Understanding Tohu wa-Bohu of Bereshit, obviously Genesis 1:2 and modern nothingness.

[Skovand1075]

Tohu wa-Bohu , Primordial Elements and Creatio ex Nihilo | Semantic Scholar

That’s a link to an article with 30+ relevant cited papers. Some good books that really exhausts this subject is “ The Lost World of Genesis 1 “by John Walton ,
“The Bible & Ancient Science: Principles of Interpretation” by Denis Lamoureux and even Richard Friedman’s “ commentary on the Torah touches up on this. Tim Mackie, another old testament scholar , also dives pretty deep into this on his podcast “ The Bible Project “ in this series which is free and roughly 7-8 hours long broken up into several episodes. Genesis 1 and the Origins of the Universe Podcast | BibleProject™


While the scriptures are profitable for everyone, not everyone will be able to grasp the nuances and depths it Carrie’s within. Many have a very plain reading of scriptures. Just enough to satisfy the reading a child may do. But this well crafted verse within this amazingly inspired text comes with one major drawback for modern Christians. It was written for and to ancient Jewish people. They had a very different concept of their world then we do. They had a ancient near eastern understanding of cosmology and we have a very modern one.

For example when we think of nothingness, of everything disappearing except us we imagine a Hollywood style set where someone is running around aimlessly in a 2d white or black room. But for ancient Mesopotamians, especially Jews, nothingness was what they called Tohu wa-bohu which we usually translate as formless and void.

So nothingness to ancient Jewish men and women was just a deep dark ocean as far as you can see with dark clouds as well. That’s why you never see what day water was created. It was considered chaos.

Thoughts?

 

[Windmillcharge]

For example when we think of nothingness, of everything disappearing except us we imagine a Hollywood style set where someone is running around aimlessly in a 2d white or black room. But for ancient Mesopotamians, especially Jews, nothingness was what they called Tohu wa-bohu which we usually translate as formless and void.

Actually because science shows that the universe has a begining, atheist are terrified of the idea that a begining require a cause and a cause from total nothing is supernatural, which implies God.
So thanks to a belief in ' quantum ' they suggest that nothing was not nothing.

 

[Skovand1075]

Actually because science shows that the universe has a begining, atheist are terrified of the idea that a begining require a cause and a cause from total nothing is supernatural, which implies God.
So thanks to a belief in ' quantum ' they suggest that nothing was not nothing.

When you say actually as your opening statement it sounds as if you are disagreeing and correcting something I’ve stated. This post is not about atheism or science from a modern perspective. It’s about what genesis 1:2 meant for the Jewish nation.

 

[BeyondET]

Yea alot of things were basic in those days. if there was dark clouds for a week forget about knowing the time, that must of been a hassle, sundial in the day time counting stars at night if the weather was good.

Nothingness today is full of atomic particles lol.

 

[Skovand1075]

Yea alot of things were basic in those days. if there was dark clouds for a week forget about knowing the time, that must of been a hassle, sundial in the day time counting stars at night if the weather was good.

Nothingness today is full of atomic particles lol.

It’s definitely one of the things many people forget now days. They try to map their modern concepts into these ancient ones. They erroneously practice concordism instead of accommodation.

For example when we say earth we think it the globe. We know earth is spherical and we know of all the other nations and continents. We think of earth as from a satellite’s eye view. The ancient Jewish people not. When they thought of the earth, they were envisioning this circle. A sort of flat plate that essentially had all the land mass together. There was not Americas , Australia and so on. So when something said “ whole earth “ it was a very different image in their mind then when we say whole earth. For a fact the word earth meant the lands for them.

 

[Skovand1075]

Has anyone else here looked into ancient cosmology and compared their understanding of the world to ours and how it could reshape a reading of genesis?