slain Apsu. Ea had been the father of Marduk, the four-eared, four-eyed giant who was god of the rains and storms. With a bow and arrow, Marduk had killed Tiamat.

“After subduing the rest of her host, he took his club and split Tiamat’s water-laden body in half like a clam shell. Half he put in the sky and made the heavens, and he posted guards there to make sure that Tiamat’s salt waters could not escape.

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 Across the heavens he made stations in the stars for the gods, and he made the moon and set it forth on its schedule across the heavens. From the other half of Tiamat’s body he made the land, which he placed over Apsu’s fresh waters, which now arise in wells and springs. From her eyes he made flow the Tigirs and Euphrates. Across this land he made the grains and herbs, the pastures and fields, the rains and the seeds, the cows and ewes, and the forests and the orchards.”[6]

The separation of the waters from above from the waters from below, and the creation of land on an earth which would have been entirely covered with water, are common elements in the book of Genesis and the Babylonian story of creation. They both are myths and don’t have anything to do with God’s inspiration or with the real way in which the universe and humankind came into existence. Concerning the creation of humankind, the two stories also have important similarities:

“With Kingu’s blood, with clay from the earth, and with spittle from the other gods, Ea and the birth-goddess Nintu created humans. On them Ea imposed the labor previously assigned to the gods. Thus the humans were set to maintain the canals and boundary ditches, to hoe and to carry, to irrigate the land and to raise crops, to raise animals and fill the granaries, and to worship the gods at their regular festivals.”[7]

Human beings were made from dust in the Bible and from clay and other materials in the Babylonian story of creation. In the book of Genesis humankind had been settled by God in the Garden of Eden in order to take care of it. The idea is the same in both narratives. Humankind had been created in order to serve God and to work towards the maintenance of the Garden of Eden. In the stories of creation from the book of Genesis this aspect is less emphasised but it is still present in the texts.

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“15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (Genesis 2; 15 NRSV)

In the book of Job we find another reference to God and waters:

“12 By his power he stilled the Sea; by his understanding he struck down Rahab. 13 By his wind the heavens were made fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.” (Job 26; 12-13 NRSV)

The piercing of the “fleeing serpent” symbolises the creation of the earth from the slaying of a water serpent, which represents the primordial chaotic waters. The same theme appears in Isaiah in which the battle between God and the serpent will continue until the end of days.[8]

“On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.” (Isaiah 27; 1 NRSV)

 Was Leviathan killed, or not, in the past? Seemingly he will be punished again on “that day” according to Isaiah. The “fleeing serpent” isn’t Satan as he was depicted by the Christian theology. The “fleeing serpent” is a symbol which brings to attention the same theme of creation from chaos which is found in other Near-Eastern mythologies. This symbol appears also in the book of Revelation from the Bible, but this time with the influence attached to it by the Christian theology. The ancient serpent coming from chaos symbolised by the primeval sea isn’t what he was in the Near-Eastern legends anymore; he was transformed into Satan, the personage so much detested by all believers:

“3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth."

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Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.” (Revelation 12; 3-4 NRSV)

“1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names.” (Revelation 13; 1 NRSV)

“3 So he carried me away in the spirit* into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.” (Revelation 17; 3 NRSV)

The final victory of God over the serpent is also His prevalence over the initial chaos and over the waters which until the last book of the Bible are seen as the symbol of His enemy. This victory is prefigured metaphorically by the image in which the sea will disappear forever.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” (Revelation 21; 1 NRSV)

We can see the cosmic fight between good and evil which started in the book of Genesis with God initially ordering the chaos symbolised by the waters of the primeval sea. God’s imposition of order was transposed in His fight against an angel who had been created by Him, this created angel being Satan. The serpent which symbolises chaos in the Bible cannot be equated with Satan because initially the Devil was created a perfect angel with no relation to a chaotic state.

Equating Satan with the dragon Leviathan with seven heads and ten horns that is related to chaos, generates an important inconsistency of the Bible. In the beginning, God would have slain the dragons in the waters which represented chaos according with the Psalm 74, and He would have crushed the heads of the Leviathan. At the same time, Satan was in the beginning a perfect angel, hence he couldn’t have been the representative of chaos. 

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    The same dragons killed by God according to Psalm 74 reappear in the book of Revelation. The dragon appears to be the same because the apparition from Revelation is the old dragon with many heads, and not a new one. In such a case is wrong to equate Leviathan or the dragon from Revelation with Satan. The evil is a necessary ingredient in mythology and is the opposite of the good.

In the Bible we have two different stories about the battle between good and evil which have been artificially compacted into just one very confused theology. Either Satan is one and the same as Leviathan, the dragon which will reappear during the times depicted in Revelation, or Satan is a new personage. Nevertheless, Leviathan was slain by God when He started to organise the chaos and separate the waters of the primeval sea, according to Psalm 74. Strangely enough, in spite of being slain by God the dragon didn’t die but he will reappear in the future as it is written in Revelation. In most interpretations of the book of Revelation the old dragon with many heads seems to be one and the same as Satan, but initially the latter was an obedient angel having a harmonious presence and not seven heads.

There isn’t much clarity about the relation between Leviathan and Satan or the fight between good and evil in the Bible. Both Leviathan and Satan had their followers, other dragons and fallen angels, but the former was slain by God in the process of creation while the latter will be thrown into fire at the end. I see here a theology of good and evil in evolution starting with old Near-Eastern mythologies and evolving into the battle between God and the angel of evil. At the same time, there is an incompatibility between Leviathan the monster which was slain by God according to Psalm 74 and Satan, who will be thrown into the lake of fire of the end of the days. Which of them is the representative of evil in the universe? When and by whom was Leviathan created? Did God create two agents of evil? The answer comes from the mixture of mythological traditions but the confusion between those myths doesn’t give a coherent description of the battle of good and evil in the universe.

The language of the stories of creation from the book of Genesis is the same mythological language through which other cultures from the Middle-East expressed their views about the origins of the universe. Even if the content of the narration is different in scope, the mythological form is similar, and also the symbols which are used.

In all stories of the creation of the universe, an external and all-powerful god or gods generated all that is. Basically, the principle is the same; everything is explained by an external intervention, which is responsible for the existence of the universe and earth, and not by forces which are inherent in matter and energy. In reality, matter and energy are “alive” and “creative”; they aren’t dead and they have an internal determination which set them in motion.

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