Contemptuoso

1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

I'm sure you are familiar with the idea of spirit being a reference to breath. Do you think that this verse is an attempt to explain tides and waves?

spin

I don't think physical world explanations were central to the story -- especially when you think of Jerusalem and its surrounding territory were totally landlocked for most of its history.

The word for "spirit" is the same as "wind".

There are some strange but interesting parallels with the Babylonian creation myth recorded in the text "Enuma Elish", which tells of the god Marduk (just like Yahweh's parallel at Ugarit) who fought the watery chaos dragon called Tiamat (called tehom, "the deep", in Gen 1:2, it's basically the same word). In order to defeat Tiamat Marduk used a wind to hold her mouth open so that he could thrust his sword in and kill her. So we don't get the gory details in 1:2, we just have the deep and the wind and the god. Then we get the aftermath, when the god slits her (the waters) in two and lifts half up to the sky and creates out of the remaining part.

So, as I understand it, the wind (spirit) should be read in this literary cultural context.


spin

Thomas II

I don't see wind as "the spirit of God" moving over the face of the water...
The "Spirit of God" in this context means ELECTRICITY,a storm,with lightning.
Water and electricity is a very powerful combination for the development of life...

spin

The text says rwx )lhym and the word rwx needs to be interpreted in English as it means "wind/spirit/breath".

Obviously, given the significance of the term rwx, this "scientificating" interpretation has little to do with the Hebrew text.


spin

Thomas II

I don't know where to begin there is so much about this...Let's see...Check this out:

http://www.gnosis-usa.com/index.php?...=173&Itemid=66

spin

Certainly not there. Retrojections are no help with dealing with what a text means. We start with information available to the time of writing, hence I made the comparison with the Enuma Elish. Mediaeval Jewish speculation has no use for understanding Genesis in its context. You need to go to possible contexts for a work not to people's thoughts well after the fact -- these latter have no direct relation to the text at all.


spin