Genesis Series: Tehom (Abyss) of Genesis 1:2

In a beginning, God had created the form Heaven and the form Earth,
And when Earth existed as an astonishing-desert with darkness over a face of abyss

The translations of the Gen 1:2 tehom are not that varied:

ocean, abyss, the deep, deep waters, the watery deep.

For the Gen 1:2 context some choose to modify with primeval, so primeval ocean, etc.

The sacred author has abyss associated with the mayim, the Hebrew plural word translated as waters in the subsequent parallel phrase. Tehom is connected to mayim.

Abyss---waters.

The prominent linguistic work analyzing some of the Hebrew words of Gen 1:2 is David Toshio Tsumura's The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2. Tsumura analyses the word 'tehom' from many different angles and comes to the rational conclusion that it is not a mythic personification:

This Hebrew term tehom is simply a reflection of the Common Semitic term *tiham- "ocean" and there is no relation between the Genesis account and the so-called Chaoskampf mythology. (p. 65)

Another scholar, Roberto Ouro has some interesting notes:

The term tehom appears 36 times in the OT, in singular and in plural. This Hebrew term appears without an article in all texts but Isa 63:13 (singular) and Ps 106:9 (plural). Tehom always means a flood of water or ocean (abyss); there is no type of personification. The word appears in a context of creation" with no mythical reference. The word is used to designate a phenomenon of nature.  Many times tehom is parallel to mayim "water" or yam "sea". (THE EARTH OF GENESIS 1:2 ABIOTIC OR CHAOTIC? PART II, p. 47 see his excellent article here)

What I found interesting in Ouro is that the Hebrew word is not prefaced by an article. Thus it may refer to an undefined concept, not an object. The word is used to describe Earth's surface. The sacred author is not pointing to an object, he is rather describing an object, the Earth, with a concept 'abyss'. So I translate 'face of abyss' instead of 'face of THE abyss'. The Hebrew "tehom" is a concept that refers to a vast supply or gathering of water covering the Earth. It doesn't matter if the supply rests over the crust or is enclosed in the crust. It could be both.  Tehom simply refers to water supply or gathering of waters. Tehom is first and foremost a physical concept. And this is indisputable for this context.

It is intriguing since later in the narrative God organizes the waters into defined Seas implying that the surface of abyss is stimulated and broken up by the land perhaps from below. So there is a dynamic physical process described in the advance of the narrative that needs to be decoded by the reader and this corresponds to God working miracles. Otherwise the narrative would make no sense. Unfortunately some interpreters try to make sense of the narrative by reading myths, scientific theories such as Big-Bang or the creation and history of the angels.

In other contexts of Sacred Scripture 'tehom' takes on different references. It could be figured to refer to Hell. The sacred authors also use this word to refer to the event of the Great Flood. But that is a different context. I've spent many articles establishing the context I think the sacred author refers to based on a prophetic vision. Truly, the one of the biggest interpretive battles of Genesis One is establishing the context of the subject of the second verse: the Earth.

In Gen 1:2 'tehom' is used to describe the surface of an astronomical object that the sacred author saw in a vision induced by God. "darkness over a face of abyss" adds additional information and modification to the subject of the sentence, i.e. Earth. The Earth is first described as tohu wabohu then as a subset is described "with darkness over a face of abyss". The face is Earth's face, Earth's surface, not another object's surface, certainly not the surface of a concept since concepts have no form!!!

Assume that the face description refers to Earth's face and abyss is a facial feature. An analogy would be an eye with a surface of tears. The context gets confused if the subject of the sentence is not assumed as an astronomical object that the sacred author visualized as if face to face. The sacred author looks at the Earth which faces him as if with eyes looking at him.  The sacred author first describes that entire object is an astonishing-desert then he describes her face as dark and yet with a water supply. These are physical concepts since they are used in context to a physical object: the Earth. The observation of the sacred author was made possible by God who stimulated a prophetic experience in the brain of the sacred author.  The seeming contradiction of astonishing desert (tohu wabohu) with abyss and waters is that Earth's surface was cold in interstellar space.

Connection of the word 'tehom' to the mythical Tiamat or Chaos is a romantic fancy of scholars who are in the heat of love with the myths. They can love the myths all they want but they should not read them into Genesis 1, 2, & 3 which a Jew and Christian read with Faith. This is irrational and childish. God and the sacred author were oblivious in relation to the Ancient Near East myths. The sacred author was not influenced by the myths. He was influenced by God and his miracles. He was influenced by the prophetic 3D movie God worked in his brain.

Abyss Theory

The Earth was covered with a water supply mingled with various molecules and chemicals. The sacred author did not need to be aware or knowledgeable of all the chemicals since he relates a basic description of the surface and events. He identified water, since water is of course essential to living entities. There was a surface ocean. It was froze over and appeared as if a super dry barren desert much like one could describe Antarctica as a desert.

Where did the Earth's water come from? My personal belief is that the Earth synthesized H2O in her transformation from a young active-fusing phase. Earth is a cinder of what was once a star. After she left her fusion phase and shed zillions of atoms; she became less energetic and atoms vibrated less (she cooled).  In the process she synthesized molecules, chemicals, crystals, and so on from her atomic elements.  And she continued to compress. She was a chemical factory. At some time hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the outer layers of the Earth were stimulated [induced to pump and vibrate and spin, etc] by the atoms of the core at the right frequencies and amps so as to arrange to an abundance of the H2O compound. The spark of energy needed to form the waters came from within. Most of our water very well may have been homegrown and then held in snug via gravitational attraction and pressure. The synthesized waters may have helped the crust to form. Perhaps some planets of our system are synthesizing waters in a phase leading into a water-world, even as we speak.

If my personal belief is not right then perhaps Earth was a rogue planet.  In any case I also suppose that the Earth assimilated some water and chemicals in her march around the galaxy.  She may have assimilated some H2O through interstellar clouds or even accretion disks of newer stars like TW Hydrae.  Maybe that is why she has just a trace of heavier water (called D2O, deuterium oxide, where the Hydrogen atoms are deuterium 1 proton and 1 neutron). The theory that Earth assimilated her water supply from comets is irrational since the comets are observed to have D2O not H2O. Other than this the scientific establishment has no theory of the origin of Earth's water supply since their assumptions are limited by the scope of the ad hoc bloated and irrational nebular hypothesis.

Back to Earth's water supply. She has just a trace of D2O. She probably passed through some dense interstellar clouds through which she assumed some rare atomic elements, molecules and chemicals. Passages through interstellar clouds diversified her makeup and supplied her with rare atomic elements not able to be homemade e.g. uranium. Earth had a long journey prior to her meeting with the Spirit of God!

Just prior to the light-event, Earth's water supply was more or less froze over since the Earth was very old, and moving between stars (not locked into a system with another star). So she was an old dark star with a froze over water supply, a buried crust, a mantle and a core (she was differentiated). The surface of the Earth was, as it were, asleep. Her skin (outer layer) was shivering in interstellar space. There was no chaos happening at the surface and little or no atmosphere. Earth's surface was quiet; awaiting the miraculous stimulation worked by God via the Spirit. The water supply was mixed with a variety of chemicals such as methane, ammonia, CO2 (dry ice), carbon monoxide and other volatiles. This interpretive theory would give some credence to Sasson's hodgepodge translation of tohu wabohu. Her surface was a hodgepodge of chemicals. Underneath the frozen shell were subsurface oceans. In the vision the surface appeared to the sacred author as a vast super-desert and he was astonished. But in retrospect he knew that there were surface and subsurface waters since he saw the forming of the first Seas.

The Spirit stimulated the surface; kicked up the surface/subsurface waters and chemicals in stylish bands, did some reactions and stretched out the molecules all the way around the Earth in every direction so as to envelop her with a first modern atmosphere. From the locations where He kicked up the pillars he formed the lands. Once the crust miraculously appears up from beneath the waters the remaining surface waters were gathered to form primitive Seas. These Seas were soon inhabited by a pristine first generation of aquatic animals which God miraculously formed.  This is why God and the sacred author use two different concepts to describe the Earth's waters: abyss and later in the narrative (verse 10) ... Seas.  There is progress.