Why Didn't God Create Water?

[stephan happy huller]

I just heard my 6 year old repeat to someone the information he must have overheard from me somewhere - namely that the Jewish understanding is that God did not create water. It was just 'there' at the beginning of creation. I am almost certain that this understanding of the Hebrew is at the heart of the Valentinian myth of water and formless matter being pre-existent at the time of creation. This reality - i.e. that Jewish tradition understands things to have existed before creation - is often understood to be something of a 'grammatical abstraction' on the part of Rashi and other medieval scholars. The 'real God of Israel' according to these critics is supposed to be this all powerful deity who controls everything. But I don't see it that way. I really think the first Israelites who used the Pentateuch imagined their god to exist within a universe that wasn't quite his from the beginning. This sort of mirrors the role of the Israelite nation as a whole - i.e. carving out a space for themselves within a formless mass (the Promised Land). Similarly I think the nationalistic divinity of Israel wasn't conceived as the god of everyone.

I think this understanding was the starting point to Marcionitism - i.e. that the Jewish god wasn't 'God as such.' We see this in Tatian's notion of the Creator 'praying for light' in Genesis. I just wonder where in Jewish tradition you could find evidence of this 'lesser Yahweh.'

[stephan happy huller]

These things should be obvious because Moses was God [mosheh = haShem or Shemah]. But I have learned that what I think is obvious isn't always as obvious for most other people

[spin]

Given that creation itself began in Gen 1:3, when god gave his first creative commend, we look back with a correct translation of the first verse (see for example the NJPS and NRSV versions) "At the beginning of god's creation of the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and empty and darkness covered the face of the deep and the wind of god hovered over the face of the waters. And god said, let there be light...." The earth was already there as was the deep. The water was already there according to the Genesis tradition. This was the received Semitic creation story, a version of which is well-known from the Babylonian creation. In this latter version Marduk used the divine wind to hold the watery chaos dragon Tiamat's mouth open so that he could thrust his sword into it. The Hebrew "deep" is the cognate Tehom and the divine wind is there in Gen 1:2.

The creation is one of division in order to give form to the world. God divided the waters above and below. He divided the earth from the waters. The stuff was already there, just not in any usable form. Creation was a matter of overcoming Tohu wa-Bohu, waste and void, by giving form and filling the world with entities. The fact that this was not in any pure sense a creation may somehow have offended those who wanted a more cosmic creator.

[stephan happy huller]

For those who care, one of the most frequent epithets for Moses among the Samaritans is the Man of God. The Hebrew origin of the name Jesus = His Man. The only antitheses in 1 Cor 15 depend on this etymology IMO

[stephan happy huller]

Yes spin. I've never gotten anti-Marcionite claims about an all powerful Creator. It's not in the text. I think Marcionites first had to have been Jews.

[Peter Kirby]

This was the received Semitic creation story, a version of which is well-known from the Babylonian creation. In this latter version Marduk used the divine wind to hold the watery chaos dragon Tiamat's mouth open so that he could thrust his sword into it. The Hebrew "deep" is the cognate Tehom and the divine wind is there in Gen 1:2.

Thanks, spin. I guess that answers the title question.

[stephan happy huller]

But there is more to it than this. If there wasn't an all powerful Creator who was Jesus?

[Peter Kirby]

If there wasn't an all powerful Creator who was Jesus?

Jesus was just some guy, you know? (to misquote Douglas Adams)

[stephan happy huller]

Yes thank you. Again, my point here is just to say that the claims of Irenaeus (he was the first to engage in this sort of barbarism) and the later Church Fathers that Jesus = the Logos = the Creator = 'the all powerful One god of the universe' doesn't make any sense if you actually look at Genesis unless his crucifixion somehow represented an acknowledge of his failure. The god who made the world wasn't all powerful.

I have always thought the Shema has been stripped out of its original context. It is now interpreted as being a creed for 'absolute monotheism' when in fact we know that Alexandrian Jews like Philo had Deuteronomy 6:4-9 but nevertheless maintained an understanding - indeed an ancient tradition - that there was a plurality of powers in heaven and that the greatest god of them all never revealed himself directly to Israel.

[andrewcriddle]

In the Book of Jubilees for example God does create water (and everything else)

For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before Him--the angels 2 of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, 3 and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, 4 and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, 5 and the angels of the voices 6 and of the thunder and of the lightning, 7 and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer, 8 and of all the spirits of His creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide (and night), and the light, dawn and day, which He hath prepared in the knowledge of His heart. 3. And thereupon we saw His works, and praised Him, and lauded before Him on account of all His works; for seven great works did He create on the first day.

Andrew Criddle