Introduction
As Christians, we are all creationists and believe in God's intelligent design. We believe in one God, who, by the power of his spoken Word (Greek: Logos; G3056, "logical definition of absolute cosmic truth") alone, made the heavens and the earth "out of nothing" (Latin: ex nihilo). He formed the world from inanimate chaos, a disorganized mess of primordial matter. This contrasts with ancient Near Eastern creation accounts where a deity fought with and slew a godlike chaos monster. For example, in the Enuma Elish—a pagan myth from Babylon—Marduk defeated the cosmic serpent Tiamat and divided her carcass into heaven and earth. However, in Genesis, there is only one God, and he separated the non-living, chaotic tehom (H8415, "deep sea;" v. 2)—a Hebrew cognate of the Babylonian tiamat—into the waters above and below the dome (vv. 6-7). Therefore, Genesis is a monotheistic correction of pagan myths from other Near Eastern cultures. The prophet Isaiah revisited this cosmic chaos monster theme when he wrote, "In that day, the LORD will punish with his sword—his fierce, great and powerful sword—Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; he will slay the monster of the sea" (27:1). Furthermore, the Jews were never a great maritime nation like the Greeks because they associated water with chaos.
When Moses recorded Genesis, he presented the Word that God spoke not as a magical spell but as the equivalent of scientific law (e.g., gravity, thermodynamics). In his gospel, John son of Zebedee wrote that Jesus is this divine Logos in the very form of God incarnate (1:1-5). He derived this meaning from Greek and Jewish sources (e.g., Heraclitus, Aristotle, Plato, Philo) that defined Logos philosophically and theologically as the ruling order of the universe. This contrasts with the myth of Ptah; for example, the ancient Egyptians believed he created the world with a spell that all pagans could use to harness his primordial power. This bolsters the etymological meaning of "Egypt[ah]," from the Greek pronunciation Aiguptos (G125) of the Egyptian name Hwt-Ka-Ptah (lit. "Mansion of the Spirit of Ptah"), originally given to the city of Memphis. Whereas some biblical scholars say the Israelites borrowed from other Near Eastern literature, their familiarity with it came as correction, neither flattery nor respect.
Sea of Galilee: Creation Revisited
For those commentators who doubt that the synoptic gospel writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke intended to portray the "historical Jesus" as the cosmic "Christ of faith," look no further than their accounts of when he calmed a windstorm on the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias or Lake Kinneret (see Matt. 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25). Jesus reveals himself as the Word, the divine Logos, who, with mere speech—"Quiet! Be still!"—restores order to a chaotic, watery depth. When Jesus and his apostles set out on the Sea of Galilee, torrential rains opposed them. This was no small windstorm, as the Greek text called it a seismos (G4578, "shake," "commotion," or "tempest"), from which the English word "seismic" derives. Jesus had fallen asleep on the boat while the apostles feared they were about to capsize and drown in these hurricane-force winds and violent waves. For comparison, a 1992 storm ravaged the modern lakeside Israeli city of Tiberias when a Sharkiya—a cold, dry easterly wind of hurricane force—coming off the Golan Heights at 60 miles per hour (96 kilometers per hour) caused waves between 6–10 feet (2–3 meters). In the gospel account, the Sea of Galilee became a microcosm of the Genesis creation, figuratively a "small world" (Greek: mikros, kosmos; G3398, G2889). The water shook the boat like an earthquake shakes entire cities, or how cyclones and typhoons flood whole regions, threatening to kill and destroy everything in their paths. This storm carried with it the watery, monstrous chaos of creation. The apostles wondered about all this when they asked, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!" (Mark 4:41). The very Word of God created them.
Hebrew Cosmology
Cosmology refers to the philosophical and scientific "study of the world" from the Greek words kosmos and logos. Biblical cosmology alluded to disc-shaped earth supported by foundations with pillars holding up the dome that separates the waters of heaven from the water cycle of the planet (see Gen. 1:7; 1 Sam. 2:8; Job 9:6; Isa. 40:22). There were windows in the dome that prevented the cosmic ocean of chaos from reaching the inhabited world (see Gen. 7:11). The cosmos was stable, meaning it neither rotated nor spun on an axis (see 1 Chron. 16:30; Ps. 93:1; 104:5). Instead, the Old Testament writers believed that God suspended the world in "the deep" ocean, one with edges in which he could see through a dome (see Job 28:24; 38:13; Ps. 29:10). The netherworld (Hebrew: Sheol; H7585) existed below the earth, "the grave" below the graves (see Ps. 49:14; 88:11). Basically, Hebrew cosmology likens the entire world to a type of snow globe, which may also be shaken from its pillars (see Job 9:6).
In contemporary English, we still refer to "sunrise" and "sunset" because that is how the 24-hour day/ night cycle appears from our ground-based observation points. King Solomon, the "Teacher" (Hebrew: Kohelet; H6953; see Eccl. 1:1) of Ecclesiastes, wrote, "The sun rises, and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises" (1:5). This begs the question of whether the ancient Hebrews really believed in the geocentric ("earth-centered") universe they described, or if they merely used such imagery as poetic devices. While the Old Testament leaves many of our cosmology questions open, it points to an intelligent designer: God. The Hebrew poetry in the Old Testament describes neither a geocentric nor a heliocentric ("sun-centered") universe. The central theme was God's sovereignty, a theological concern with little correlation to our scientific method.
Noahic Flood
In scripture, the worldwide flood in which God told Noah son of Lamech to build an ark to save his family is a cosmological one (see Gen. 6-9). The main takeaway from the narrative is that God saved a righteous man and his family when he released the primordial waters of chaos to destroy creation. This reversed the Genesis creation account, though God still controlled the outcome. Today, as Intelligent Design proponents, we view the Noahic flood through the lenses of history and science, while many critics dismiss it as mythological.
Coincidentally, there are over 500 deluge myths from nearly every ancient civilization, including the Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia. The Havasupai (lit., "people of the blue-green water"), a Native American tribe with a history of over 1,000 years living in the Grand Canyon, believe primordial floodwaters surged along the Colorado River to form it. Their local deluge account also mentions a benevolent deity who saved a noble person in a wooden vessel. The geological evidence of this Grand Canyon flood believed to date about 400,000 years ago, includes heavy boulders suspended more than 100 feet (30 meters) high along its walls. About the Noahic flood, researchers in 1993 discovered ancient streambeds, river-cut canyons, shorelines, land surfaces buried in seafloor sediments, and shrub roots all submerged by Black Sea mud over 7,000 years ago. This happened when the rising Mediterranean breached the Bosporus Strait and poured salt water into the then-freshwater Black Sea, which is close to the Ararat mountains of modern-day Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Iran (pictured above; see Gen. 8:4). In other words, geological evidence suggests the Noahic flood changed the Black Sea's composition from fresh to salty. So, there is evidence for floods of "biblical proportions" worldwide.
The New Testament, however, presents the Noahic flood theologically. For example, the author of Hebrews testified, "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith" (11:7). Simon Peter wrote, "God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water" (1 Pet. 3:20). Although God reversed his creation with the flood, he still rewarded Noah's faithfulness and saved him. Peter compared this to baptism, a type of death and resurrection in Christ Jesus, because the cosmic chaos ocean represented death. At the same time, the ark symbolized a transformation of new life (see 1 Pet. 3:21). Jesus himself compared his eschatological return as the Son of Man to the Noahic flood, in which most people were too concerned with their day-to-day lives to realize the world as they knew it was about to end (Matt. 24:37-38; Luke 17:26-27; cf. Dan. 7:9-14). On the last day, God will only save those who, like Noah, respond in faith.
End Times: Chaos Revisited
In Revelation, John revisited the cosmic chaos monster theme from Genesis. He wrote, "So the great dragon was thrown down. The old snake, which is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, was thrown down to the earth; and his angels were thrown down with him" (Rev. 12:9). This whole time, it was the devil who personified disorder in creation: the chaotic beast of the depths, the serpent in Eden (see Gen. 3:1-14), the sea monster Leviathan, and the great dragon at the world's end. John also applied the cosmic waters/ocean theme to the devil when he wrote:
But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth (Rev. 12:16).
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name (Rev. 13:1).
This may all sound mythological to the modern ear, not just supernatural—beyond the natural world. Revelation also takes a geocentric cosmos model for granted, similar to Genesis. Likewise, a war between God and the chaos monster threatens to destroy his creation with its lawlessness (see 2 Thess. 2:1-7). Before the millennial reign of Jesus, an angel will seize "the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years" (Rev. 20:2). Furthermore, Revelation presents a teleology (from Greek: telos; G5056, "end") of creation, a philosophical and theological definition of God's final cause, function, purpose, design, and end-goal for the world. Jesus called himself this very telos when he declared, "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (Rev. 21:6), and, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End" (22:13). Alpha (Α) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet while Omega (Ω) is the last, indicating that Jesus is the ultimate reason—Logos—for all things that exist (see John 1:1-4). He is "everything from A to Z."
Prayer
Blessed are you, LORD our God, King of the universe; you are worthy of glory and praise. At your command, all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will, they were created and had their being. You brought forth the human race from the primal elements and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the stewards of creation. But we turned against you, betrayed your trust, and turned against one another. Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight. Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages, you revealed your righteous Law. In the fullness of time, you sent your only-begotten Son, Jesus, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open the way of freedom and peace for us. By his blood, he reconciled us. By his wounds, we are healed. Therefore, we praise you, joining with the heavenly chorus, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and everyone in every generation who has looked to you in hope. Amen.
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