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  • From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew list" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Tehom: Divine or Not Divine?
  • Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 03:30:20 +0000

On 7/11/06, Joel Stucki <joel AT stucki.ws> wrote:

I don't think anyone can rightly argue against monotheism in
the Genesis account and I certainly hope no one thinks my
earlier comments are suggesting that.

Dear Joel, and all,

I agree. But in order to draw a more careful line about whether
Tehom is simply a word that means "Deep", undivinized from
its origins, or whether Tehom is a reference to a god, I think it
would be best to suggest how the Genesis account may be
interpreted.

Suppose today you were called Moses and had a revelation from
God. God might say, "Listen, the Big Bang theory the scientists
are speaking of is generally right. However, let me show you my
part of it." God would describe the process in much the way it is
described in astronomical texts (see for example:
http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/astr103/Topics-Extrasolar/Beginning-N.html
) but explaining his part in the process. At the most basic level,
we might learn from this revelation that the process was directed
and guided by God. Now suppose, that 1000 years from now,
theories of the Creation are much more developed, some of the
events before Planck time can be further described, and some
other events are known to take place probably a little differently
than described in current models, because of involved experiments
that showed results inconsistent with the models. Would the
revelation of God given today be wrong because God described
his part in the process in terms of the current model? The
question is what God was out to tell us. God probably did not
want to get into involved discussions of the physics involved,
nor of events that can only be described using advanced
mathematics that we had not yet developed. The revelation of
God is not to be measured in the details of what happened in
the period of 10^-41 second, but rather what God added or
changed from the currently accepted model of creation. It
would be wrong for someone in 1000 years to claim that the
physical theories developed by that time are wrong and the
exact details of the divine revelation are inerrant simply
because God used terms and concepts that made sense to
us today but are out of date in 1000 years.

There are of course other ways to interpret a divine
revelation, but this is one of them, and it paves the way to
seeing how a revelation can be given in the context of a
borrowing of a cosmogony. Such a method of interpretation
also places a different emphasis on the study. In order to
understand the revelation, we must understand what was
borrowed, and how it was changed. While this may have
been common knowledge to Israelites in Biblical times, it
is much less so today.

Karl and George have suggested that the usage of the word
Tehom in the Bible shows that it is not a divine name in
Hebrew. While some usages may indeed indicate a
"de-mythologized" meaning, others are ambiguous and also
suggestive of divine interpretation:

Isa 51:9-10 - this text is clearly suggestive of a divine fight
between God and the chaotic Sea, comparable to Marduk
vs. Tiamat, or Ba(l vs. Yam. It is hard to see the mention
of either Yam or Tehom Rabbah in this verse as a reference
to non-personalized or even non-divine forces.

Gen 49:25 The parallelism $mym/thwm immediately
follows )l )byk/$dy, which is clearly a divine

Deut 33:13 A similar parallelism to the last example, but
here, while various words can be interpreted as divinities, it
appears the implication is of regular nouns, and there is no
other reason to read this as a diety.

Ps 104:6 - Here, we find Tehom in parallelism with mym. So
perhaps on the face of it, we do not find any direct reference
to a diety. But in 104:25-26, the Sea/Yam, which starts out
being described naturally, is described in the end of the verse
as Leviathan. Leviathan is almost exclusively refered to not
as a natural manifestation but as a creature with a proper
name, and Ps 74:14 seems to describe the fight between God
and the Sea very clearly, while Isa 27:1 alludes to a similar
fight. One gets the impression that while Ps 104 describes
Yam in natural terms, it is not because it is de-mythologizing
Yam, but rather, it is expanding on Yam, using the term
as both a divine term when comparing to Leviathan, and a
natural term, when compared to the great size of the sea. If
Yam is so described, it would be hard to suggest that Tehom
is not also so described. Because there is no outright
comparison, this text has to be taken as ambiguous, however.

These examples suggest that while Tehom may be used in
some places in the Bible as a natural term, it is used in others
as a reference to the diety itself. The most obvious example
from the above is Isa 51, of course. Significantly, Isa 51 and
Ps 104, which provide evidence that Tehom was viewed as a
diety or at least not entirely in natural terms (as far as 104),
are also cosmogonies. Context and genre appear to play an
important role -- just like one could describe the sun in plain
terms and refer to just the plain sun in many texts and yet in
certain texts refer to a Sun god, when that context requires it,
so too here, Tehom appears to be used as a natural term, like
the word Yam, except those places where the context allows
for a divine interpretation. Cosmogonies are definitely such
examples. While $amayim may usually used as a natural
term, examples such as Job 28:12-13 suggest that a
parallelism with $mym does not deny the meaning as the
great Chaotic Sea god that God vanquished in bringing
order to the world.

In Genesis 1, therefore, one finds the text as it is now
ambiguous. Tehom could refer to a deity, it is at the proper
place, and comparison with other ANE cosmogonies suggests
that Tehom in this place in a cosmogony is a deity, but the
resistance to use diety names when describing the planets as
well as the rather monotheistic representation of the story
suggests God may suggest the other way around. But if so,
why did the author, which probably was not ignorant of the
representation of Tehom in divine terms both in other ANE
cultures and in his own culture (such as in Isa 51), use the
word Tehom? In fact, since Shamayim is an otherwise
relatively natural word and one used often to compare with
Tehom, why did the author not speak of Shamayim? It
would even have made more sense in the context of the
verse since Shamayim were created in verse 1, and the
previous part of verse 2 described the )arec. Why take a
word that has rather obvious divine connotations in
this particular textual context, and use it instead of more
natural words, especially when you go out of your way to
describe the Sun and the Moon, which are natural terms
as well?

It is at this point that the differences in interpretation of
a cosmogony such as Genesis become more obvious.
While an interpretation which suggests Genesis was a
new revelation describing in detail the steps and details
of creation may find it hard to explain such a usage,
except to attempt to deny it, an interpretation that
suggests Genesis was based on creation accounts of
the time, and that the revelation is to be found not in
the details, but in the changes from those accounts,
can explain the presence of Tehom as something that
wasn't changed from the earlier accounts. Rather, the
use of other terms such as Ma)or for Sun and Moon
may suggest that here the word Tehom, while not
changed from previous accounts must be still read in
a new context.

Yitzhak Sapir
http://toldot.blogspot.com




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