The Translation

A portion of a letter:

(I’ve avoided including links in the following due to emails with links sometimes being sent to spam folders. For much of this I used the Biblehub online compilation of the Brown Driver Briggs, Englishman’s, NAS, and Strongs Concordance)

The word Bohu is used only three times in the entirety of the Hebrew Scripture, each time alongside the word Tohu. These three instances are:

1. Jeremiah 4:23. The passage describes a mountain quaking, the light of the sky being blotted out, and all animal life fleeing as the land is turned to desolation.
2. Isaiah 34:11. The passage involves an eternally smoking pitch of brimstone with streams of molten stone uninhabitable by humans.

With volcanoes and lava in mind, this is the third:

“In the beginning Elohim created the Heavens and the Earth. And the earth was tohu v bohu. And there was darkness upon the surface of the deep. And a wind of Elohim flew over the surface of the water and Elohim said “let there (or it) be light.” And there was light.”

The “deep” here is ocean water, which later in the seven day text fish will swim in.

The text clarifies that darkness is “upon the surface” of the deep water. This leaves open the possibility of light being beneath the surface.

Where molten earth is.

The Hebrew Scripture contain a famous passage of the parting of waters – consider this passage the parting of waters by wind to allow light to reach and illuminate the surface.

There is also a famous passage of a man on a quaking mountain with fire on top that has smoke ascending from it “like a furnace.”

There were active volcanoes and volcanic fields in the ancient near east and those on and around the trade route between budding Greek empires and huge northern African ones with giant pyramids had certainly heard of volcanoes.

This rendering help explains the language of the first day of the text…including how light is present in the text prior to stars and the sun.

I would like to talk to you about this – and also what happens to the Seven Day Text when Tohu v Bohu is translated as “molten lava.”

The first day of the text is ocean water on lava.

The second day is when Shamayim is formed. I’d ask you to consider an ancient theory regarding the formation of the atmosphere: ocean water on molten rock, creating steam.

Shamayim is what dew comes from multiple times in the first 5 books of the scripture.

Birds are in it like fish in the sea (Zeph 1:3). Birds fly “upon it” (al) and are “of the” (ha) in the Seven Day Text itself.

As Oxford Professor John Day has written it can validly be translated as “the air” (and is at points by the King James translation).

As stated in the Seven Day Text, Shamayim is synonymous to the word Rakia. Rakia is from a root meaning to spread out, translated by many including the Jewish Publication Society as “the expanse.”

Nowhere in the entirety of the scripture is the word Rakia used to describe a “solid dome in the sky.”

There are waters below the shamayim in oceans, lakes, and streams. There is upper waters in clouds (the originally unvowelled “me’al” (above) could also be vowelled as “ma’al” the upper part of).

Clouds in Hebrew is Shakakim. This is from a root meaning “to pulverize to a dust” implying the small water particles in them.

Jeremiah 51 describes their formation via evaporation – watching mists rising – and their thunder as “water rumbling.” Job 37 describes the formation of “powerful clouds” (shakakim hazakim) via calm, hot, heat (the calm before the storm). These swirling thunderclouds are blown away by the wind.

Shamayim comes from the Akkadian word Samu, constructed Sa = of, the one of and Mu = water, dew, bodily secretions. The protosemetic root Samay is constructed the same way and is associated with height because it’s the sky.

Samu was a sky god in some ancient near eastern cultures and is linguistically traceable back to An/Anu of the Sumarians. An / Anu was the Father Sky of the Sumerians, and they and their Cuniform Dinger turned into Samu. It was the Cuniform for both the Father Sky and the Sky itself. (Source: the Association Assyriophyle d’France online Akkadian dictionary and the Wikipedia for Anu and Dinger)

Anu had a partner. A Mother Earth named Ki. Ki and Her Cuniform turned into Arsatum and Ersetu in Akkadian, which had connotations of feminine divinity, and they turned into Aretz.

On the third day of the text Aretz reaches the surface of the water. It is now in a state of yabasha, from a root connected to dried pottery.

Consider a culture whose most sacred moment involves a person standing in a volcanic mountains view of continental formation might be.

That same cultures notion of pregnancy was musculine liquid in a female body.

On the third day shamayim, credited elsewhere for dew leading to harvests, and Aretz touch.

Plants are formed.

Mother Earth. Father Sky. (A conception so fundamental to ancient human observation of nature and reproduction that many First Nations in what is now North America shared similar a notion.)

The seven day week we know coming from Sumeria. The words Aretz and Shamayim we know having links back to their Mother Earth and Father Sky.

The order of creation is Mother Earth and Father Sky, ocean life and birds (consider ancients finding raptor dinosaur fossils), creeping things, land animals, and then people. Of all things a creation myth could write the evolutionary order is basically correct – and Bara (created) is used only involving this process. (The sun and stars, for instance, are “made.” Evolved is a valid translation of Bara in this text)

The text concludes with the line “these are the Toldot of shamayim and aretz.” Toldot from the root meaning “to give birth” and meaning family, children, or generations.

Some more really interesting things include: the word “merachaphet” (flew) on the first day to describe Elohims wind soaring over the water is connected to the syriac “brood / fertilize” as masculine mayim is on feminine aretz. It is a rarely used word in scripture, notably a passage credited to Moses of a bird over their nest.

With “eggs” in mind another neat thing is that the term “pillar” as in “pillar of the earth” (matsuq) comes from a root meaning to melt. Please consider this in terms of the Mother Earth / Father Sky concept I’ve written of, of eggs, and of a molten core. The term matsuq for “pillar of the earth” is used only a single time in all of scripture (Samuel 2:8). It is highly likely some ancients considered the earth round, like an egg.

The fact Shamayim is masculine grammatical tense and Aretz feminine tense in the sense Mother Earth / Father Sky concept indicates the tense itself has “meaning.”

To my knowledge this is the earliest indication of where masculine / feminine tense originating from might come from. Billions speak languages with masculine and feminine gender today.

Elohim is a plural word meaning “gods.” We know that Shemesh, Yam, Aretz, and Shamayim all were considered separate divinity in cultures prior and surrounding the Israelites. We also know the seven day tradition comes out of Sumeria – and the scriptural Abraham is said to come from former Sumerian / Akkadian territory (Ur). The text includes the line “Let US” make humans in “OUR” likeness (tzelem – image, likeness, stuff of as in a figurine).

Elohim is also interesting when considering Yahweh. El genetically means “a god” and the Cuniform dinger for the Sumerian Father Sky also is connected to the word “to” as in “I’m talking to you.” El also means “to” in Hebrew. Ehyeh and Yahweh both sound like a breath of air, carried via shamayim, via a root HYH associated with “being / existing” itself. For this reason Yahweh might have been associated with male divinity and the “talking god” as shamayim carried verbal communication on it. “Wind” (ruach) on day one also can mean breath.

Also neat is Bereshis literally translates “inside the head / top / first feminine.” Job, considered one of the earliest writings, contains a passage with references to the seven day text that includes both a primordial womb from which all water gushes forth from, as well as mists forming clouds.

Super interesting also. The Chinese Diand Tseun / Tian (pronounced like “an”) are ancient words for earth and heaven / sky respectively in Chinese and key concepts in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. Their combination, written in English as Shangdi, is the highest of all divine concepts in that religious tradition. Given Sumer being the first written language and its proximity to what is now China and use of a Cuniform / Symbolic script it is not surprising that such a connection can be found in China.

It is neat as well that the text essentially is “sealed.” Elohim created the world, said people are the caretakers of the place (acknowledging free will and freedom), said plants are a gift to eat but not saying other animals are, and then retires. There is no day 8. So far as we know, in context of the story, Elohim retired and the text could be called the retirement story.

As for how this translation could have gotten “lost.”

There’s a few reasonable ideas as to how.

The first is that the Yahwist Cult was, no doubt, very sexist. They blamed, for instance, the origins of evil on women (Eve) and held it acceptable Yahweh punished all women forever with dangerous and painful pregnancy as childbirth as punishment. They claimed that a singular, male, god was preeminent and that women were the property of males. It is possible the seven day week, and the sabbath, and some form of this text was so ingrained in the region and their own Hebrew community that they could not totally do away with it while establishing their masculine monotheistic cult. So, they “wrote out” the other gods in the text, changing most (but not all) of the verb tenses to masculine singular. Over time mere suggestion of other forms of divinity could have been considered heretical and extremely dangerous, and eventually it was forgotten completely. The “us” and “our” is highly relevant in questioning this theory though. Interestingly in Eve and Adam plant life is also credited to mists covering earth.

Another could be over the course of multiple exiles and massacres that occurred to the Ancient Israelites it could have been lost – for instance in the aftermath of the Bar Kokbha revolt nearly all Hebrew knowledgeable clergy and ancient academia were killed by Emporer Hadrian, who tried to totally destroy any remnant of the Hebrew culture.

Regarding the “Rakia” being a “solid dome / firmament” idea…it’s fascinating. Nowhere in the entirety of the scripture is a solid dome in the sky referenced. In Job 37 swirling shakakim hazakim (powerful clouds) that are blown away by the wind, and formed by hot heat, are sometimes translated as being a “hard mirror.” A better translation is they look like bubbling molten metal, or they had the appearance of an ancient mirror that would likely be dark, have bubbled imperfections, and not appear anything like the mirrors you might see at a local modern department store. Another passage is sometimes translated Rakia as being like a “tent” but the word itself is connected to veils, implying the “misty” nature of shamayim. There are a couple passages about the “windows” of Shamayim opening and rain falling but the scripture is full of figures of speech and mannerisms.

What is so interesting is some other cultures, some very powerful and dangerous, did have a notion of a solid dome in their cosmology. This does not mean the Israelites shared it – and it could have been very very dangerous to oppose such an idea. In both Job 37 and in Jeremiah 51 – which describes clouds formed via evaporation – we see mockery of the idea of a solid dome. Job mocks those who don’t know how clouds are formed while describing their formation through hot heat (evaporation), and Jeremiah 51 after describing clouds forming via “mists rising” immediately transitions to bashing metalsmiths and metal idols.

Rakia, as a root meaning to spread out, was indeed used in relation to the beating out of a metal in mettalurgy. It’s very possible ancient writers of the Hebrew used the word, obscure to outsiders language, to give plausible deniability that they thought the idea of a metal dome as…something to be mocked, as it cleverly is in both Job 37 wordplay and in Jeremiah 51.

This too could have been lost along the way – particularly during exiles and massacres as mentioned above.

Once lost? Galileo spent the last 9 years of his life under house arrest, and was nearly killed after a long trial, for saying we revolve around the sun. That’s due to how religious authorities read this text. For thousands of years no one has knew of Ki and An and even suggesting time prior to the Scripture was extremely dangerous. There was no online Biblehub, no Wikipedia, no email to share it even if found. The lexicons are less than 100 years old. A tiny amount of people knew any Biblical Hebrew and even less studied it in an academic manner, which is still the case. Prior to the internet, even 30 years ago, some of this knowledge would require very specific knowledge in very specific libraries that many would not have access to.

And nowadays the truth is that in a city of a few million people, the large majority of which practice some form of so called Abrahamic religion, a member of the public can audit two semesters of Tuesday / Thursday evening Biblical Hebrew at the university for the price of a few football tickets and…there are 5 people in the class. There are millions and billions of people who are Abrahamically religious, and even more who live in a seven day week structured largely because of this text, and the truth is a tiny tiny tiny number of people ever actually study it carefully in the original language.

Thank you for reading – and feel free to discuss the information with your peers at Oxford. I am quite sure the students there would also love to take it on.

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My reading is that based on humans free will what Elohim meant by it’s all very good is that this creation is as good as they could do, that they put it their best effort with good intentions, and it’s better than nothing…the line does not that all that people do is good or that bad things that happen to good people is good.

Fun fact Anu means We in Hebrew.