The Waters were divided as part of the preparation for the Surfacing of the Earth (dry) Whatever the inspiration or (demythologizing?) theological intent of the biblical authors, it is sufficient to this question only to describe the need for the ‘dividing’ of the waters and the importance of the firmament God called into existence on the second day. Of course the parallels between this text and other ANE creation myths are striking and often noted by critical scholars, including the philological connection between the Hebrew Tohem and Babylonian Tiamat, the serpent goddess of the ocean whose rib-cage Marduk used to fashion the vault of the sky in their creation epic, the Enûma Elish. ![]() God accomplished this by means of the rakia or firmament, the hard, hammered-out dome of the sky (see image below). But life was predicated on keeping chaos at bay, keeping the upper and lower waters – which were always threatening to break through – in their place. On succeeding days God gathered the lower waters and caused dry land to appear and burst with vegetation (v.9-13), and he created lights in the dome of the sky (v.14-19), sea life and birds (v.20-23), and creatures on the land (v.24-31). The ‘dividing’ or ‘separating’ of the waters, therefore, created what we’d call an atmosphere within the chaos of the watery universe. There was evening and there was morning, the second day. Separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that It separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and ![]() After creating light on the first day (v.3-5), Elohim is said to have pushed back or split the waters to create a space within Tehom:Īnd God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let In Hebrew cosmology Tehom was the primordial cosmic ocean that filled the entire universe. Like many Ancient Near Eastern mythologies, the creation story in Genesis 1 does not begin with nothing but with the dark, formless, watery ‘deep’, in Hebrew known by the proper noun Tehom ( H8415).
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