Post by Richard on May 25, 2015 13:59:24 GMT
"It's easy to fly like an eagle when you live among the turkeys."
THE WATERS ABOVE AND BELOW
In her new translation of the Rig-veda, Wendy O’Flaherty says that the ancient Hindus believed that “the earth was spread upon the cosmic waters” and that these primeval oceans “surrounded heaven and earth, separating the dwelling-place of men and gods….”(19) After the sky fell in on the Celts, the next event they feared was that the seas would come rushing in from all directions.(20) In the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, the sky is made from the body of Tiamat, the goddess of watery chaos. The victorious god Marduk splits “her like a shellfish into two parts: half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, pulled down the bar and posted guards. He bade them to allow not her waters to escape.”
In Genesis 1:1 we find the linguistic equivalent of Tiamat in the Hebrew word tehom (“the deep”), and the threat of watery chaos is ever present in the Old Testament. Evangelical F. F. Bruce agrees that “tehom is probably cognate with Tiamat,” and Clark Pinnock admits that Yahweh also “quite plainly…fought with a sea monster” and that the model of the battle is a Babylonian one.(22) The psalmists describe it in graphic terms: “By thy power thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two, and broke the dragon’s heads above the waters; thou didst crush the many-headed Leviathan, and threw him to the sharks for food” (Ps. 74:13-14 NEB; cf. Job 3:8; Isa. 27:1).
The firmament separates the waters from the waters, so that there is water above the heavens (Ps. l48:4) and water below the earth. The Second Commandment makes this clear: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth…”(Deut. 5:8; cf. Ex. 20:4; Is. 51:6). The lower tier of this three-story universe is identified as water in other passages: “God spread out the earth upon the waters” (Ps. 136:6); and “he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers” (Ps. 24:2). If the waters below the earth are simply springs,(23) then one would have a hard time making sense of the prohibition of making images of the mostly microscopic creatures found in such waters. The biblical authors are definitely thinking of the great fishes and monsters of “the deep” itself. The fertility goddesses of the land and the seas were Yahweh’s principal rivals.
Some evangelicals claim that the author of Job believed that the earth was suspended in empty space: “The shades below tremble, the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God. He stretches out the north over the void, and hangs the earth upon nothing” (26:5-7). The first thing that can be said here is that the context is not one of God’s creation (which comes next at vv. l0-l4 following the cosmology above), but one of God’s threat of destruction. Second, none of the ancients, except for possibly the Greek atomists, had any notion of empty space. The Hebrew words for “void” and “nothingness” have parallel uses in many Old Testament passages and generally refer to a watery chaos (Gen. 1:1; Jer. 4:23; Is. 40:17, 23). Therefore we must conclude, as does Marvin H. Pope, that Job does not have the Pythagorean notion of the earth suspended in space.(24) Oceans, not empty space, surround the Hebrew world.
Although it sounds odd at first, the rabbinic idea that the sky-dome was made of congealed water makes eminent sense in terms of creation out of watery chaos. This doctrine, and not creatio ex nihilo, is the prima facie implication of Genesis 1:1; and the scholarly consensus is that this initial impression is indeed correct.(25) Hebrews 11:3–“that which is seen was made out of things which do not appear”–has been used for centuries as the main scriptural support for creation out of nothing. G. W. Buchanan has now shown that this was very tenuous indeed: “The author’s concern for the unseen was not primarily that which was invisible or intangible, but that which was future, that which had not yet happened. It was a concept of time rather than of substance or essence.”(26) One passage is never mentioned in arguments for creatio ex nihilo: “Ages ago I Sophia was set up…before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths (tehom) I was brought forth…”(Prov. 8:23-24). Here there seems to be a clean break with previous creation models: watery chaos is not a coeternal substance along with Yahweh and Sophia, his co-craftsperson.
Creatio ex nihilo represents yet another parting of the ways between process and evangelical views. The process theologians of course reject God as absolute power and support Whitehead’s own version of creation out of chaos. In contrast to all traditional views, the process God does not create the universe at one point in time nor does this God create it continuously throughout all time; rather, God prepares “initial aims” for an essentially self-creating universe. This brilliant and unorthodox separation of “creativity” from God gives sufficient independence to the world so that certain devastating implications of creatio ex nihilo are avoided. Specifically, I have argued elsewhere that such a doctrine of creation leads to the unavoidable imputation of all evil to God. See www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/3dp.htm. Sec. E.
There is yet another problem with creatio ex nihilo. With regard to theological language, its proponents have only the via negativa, for as William T. Jones has phrased it, “God’s creativity and man’s have nothing in common but the name.”(27) In contrast some process theologians follow the via eminentia, so that the term “creativity” is used univocally for both God and creatures. Charles Hartshorne expresses this crucial aspect of a process doctrine of creation well: “Creativity, if real at all, must be universal, not limited to God alone, and it must be self-creativity as well as creative influencing of others.”(28)
THE WATERS ABOVE AND BELOW
In her new translation of the Rig-veda, Wendy O’Flaherty says that the ancient Hindus believed that “the earth was spread upon the cosmic waters” and that these primeval oceans “surrounded heaven and earth, separating the dwelling-place of men and gods….”(19) After the sky fell in on the Celts, the next event they feared was that the seas would come rushing in from all directions.(20) In the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, the sky is made from the body of Tiamat, the goddess of watery chaos. The victorious god Marduk splits “her like a shellfish into two parts: half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, pulled down the bar and posted guards. He bade them to allow not her waters to escape.”
In Genesis 1:1 we find the linguistic equivalent of Tiamat in the Hebrew word tehom (“the deep”), and the threat of watery chaos is ever present in the Old Testament. Evangelical F. F. Bruce agrees that “tehom is probably cognate with Tiamat,” and Clark Pinnock admits that Yahweh also “quite plainly…fought with a sea monster” and that the model of the battle is a Babylonian one.(22) The psalmists describe it in graphic terms: “By thy power thou didst cleave the sea-monster in two, and broke the dragon’s heads above the waters; thou didst crush the many-headed Leviathan, and threw him to the sharks for food” (Ps. 74:13-14 NEB; cf. Job 3:8; Isa. 27:1).
The firmament separates the waters from the waters, so that there is water above the heavens (Ps. l48:4) and water below the earth. The Second Commandment makes this clear: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth…”(Deut. 5:8; cf. Ex. 20:4; Is. 51:6). The lower tier of this three-story universe is identified as water in other passages: “God spread out the earth upon the waters” (Ps. 136:6); and “he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers” (Ps. 24:2). If the waters below the earth are simply springs,(23) then one would have a hard time making sense of the prohibition of making images of the mostly microscopic creatures found in such waters. The biblical authors are definitely thinking of the great fishes and monsters of “the deep” itself. The fertility goddesses of the land and the seas were Yahweh’s principal rivals.
Some evangelicals claim that the author of Job believed that the earth was suspended in empty space: “The shades below tremble, the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God. He stretches out the north over the void, and hangs the earth upon nothing” (26:5-7). The first thing that can be said here is that the context is not one of God’s creation (which comes next at vv. l0-l4 following the cosmology above), but one of God’s threat of destruction. Second, none of the ancients, except for possibly the Greek atomists, had any notion of empty space. The Hebrew words for “void” and “nothingness” have parallel uses in many Old Testament passages and generally refer to a watery chaos (Gen. 1:1; Jer. 4:23; Is. 40:17, 23). Therefore we must conclude, as does Marvin H. Pope, that Job does not have the Pythagorean notion of the earth suspended in space.(24) Oceans, not empty space, surround the Hebrew world.
Although it sounds odd at first, the rabbinic idea that the sky-dome was made of congealed water makes eminent sense in terms of creation out of watery chaos. This doctrine, and not creatio ex nihilo, is the prima facie implication of Genesis 1:1; and the scholarly consensus is that this initial impression is indeed correct.(25) Hebrews 11:3–“that which is seen was made out of things which do not appear”–has been used for centuries as the main scriptural support for creation out of nothing. G. W. Buchanan has now shown that this was very tenuous indeed: “The author’s concern for the unseen was not primarily that which was invisible or intangible, but that which was future, that which had not yet happened. It was a concept of time rather than of substance or essence.”(26) One passage is never mentioned in arguments for creatio ex nihilo: “Ages ago I Sophia was set up…before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths (tehom) I was brought forth…”(Prov. 8:23-24). Here there seems to be a clean break with previous creation models: watery chaos is not a coeternal substance along with Yahweh and Sophia, his co-craftsperson.
Creatio ex nihilo represents yet another parting of the ways between process and evangelical views. The process theologians of course reject God as absolute power and support Whitehead’s own version of creation out of chaos. In contrast to all traditional views, the process God does not create the universe at one point in time nor does this God create it continuously throughout all time; rather, God prepares “initial aims” for an essentially self-creating universe. This brilliant and unorthodox separation of “creativity” from God gives sufficient independence to the world so that certain devastating implications of creatio ex nihilo are avoided. Specifically, I have argued elsewhere that such a doctrine of creation leads to the unavoidable imputation of all evil to God. See www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/3dp.htm. Sec. E.
There is yet another problem with creatio ex nihilo. With regard to theological language, its proponents have only the via negativa, for as William T. Jones has phrased it, “God’s creativity and man’s have nothing in common but the name.”(27) In contrast some process theologians follow the via eminentia, so that the term “creativity” is used univocally for both God and creatures. Charles Hartshorne expresses this crucial aspect of a process doctrine of creation well: “Creativity, if real at all, must be universal, not limited to God alone, and it must be self-creativity as well as creative influencing of others.”(28)