Was chaos the initial state of the earth at creation?
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Most English-language Bibles begin with "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth," although the first three Hebrew words of Genesis are: "בראשית ברא אלהים" (B'reishit bara Elohim). There is no definite article and the grammar is complex, if not confusing, but there is a general consensus among scholars that this can not be translated correctly as "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth" - for example, Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, page 27. Some believe the earth was pre-existing, and the beginning of God's creation was the firmament that separates the waters above from the waters below. In the 'Gap theory', others see God as creating the earth and then, for some reason, allowing a time gap before beginning to create other things. Apart from this, the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a seems orderly and unchaotic, although the precise order of creation would be surprising to a scientist.
Digressing for a moment, we find that other cultures in the ancient Near East did believe that chaos accompanied the creation and that chaos monsters had to be conquered, especially Leviathan. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, in Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, page 43, explains that Baal was acclaimed in Canaan as victor over Litanu / Leviathan. In the Book of Job, we find that God was the victor over Leviathan. These creation fragments in Job (and in Psalms 74:14, 104:26) do not invalidate the creation account in Genesis chapter 1.
The creation story in Genesis chapter 1 need not be regarded as a literal story and indeed was not seen this way by some of the early Christian Church Fathers, who regarded it as an allegory. For example, Origen (De Principiis, Book 4.1.16):
... as even these do not contain throughout a pure history of events, which are interwoven indeed according to the letter, but which did not actually occur. Nor even do the law and the commandments wholly convey what is agreeable to reason. For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that any one doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally...
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