Chaos Subdued

The chaotic waters (Tehom)

Texts from the earliest civilizations indicate that the ancients were acute observers of the natural world. They observed flood cycles, dry seasons, and volcanic activity. Such natural phenomena are described in the Bible and in other more ancient texts. 

In Genesis 1 the chaotic primal waters are subdued by the generative Word that goes forth from the Creator. Genesis 1 uses the words tohu (formless or confused) and bohu (empty or void) to describe the beginning. The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and appears to be of Nilotic origin. In Isaiah 34:11 tohu means "confused" so Genesis 1 refers to matter in a confused or chaotic state before God set things in order.

The ancient Egyptians believed that chaos (tehom) dwelt south of Yebu (Elephantine Island) as a great river serpent called Apep or Apophis. This serpent is depicted as the enemy of the High God Ra. In this image Apep attacks Ra as he journeys from east to west in his solar boat. 

The serpent Tehom was overthrown by Tehut, divine Wisdom, shown in this image as Horus, the son of Ra. The image below is of a relief from the temple of Horus at Idfū in Egypt. It shows Apophis being subdued by spears.

The dark turbulent waters called Tehom in Genesis 1 relate to the Nilotic word for water, Tehem. Tehom is the antagonist of Tehut in ancient Nilotic mythology. 

In the ancient world natural and spiritual forces are often portrayed as demons and deities. In the Bablyonian context, Tiamat is a goddess, but in the Nilotic context, Tiamat is the chaotic waters that are subdued by God. 

The name of the coastal region of Yemen is Tihamat. The word is related to the Akkadian words for sea, tâmtu and ti'amtum, and tiamatu - ocean, abyss, and to the Egyptian word tehem which refers to water. 

The Law of Tehut was established about 5600 years ago by King Menés who administered justice and issued edicts to enhance food production and distribution, guard the rights of ruling families, improve education, and increase knowledge of the natural world through geometry and astronomy. The Law of Tehut was to establish order in his territory.

Related reading: Te-hut overcomes Te-hom; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; The Mountains and Horizons of Ancient Egypt; The Themes of Genesis 1-3

Wisdom! Let Us Attend.

1812 Ukrainian (Kyiv) Icon 

Sophia, the Holy Wisdom

Alice C. Linsley


Genesis 1 describes when God began the work of creation. It uses the words tohu (formless or confused) and bohu (empty or void). The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and is of Nilotic origin. The word tohu in Isaiah 34:11 means "confused" so it appears that Genesis 1 refers to matter in a confused or chaotic state before God set things in order.

In Nilotic mythology chaos preceded creation. The Egyptians personified chaos (tehom) and believed that this serpent dwelt south of Yebu (Elephantine Island). However, Tehom was overthrown by Tehut, divine Wisdom, also personified. The oldest known law code was the Law of Tehut, attributed to Menes, the first ruler to unite the peoples of the Upper and Lower Nile.

The idea of Wisdom personified is found in Proverbs 9 and Proverbs 8. Here Wisdom speaks in the first person, giving an account of creation:

YHWH had me as the beginning of his way,

the earliest of his works of yore.

Of old I was woven, from the very beginning,

even before the earth itself.

When the deeps were not existent, I was birthed.
When the wellsprings were not yet laden with water,
when the mountains were not yet anchored,
before the hills themselves, I was brought forth.
Before [YHWH] made the earth abroad
and the first clods of soil,
when he established the heavens, I was there.

When he circumscribed the surfaces of the deep,
when he secured the skies,
and stabilized the springs of the deep,
when he assigned the sea its limit
(lest the waters transgress his decree)
when he inscribed the foundations of the earth,

I was beside him growing up.
I was his delight day by day,
playing with him every moment,
playing with his inhabited world
delighting in the offspring of ‘ādām.

Wisdom tells us that she “came forth from the mouth of the Most High” as the first-born before all creatures. This sounds very like the Logos of John's Gospel. The creation of the universe was a singular event according to the Bible. Everything that was created in the beginning was created from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). God did not create from preexisting elements or from the substance of a previously existent world. God's power is in the Word which goes forth from God and unfailingly generates life and existence (Isaiah 55:11). The Word is generative.

Wisdom is personified as a female who seeks a place to rest upon the earth and finds that place among the people of Jacob (Sirach 24:8) In this view, wisdom is associated with the Spirit’s presence and guidance among people of the covenant. The covenant extends to those who put their faith in the Messiah whose appearing Wisdom foretold (Genesis 3:15).

To love Wisdom is to honor the boundaries established by Wisdom. The boundaries are set by binary distinctions or what Genesis calls separation. Order is established by separating the waters above from the waters below, the seas from the dry land, the night and day, male and female, humans and the lower creatures, etc.

In the Biblical worldview there is a fixed and immutable hierarchy in the order of creation, with humans being the most like the Creator. Wisdom delighted in play with humans, a wondrous creation. In the hierarchical conception of Genesis humans rank above the other animals, the animals rank above the plants, and the plants rank above inanimate objects such as rocks. Within these tiers are the "kinds" (essentialism), each reproducing according to its kind. 

This explains why homosex and onanism are regarded as serious transgressions of the divine order in creation. Onanism was regarded as an unrighteous deed because the seed that should fall to the earth is the seed of plants, which spring forth from the earth. The seed of man should fall on his own type (the womb), from which man comes forth. Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted” (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 A.D. 191).

Thales of Miletus (c. 624-546 BC) was a great observer of the natural order. He was skilled in geometry, astronomy, engineering and the natural sciences. Thales studied in Egypt and calculated the height of the pyramids from the length of their shadows. He measured the time between one solstice and the next. Thales taught that water was the original substance from which all things took form. He called Wisdom arche/archai. 

To love Wisdom leads to blessedness (deification/theosis/sanctification). Those who despise Wisdom are cursed. St. Paul explains that their minds are darkened and they cannot see Truth. By the ignorance in them they are alienated from the life of God (Eph. 4:18). 

Contemporary Western culture shows no honor to Wisdom. The immutable distinctions are blurred by relativism, Process Theology, reductionism, laziness, ignorance, bigotry, entitlement attitudes, and the spiritual confusion that comes from involvement in demonic activity. 

Related reading: The Removal of Wisdom's Tongue; Ancient Seats of Wisdom; The Wisdom of Yeshua Ben Sira; Ancient Wisdom, Science and Technology; Tehut's Victory Over Tehom

Water and Blood

Alice C. Linsley


According to the oldest written sources water and blood were viewed by the ancients as the primal substances of life. Both substances were related to the sun and had cosmic implications.

Thales of Miletus taught that water was the original substance from which all things took form. He noted that water has many states: liquid, solid, vapor, ice. He reasoned that everything that exists came from water and retains the essence of water.

From reading Sumerian commercial records, the Egyptian Coffin Texts, and the Hebrew Scriptures it is evident that many Afro-Asiatic peoples believed that the earth emerged from a watery chaos. In the Coffin Texts we read, I was the one who began (everything), the dweller in the Primeval Waters. First Hahu emerged from me and then I began to move."

Hahu is the wind that separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas. In Akkadian, the wind of God is called Enlil. In Hebrew the wind or breath of God is called Ruach. In Christianity this uncreated force is called the Holy Spirit.

The celestial waters were called Nun, a name that appears among the Horite Hebrew chiefs in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua bin Nun is an example. Nun is found at the Horite shrine of Heliopolis in Egypt and represents the cosmic waters of the firmament above and firmament below (Gen.1:6). In Heliopolitan cosmology the watery realms were connected by the great pillars of the temple of Heliopolis (Biblical On).

In Genesis the primal chaotic waters are called tehom. Tehom was subdued by tehut which went forth from the mouth of God. The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and is of Nilotic origin. The word tohu in Isaiah 34:11 means "confused" so Genesis 1 evidently refers to matter in a confused state before God set things in order.

The Egyptians envisioned the first place as a mound emerging from a universal ocean. Here the first life form was a lily growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The mound was called Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land." Anything that springs forth, mounds, emerges represented life and was termed bnbn (benben), from the root bn, meaning to "swell forth." This conception of land and life emerging from a universal ocean was represented by stone pillars, mounds of earth, and pyramids.

The notion applied to the daily swelling of the sun. The image of the sun swelling forth from the peak of the pyramid or mountain is represented in the sign of tnt (tanit) and in the Agadez crosses made by the Inadan metalworkers of Niger and Sudan. The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn, which comes from the same root. The swelling of the sun speaks of God's sovereignty over all the earth. In the Arabic yakburu in reference to the sun means “he is getting big” and with the intensive active prefix: yukabbiru means "he is enlarging." Here we identify the biru in ha-biru which is the word Hebrew. For the ancient Ha-biru, the sun was the emblem of the eternal Creator.

The annual swelling of the Nile brought life-giving minerals to the soil. The Nile waters were essential for life, and provided habitats for fish, hippos, crocodiles and many hundreds of species of birds. Without water and blood life as we know it could not exist.This ancient understanding seems modern since today biologists and medical practitioners take this for granted.

In his The Dynamics of World History (p. 128) Christopher Dawson explains, “The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense, the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.”

Mircea Eliade: “The prototype of all water is the ‘living water’….Living water, the fountains of youth, the Water of Life…are all mythological the same formulae for the same metaphysical and religious reality: life, strength and eternity are contained in water.” (Patterns in Comparative Religion. Sheed and Ward Ltd., London, p. 193.)


Blood as primal substance

In the Babylonian creation myth Ea makes mankind from the blood of Kingu. In Genesis 4:10 we read that the Abel's shed blood has power to cry out to God from the ground. The first human, according to Genesis 3 was formed from the red earth which is the likely etiology of the word Adam, or ha-dam, meaning the blood. The Hebrew word for red/ruddy is edom. The word edom is equivalent to the Hausa odum and to the Hebrew adam, and originally referenced the red clay that washed down to the Upper Nile from the Ethiopian highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic cambisols have a strong red brown color.

Red and black Nubians
Detail from a Champollion drawing

The blood-colored substance that is found naturally around the globe is red ocher or hematite (from the Greek word for blood, haema). When hematite powder is mixed with water is looks like blood.

For 100,000 years red ocher was used in burial as a symbolic blood covering. Proto-Saharan nobles were buried with red ochre at Nekhen on the Nile (3800 BC). P.L. Kirk reports that prehistoric Australian aboriginal burials reveal pink staining of the soil around the skeleton, indicating that red ochre had been sprinkled over the body. The remains of an adult male found at Lake Mungo in southeastern Australia were copiously sprinkled with red ocher.

Red ocher is an ancient and universal symbol of blood. Stan Gooch explains:

"Everyone, both heretic and orthodox, and including the present-day users of ochre themselves, agree that it represents blood. A very common interpretation, and one that we can readily accept here, is that just as a new baby comes into the world covered with blood, so the corpse must also be covered with blood to facilitate, or perhaps cause, the re-birth of the deceased in the spirit world beyond. Birth blood is therefore one very probable meaning.

A further significance (borne out also by much other evidence) is given by the Unthippa aboriginal women. They say that their own female ancestors once caused large quantities of blood to flow from their vulvas, which then formed the deposits of red ochre found throughout the world. So we can say that red ochre also represents menstrual blood: in both cases therefore female blood connected with the birth process. (We shall later be able to be even more precise and say that ochre is the menstrual blood of the Moon Mother; or more properly, the placental blood which covered the Earth when She gave birth to it."

For a different interpretation of blood symbolism read "On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality."

John Greenway tells this story concerning the influence of red ocher among Australian Aborigines today:

"The most terrifying physical inquisitors in aboriginal Australia are the little known Red Ocher Men… It is astonishing how little is known by outsiders of the Red Ocher Men. Many whites who have learned about everything else of aboriginal life have not even heard of them, so well enforced is the omerta among even those of the aborigines who wish the whole organisation ended… The cult is nearly universal in aboriginal Australia… In the deserts the Red Ocher cult moves right across the land in the course of a year, carrying its own ceremonies and myths, touching all tribes in its path, and working as a kind of ecclesiastical circuit court embodying all processes of the religious judiciary.

The function of the court is to punish law-breakers — not so much the perpetrators of everyday misdemeanours like spear fights and wife-beating, but those felons who blaspheme the laws incorporated in the myths. If, for example, the young man on trial in Meekatharra had really shown the tjurunga [the law sticks] to women, his only chance to escape the Red Ocher Men would have been to flee from his tribal jurisdiction and live in a city or large well-policed town among other fugitives from their honour and their heritage."

The Red Ocher men are responsible for blood sacrifice to re-establish community/communion. They conduct ceremonies and rituals according to their sacred laws and offer prayers to resolve blood guilt and anxiety. Among primitive peoples blood guilt and anxiety arise from the shedding of blood through killing, hunting, menstruation, and the birth process.

Anthropologists have noted anxiety about blood among every primitive society studied. A principle of anthropology that applies here is: The wider the distribution of a trait, the older it is. Since the use of red ocher as a symbol of blood is virtually universal, we may conclude that it is very old and that the earliest populations regarded blood as a primal substance akin to water.

The offices of the priest and the shaman serve to mitigate against blood anxiety and guilt. These are the oldest known religious offices. Though they represent different worldviews, they serve similar roles in their communities, and for both blood and water are the most fundamental substances of life.


Water and blood speak of Christ

On the cross Christ's side was pierced and out flowed water and blood. These came forth like blooms from the cross as Aaron's rod bloomed, foretelling Jesus the true High Priest in whom there is life.

"Truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him." (John 6:53-56)

Christ's encounter with Photini at Jacob's well speaks of Him as the Living Water given to his bride, the Church.

The blood and water from Jesus' side represent the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist. John Chrysostom wrote, "As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church." (The Catecheses, Cat. 3, 13-19; SC 50, 174-177) This view of the sacraments in their proper order is reflected in Church writings that reverse the order of John 19:31-36. Instead of keeping the Biblical order, this order appeared in Church literature: ‘from His side came water and blood.”

Yet St. Paul gives the blood first place, suggesting that the material world exists by virtue of Christ's blood which is real even before His incarnation. 

Before his incarnation He was eternal God and He continues to be eternal God in His resurrection body. His blood is given for the life of the world... does this have layers of meaning? Most certainly we are faced with a sacred mystery. The mystery is lightly touched upon in the Creed: "Through Him all things were made." Christ was with the Father before the foundation of the world. "He was in the beginning with God." (1 John, verse 2)

Paul grounds what could become gnostic speculation to the historic event of the Cross by frequently speaking of the blood of Christ. The event is a moment in time, but the benefits of His blood are cosmic and timeless.

Paul writes that those who are baptized into Christ "have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). We may enter with boldness into the Most Holy Place "by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body..." (Heb. 10:19, 20) In this we follow Christ, our great High Priest, who "did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood..." (Heb. 9:12)

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth." (Eph. 1:7-10)

The gathering into one is termed "pleroma" in Greek and for St. Paul, the blood of Christ is pleromic. There is a significant difference between the Gnostic application of “pleroma” and Paul’s application. For the Gnostics, the pleroma was vague and undifferentiated, but for Paul the pleroma is the manifestation of the benefits of the “blood of Jesus.” Jesus Christ is the “pleroma” (fullness) of all things in heaven and on earth, both invisible and visible. The Gnostics used “pleroma” to describe the metaphysical unity of all things, but Paul uses the term to speak about how the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ in bodily form (Col. 2:9). Paul never allows the churches to wander from the blood of Jesus. 

The pleromic blood can be traced through the Scriptures as the scarlet cord that ties all things together. To express this in the simplest terms, all things are gathered in Jesus Christ in whom dwells the fullness of God. By His blood we are made clean and by faith in His blood we receive eternal life.

Related reading: Why Women Were Never Priests; Mining Blood; Blood and Binary Distinctions; Theories of Primal Substance

Archaeology and the Afro-Arabian Context of Genesis

"Upon this first...rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to believe, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."--Charles Sanders Peirce, 1896


Alice C. Linsley


Arabia as a region was never ethnically nor linguistically distinct from Africa. Arabia was the connective tissue in the body of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion. Southwestern Arabia, the Tunisian island of Djerba, coastal Yemen, and the Horn of Africa have common flora and fauna.

South Arabia and specifically Yemen, have Paleolithic sites, tumuli, and megalithic enclosures dating to the Neolithic. In the region of Dedan there are magnificent tombs carved in the mountains. They are decorated with geometrical motifs. This site also has many Dedanite, Minaen, Lihyanite, Thamudic, and Nabataean inscriptions.

Prior to 2500 BC, two Bronze Age cultures existed in North Yemen. In the middle of the second millennium BC, the first important urban centers appeared in the coastal area, among which are the sites of Sabir and Ma'laybah. This Sabir culture, named after the German-Russian excavations in Sabir beginning in 1994, has been the subject of great interest.

Features of the ancient culture common to the adjacent regions of Africa and Arabia include Tukul huts, pottery, weapons, tools and burial finds. Tukul huts of the Tihamah are identical to those found on the Ethiopian highlands and in the parts of the Sudan that once drew water from the Nile. East Africa Red Pottery has been found at Petra and along the Yemen coast.

Tukul huts in Ethiopia

Archaeologists working in the Ethiopian highlands have identified the remains of settlements from the first millennium B.C. that had strong cultural and religious connections with coastal Yemen. Recent excavations and surveys have focused on the ancient town of Yeha, believed to be a major center of the Diamat kingdom (c.700 B.C.).

Excavations at Yeha and surrounding sites have uncovered buildings, burials and pottery that indicate cultural connections with the culture of ancient Yemen. Among the discoveries was a perfectly preserved sacrificial altar adorned with a Sabean royal inscription.

The 2008 discovery by Ethiopians archaeologists of the sacrificial altar was made in Meqaber Ga’ewa, a previously unknown location near the city of Wuqro. The altar bore a royal inscription in Old South Arabian (Dedanite) bearing the name Yeha. This is likely related to the Israelite name for God - YHWH. The double H likely represents reduplication for emphasis or enhancement, as in the phrase I am I am (Exodus 3:14). Reduplication is a common feature of languages in the Nilo-Saharan and Semitic languages.

Further, genetic research has demonstrated extensive female-mediated gene flow from Sub-Saharan Africa into Arab populations of the Tihamah, the Hadramawt, and the Near East.

Tihamah (Tiamat) an Ancient Name for Coastal Yemen

The Tihamah is a low narrow plain along the eastern shore of the Red Sea. Hemmed in by mountains and high plateau, the climate is hot and humid. A site survey of human occupation for this region was completed in 2008 by a coalition of Yemeni Governmental agencies. The survey documented a large number of sites dating to the early Holocene containing obsidian tools, especially geometric microliths like those found on the Horn of Africa.

The name of the coastal region is related to the Akkadian words for sea, tâmtu and ti'amtum, and to the Egyptian word tehem which refers to water. The Hebrew word tehom in Genesis 1:2, refers to the chaotic deep, the primeval chaos represented by dark, turbulent waters.

And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

There appears to be a very ancient association between the mythological Tiamat and the Ainu. Tiamat bore two hairy sons called Lahmu and Lahamu, probably related to the Lehab of Genesis 10:13. Their names mean the "hairy" and they were temple gatekeepers in Eridu. According to the myth, Lahmu and Lahamu were associated with Anu, a deity and a people. There may be a relationship to the hairy Ainu of Northern Japan.

The Ainu are at the center of Cavalli-Szforza's Genetic Distance Chart, which is what would be expected of "First People." Ainu is also spelled Annu and Hannu. In all the ancient texts they are described as bearded and hairy with a reddish skin tone. Esau's physical description in Genesis 25 corresponds to the description of the Ainu. The Ainu word for priest is Tera (Terah) which is the title held by Abraham's father.

The Lehab were later classified as Dedanites and among them two groups are especially notably as they were metal workers: the Letushim and the Leummim, both groups being descendants of Abraham by his cousin wife Keturah (Gen. 25:1-4). Keturah's son was Joktan, the progenitor or acclaimed common ancestor of the Joktanite clans of Arabia.

Related reading: The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y; The Nubian Context of YHWH; The Canaan That Abraham Knew; The Sabir Culture and Coastal Yemen during the second millenium BC; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; The Afro-Arabian Dedanites; The Nile and Tigris Linguistically Connected; Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked

Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About the Earth

Alice C. Linsley




Part 5:  The Creation of Earth
This continues the series on Answers to High Schooler's Questions About Genesis.


Q:  How old is the Earth?

A:  The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This is based on radiometric age dating of meteorite material and the earth's oldest rocks, and is consistent with lunar samples. Young-Earth Creationists argue that radiometric dating is not reliable because it contradicts what they believe the Bible says about the age of the Earth.  For the sake of argument, let us consider that radiometric calculations are off by 50%. Were this the case (and it is not), the earth would still be over 2 billion years old.  The oldest human fossils are about 3.6 million years.  Again for the sake of argument, let us consider that the carbon dating of the oldest human fossils is off by 50%.  These humans would still have lived over 1 million years ago

Young-Earth Creationists calculate the Earth's age at 6000 years on the basis of ages assigned to the rulers in the Genesis King Lists.  They assume that Bishop James Ussher's scheme is accurate.  However, Ussher didn't recognize that these lists are not generational, but regnal. The reigns of some kings coincided. For example, Tubal-Cain (Gen. 4) and Methuselah (Gen. 5) ruled at the same time.  Further, these rulers had two wives. The first wife was the bride of the ruler-to-be's youth.  The second wife was a patrilineal cousin and this wedding took place shortly before the heir ascended to the throne. This is why Abraham was anxious for Isaac to marry his cousin bride before he died (Gen. 24).

With two wives, there were two first-born sons.  They ascended to different thrones, but the ruling lines intermarried exclusively. Bishop Ussher didn't take this unique marriage and ascendancy pattern into consideration. He apparently was unaware of its importance.



Q:  How many times has God created Earth?

A:  The creation of the Earth was a singular event according to the Bible. John 1:3 says that everything that was created in the beginning was created from nothing (creatio ex nihilo).  In other words, God did not create from pre-existing elements or from the substance of a previous world.

The idea that God created more than one Earth developed out of Greek Philosophy and can be traced to the thought of Anaximander of Miletus (B.C. 610 – 546). He believed that the universe or “all the heavens and the worlds within them” came from “some boundless nature.” Their existence involved the interaction of the four elements of ancient physics: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

Anaximander speculated that these elements constantly interact to produce new worlds. This is why some thought this world came about as the result of the explosion of a previously existing world.  He hypothesized that the world originated when a firey ball surrounded Earth like bark on a tree. When the ball broke apart it formed other worlds as hollow concentric circles or spirals, filled with fire.

In his first sermon on creation, Basil the Great argued against Anaximander's view that a world is created by the spiraling motion of the four interactive elements.  He declared, "Do not then imagine, O man! that the visible world is without a beginning; and because the celestial bodies move in a circular course, and it is difficult for our senses to define the point where the circle begins, do not believe that bodies impelled by a circular movement are, from their nature, without a beginning." (The Hexaemeron, Homily I)

This idea of previously existing worlds is not found in the Bible. According to the Bible, God fashioned all the worlds from nothing. Hebrews 11:13 says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible."



Q:  What existed before God created everything?

A:  No matter existed. Only the triune God existed: Christ the Logos and the Spirit of God were one with God the Father. The Holy Trinity is evident in Genesis 1 and was manifested to John the Baptist and his disciples when Jesus was baptised in the Jordan River. (See Matthew 3:16,17; Mark 1:9-11)

Genesis 1:2 speaks of a void (bohu in Hebrew).  This may be the work of Hellenistic Jews who translated the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) into Greek. That version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint and it appears to be influenced by Greek Philosophy which debated the idea of motion, matter and a void. John Sailhamer makes this point in his book Genesis Unbound.  The Greek-speaking Jews who translated the Old Testament were likely drawing on the thought of Democritus (460 – ca. 370 BC), a ancient philosopher who argued that any movement would require a void.  Since God is the Unmoved Mover, there was movement at the beginning and therefore a void.  This argument has been used to suggest that God as Unmoved Mover is illogical since, as Democritus asserted, a void cannot exist.

Obviously there is a conflict between the Greek and the Semitic worldviews. As Genesis reflects a Nilo-Semitic worldview, we must look for another explanation of the word bohu.

Genesis 1 describes when God began the work of creation. It uses the words tohu (formless or confused) and bohu (empty or void). The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and is of Nilotic origin. The word tohu in Isaiah 34:11 means "confused" so it appears that Genesis 1 refers to matter in a confused or chaotic state before God set things in order.

In Nilotic mythology chaos or disorder preceded creation. The Egyptians believed that chaos (tehom) dwelt south of Yebu (Elephantine Island) as a great river serpent between the Nile's east (bahku) and west (manu) banks. The word bohu appears to be related to the word bahku, the direction from which the Sun rose and filled the valley with light - And God said, "Let there be light and there was light." (Gen. 1:3)




Q:  How did everything just appear when God spoke?

A:  The Word of God generates life. This is what John explains in the Prologue to his Gospel:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men." John 1:1-4

Basil the Great explains, "It must be well understood that when we speak of the voice, of the word, of the command of God, this divine language does not mean to us a sound which escapes from the organs of speech, a collision of air struck by the tongue; it is a simple sign of the will of God."  (The Hexaemeron, Homily II)



Q:  Could God have created the world through evolution?

A:  Evolution is an explanation for how species emerge, adapt and survive. Darwin's observations about the complexity, diversity, adaptability and survival of species do not address the question of the origin of matter.  His hypothesis that humans and apes had a common ancestor has never been proven. There is no physical evidence that this is true.

Some Christians believe that God created the different species by the processes described in evolutionary theory. Their view is called "Theistic Evolution" and has grown in popularity among Evangelicals. 

Other theories held by Christians include Intelligent Design, the Framework Theory, Progressive Creationism, Age-Day Creationism, Gap Theory Creationism, and Young-Earth Creationism. These are described here.

Genesis tells us that God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time and according to a plan. It is the work of science to discover the order and the work of theologians and Bible scholars to discern the plan. For Abraham's ancestors the order was perceived as fixed, though they recognized flux within the fixed boundaries. Their acute observation of the patterns in nature suggested a divine plan.

If the biblical worldview is true, no discrepancy should exist between genetics and the biblical assertion that the order of creation is fixed with genetic boundaries between "kinds."  Specific fixed boundaries exist within the DNA code. This explains why humans reproduce humans and not some other animal. Further, while the similarity of humans to apes may suggest a common origin, this common ancestor is not known to have existed.  A common ancestor exists in the imaginations of artists who draw images for Biology books.

Evolutionary theory rests on many unconfirmed and often ludicrous assumptions.  For example, some assume that because nurse sharks and camels share an antigen receptor protein they are descended from a common ancestor. However, the DNA sequences that code for the proteins are different between sharks and camels. 




Q:  Why did God take seven days to create?

A:  Actually,the first creation story says that God created in six days and rested on the seventh.

According to Genesis 1, God created in an orderly fashion over a period of time.  Order implies duration of time.  Consider how time passes as you write the letters of the alphabet in order.  Seconds pass as you draw each on the paper.  Time began to pass, like a ticking clock, from the moment that God created matter and space.



Q:  Were the seven days of creation 24-hour days?

A:  Genesis 1 suggests that the seven days are to be taken as 24-hour days.  However, Genesis 2 says that God created everything in a single day.  In both creation stories the Hebrew word for day is yom. This word is used in the Bible to mean a 24-hour day or an unspecified duration of time.



Q:  When Genesis says "hovered over the waters" does that mean that water existed before God formed the earth? Or was this water over an unformed earth?

A:  According to the ancient Nilotic peoples, the world emerged as a dry mound rising up from the primordial ocean. Because the Sun is essential to life on earth, the first rising of Ra (the Creator whose emblem was the Sun) marked the moment of the world's emergence. This is why God's first words in Genesis are "let there be light" and why St. John says that Christ, the Word, was the real light that was coming into the world. (John 1:9)




Q: How could water come up from the ground if it hadn't rained yet?

A:  Genesis 2:4-6 says "On the day that God made earth and heaven there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant sprung up for Yahweh God had not sent rain on the earth, nor was there any man to till the soil. Instead, water flowed out of the ground and watered the whole surface of the soil."

This picture of the primeval Earth as a watery world is consistent with the cosmology of Abraham's Nilotic ancestors from whom we receive this account. They believed that the dry ground emerged from a universal ocean.  It is also consistent with scientific findings that suggest that 2.5 billion years ago oceans covered most of the planet. Just 2% to 3% of the Earth's surface would have been dry land, compared with 28% today.




Q: Where was the Garden of Eden?

A:  Eden is described as a vast watery region that extended from the Nile to Mesopotamia.  The writer of Genesis 2-3 says that God prepared a garden somewhere in this region and placed the first humans there.  This is also the region where the oldest human fossils have been found. This is the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion and the place of origin of the Genesis rulers and of "him that holds the scepter from the house of Eden" (Amos 1:5).

Genesis 2:10-14 says that Eden was watered by four rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Pishon and the Gihon. The Tigris and Euphrates are in Mesopotamia and the Pishon and Gihon are in Africa. The Ethiopians identify the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former Kushite kingdom of Gojjam. The Pishon "flows through the whole land of Havilah" (Gen. 2:11). Havilah is a son of Kush (Gen. 10:7) and the "Kushites" lived in the Upper Nile region and the Sudan. Kushite kings also ruled in Egypt.

The description of Eden as a well-watered region is supported by climate and geological studies. These four rivers encompass the heart of the ancient Afro-Asiatic Dominion which was ruled by a network of chief priests. They controlled the major water systems and built shrines along the rivers.



Q: Where do dinosaurs fit in the story of creation?

A:

Dinosaurs are not mentioned in the Genesis creation accounts. These accounts speak of great diversity and an hierarchy within the animal world, but the peoples from whom we receive the creation stories did not have any direct experience of dinosaurs. Likely they had oral traditions about great creatures that once lived on the Earth. They may have associated the avian dinosaur with the serpent-dragon. This dragon was called by the RahuKetu (drawing from the Ancient Egyptian words Ra and Ketu). The avian dinosaurs survived after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Scientists have identified seven major global and local dinosaur subgroups during the latest Cretaceous period. The large herbivores, such as ceratopsids and hadrosauroids, appear to have been in decline for some time before their extinction. Carnivorous dinosaurs, mid-sized herbivores, and some Asian species appear to have fared better. Their populations were thriving and appear to have disappeared rather suddenly.

The reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs is still a mystery.  However, most scientists believe that their extinction was environment and likely triggered by the impact on Earth of a large asteroid or comet.  Evidence for such events have been identified in the Yucatan and in Siberia. An object 10 kilometers across struck Earth off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

It is believed that this caused dense clouds of dust that blocked the sun's rays. The darker and colder environment caused many plants to die and these were the food source of the large bulk-feeding herbivores.  According to this theory, once the dust cleared greenhouse gases caused temperatures to skyrocket and the frigid and sweltering climatic extremes caused the extinction of up to 70 percent of all plants and animals living at the time.

Another theory involves global volcanic activity. Massive beds of ancient lava found around the world depict an Earth where volcanic eruptions were commonplace. According to this theory, volcanic activity spewed gas, ash, and dust into the atmosphere, blocking light from the sun. Plant production plummeted, and dinosaurs that were poorly adapted to the harsh conditions perished.



Related reading: YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; Tehut's Victory Over Tehom; Bishop Ussher Goofed; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin