7: Ep. 7 - The Deep

When the heavens above did not exist, and earth beneath had not come into being, there was Apsu, the first in order, their begetter, and Tiamat, who gave birth to them all.

They had mingled their waters together before meadowland had coalesced.

and reed bed was to be found, when not one of the gods had been formed or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed.

These are the first lines of the ancient Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, one of the oldest written stories in the world.

It is the story of the creation of the universe and human beings.

And this story says that in the beginning, there was only water swirling in chaos.

And out of this swirling chaos, the waters divided into sweet, fresh water, the god Apsu, and salty, bitter water, the goddess Tiamat.

Once they were differentiated, Tiamat and Apsu mingled their waters together and their union gave birth to the younger gods, the lands, and eventually human beings.

It's a long epic tale that tells the story of this great Babylonian god, Marduk's victory over the forces of chaos and his establishment of order at the creation of the world.

Later, this creation epic would be echoed by ancient Hebrew scribes in the book of Genesis, the story that we hear today.

In both of these creation stories, Enuma Elish and the first part of Genesis, a deity brings order out of watery chaos in order to create the world.

In fact, this narrative of creation arising out of the original chaotic waters is very common across cultures.

Ancient Egyptian myths describe this dark, endless primordial waters from which the first mound of dry land emerges, sparking the creation of the sun god and then the whole world.

In ancient India, the Rig Veda and other ancient Vedic texts say there was a vast cosmic ocean.

In one version, a golden egg arises from the waters to birth the creator God, Prajapati.

In another version, the gods endlessly churn this ancient milky ocean of consciousness in order to obtain the nectar of immortality.

In China, there are origin stories of a kind of cosmic egg floating in a cosmic sea.

The light, clear elements of the egg rise to become the heavens while the heavy parts sink down to form the earth.

The Iroquois cosmovision tells of a world completely covered in water, where the animals work together to help a divine woman named Sky Woman to safely land on the back of a giant turtle, creating the world as we know it.

And there are many, many more creation stories out of the primordial sea.

So the story we hear today from Genesis 1 emerges from this broader mythic context and specifically draws upon this Babylonian creation epic of Enuma Elish.

But while Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 have many parallels, they are actually more different than they are similar in some theologically meaningful ways.