In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell (Latin: Descensus Christi ad Inferos, "the descent of Christ into Hell" or Hades) is the period of time between the Crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. In triumphant descent, Christ brought salvation to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world.
Christ's descent into the world of the dead is referred to in the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed (Quicumque vult), which state that he "descended into the underworld" (descendit ad inferos), although neither mention that he liberated the dead. His descent to the underworld is alluded to in the New Testament in 1 Peter 4:6, which states that the "good tidings were proclaimed to the dead". The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes Ephesians 4:9, which states that "[Christ] descended into the lower parts of the earth", as also supporting this interpretation. These passages in the New Testament have given rise to differing interpretations. The Harrowing of Hell is commemorated in the liturgical calendar on Holy Saturday.
As a subject in Christian art, it is also known as the Anastasis (Greek for "resurrection"), considered a creation of Byzantine culture and first appearing in the West in the early 8th century.
The Old Testament view of the afterlife was that all people when they died, whether righteous or unrighteous, went to Sheol, a dark, still place. Several works from the Second Temple period elaborate the concept of Sheol, dividing it into sections based on the righteousness or unrighteousness of those who have died.
The Greek wording in the Apostles' Creed is κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα (katelthonta eis ta katôtata), and in Latin is descendit ad inferos. The Greek τὰ κατώτατα (ta katôtata, "the lowest") and the Latin inferos ("those below") may also be translated as "underworld", "netherworld", or "abode of the dead".
The realm into which Jesus descended is called Hell, in long-established English usage, but is also called Sheol or Limbo by some Christian theologians to distinguish it from the Hell of the damned. In Classical mythology, Hades is the underworld inhabited by departed souls, and the god Pluto
is its ruler. Some New Testament translations use the term "Hades" to
refer to the abode or state of the dead to represent a neutral place
where the dead awaited the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
The word "harrow" originally comes from the Old Englishhergian meaning "to harry or despoil", and is seen in the homilies of Aelfric, c. 1000.
The term 'Harrowing of Hell' refers not merely to the idea that Jesus
descended into Hell, as in the Creed, but to the rich tradition that
developed later, asserting that he triumphed over inferos, releasing Hell's captives, particularly Adam and Eve, and the righteous men and women of the Old Testament period.
The Harrowing of Hell is mentioned or suggested by several verses in the New Testament:
Matthew 12:40: "For just as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for
three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the
earth."
Matthew 27:50–54:
"And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His
spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top
to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the
graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep
were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they
went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and
those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the
things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, 'Truly this was
the Son of God!'"
Acts 2:24: "But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power."
Acts 2:31: "Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, 'He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption'."
Ephesians 4:9: "In saying, 'he ascended', what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?"
Colossians 1:18:
"He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in
everything."
1 Peter 3:18–19: "For Christ also suffered for sins
once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you
to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit,
in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in
prison, ..."
1 Peter 4:6:
"For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so
that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged,
they might live in the spirit as God does."
Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar sees parallels with Mark 3:24:
"If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And
if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to
stand. And if Satan
has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his
end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his
property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house
can be plundered." That and Matthew 16:18 ("And I tell you, you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it.") speak to Jesus's power and the impotence of
Satan.
The Harrowing of Hell was taught by theologians of the early church: St Melito of Sardis (died c. 180) in his Homily on the Passover and more explicitly in his Homily for Holy Saturday,Tertullian (A Treatise on the Soul, 55, though he himself disagrees with the idea), Hippolytus (Treatise on Christ and Anti-Christ), Origen (Against Celsus, 2:43), and, later, Ambrose (died 397) all wrote of the Harrowing of Hell. The early heretic Marcion and his followers also discussed the Harrowing of Hell, as mentioned by Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius. The 6th-century sect called the Christolytes, as recorded by John of Damascus, believed that Jesus left his soul and body in Hell, and only rose with his divinity to Heaven.
The Gospel of Matthew relates that immediately after Christ died, the earth shook, there was darkness, the veil in the Second Temple was torn in two, and many people rose from the dead, and after the resurrection (Matthew 27:53) walked about in Jerusalem
and were seen by many people there. Balthasar says this is a "visionary
and imaginistic" description of Jesus vanquishing death itself.
According to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, the Harrowing of Hell was foreshadowed by Christ's raising of Lazarus from the dead prior to his own crucifixion.
In the Acts of Pilate – usually incorporated with the widely-read
medieval Gospel of Nicodemus – texts built around an original that might
have been as old as the 3rd century AD with many improvements and
embroidered interpolations, chapters 17 to 27 are called the Decensus Christi ad Inferos. They contain a dramatic dialogue between Hades and Prince Satan, and the entry of the King of Glory, imagined as from within Tartarus.
Interpretations of the doctrine
Orthodoxy
In Harrowing of Hades, fresco in the parecclesion of the Chora Church, Istanbul, c. 1315, raising Adam and Eve is depicted as part of the Resurrection icon, as it always is in the East.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Harrowing of Hades is celebrated annually on Holy and Great Saturday during the VesperalDivine Liturgy of Saint Basil, as is normative for the Byzantine Rite. At the beginning of the service, the hangings in the church and the vestments worn by the clergy are all somber Lenten colours (usually purple or black). Then, just before the Gospel reading, the liturgical colors are changed to white and the deacon performs a censing, and the priest strews laurel
leaves around the church, symbolizing the broken gates of Hell; this is
done in celebration of the harrowing of Hades then taking place, and in
anticipation of Christ's imminent resurrection.
Icon
The Harrowing of Hades is generally more common and prominent in Orthodox iconography compared to the Western tradition. It is the traditional icon for Holy Saturday, and is used during the Paschal season and on Sundays throughout the year.
The traditional Orthodox icon of the Resurrection of Jesus, partially inspired by the apocryphal Acts of Pilate (4th c.), does not depict simply the physical act of Christ coming out of the Tomb, but rather it reveals what Orthodox Christians believe to be the spiritual reality of what his Death and Resurrection
accomplished. The icon depicts Jesus, vested in white and gold to
symbolize his divine majesty, standing on the brazen gates of Hades
(also called the "Doors of Death"), which are broken and have fallen in
the form of a cross, illustrating the belief that by his death on the
cross, Jesus "trampled down death by death" (see Paschal troparion). He is holding Adam and Eve
and pulling them up out of Hades. Traditionally, he is not shown
holding them by the hands but by their wrists, to illustrate the
theological teaching that mankind could not pull himself out of his original or ancestral sin, but that it could come about only by the work (energia) of God. Jesus is surrounded by various righteous figures from the Old Testament (Abraham, David,
etc.); the bottom of the icon depicts Hades as a chasm of darkness,
often with various pieces of broken locks and chains strewn about. Quite
frequently, one or two figures are shown in the darkness, bound in
chains, who are generally identified as personifications of Death or the devil.
Catholicism
Christ leads the patriarchs from Hell to Paradise, by Bartolomeo Bertejo, Spanish, c. 1480: Methuselah, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and Adam and Eve lead the procession of the righteous behind Christ.
There is an ancient homily on the subject, of unknown authorship, usually entitled The Lord's Descent into Hell that is the second reading at the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
states: "By the expression 'He descended into Hell', the Apostles'
Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us
conquered death and the devil 'who has the power of death' (Hebrews 2:14).
In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went
down to the realm of the dead. He opened Heaven's gates for the just who
had gone before him."
As the Catechism says, the word "Hell"—from the Norse, Hel; in Latin, infernus, infernum, inferni; in Greek, ᾍδης (Hades); in Hebrew, שאול
(Sheol)—is used in Scripture and the Apostles' Creed to refer to the
abode of all the dead, whether righteous or evil, unless or until they
are admitted to Heaven (CCC 633). This abode of the dead is the "Hell"
into which the Creed says Christ descended. His death freed from
exclusion from Heaven the just who had gone before him: "It is precisely
these holy souls who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into Hell", the Catechism states (CCC 633), echoing the words of the Roman Catechism, 1, 6, 3. His death was of no avail to the damned.
Conceptualization of the abode of the dead as a place, though
possible and customary, is not obligatory (Church documents, such as
catechisms, speak of a "state or place"). Some maintain that Christ did
not go to the place of the damned, which is what is generally understood
today by the word "Hell". For instance, Thomas Aquinas
taught that Christ did not descend into the "Hell of the lost" in his
essence, but only by the effect of his death, through which "he put them
to shame for their unbelief and wickedness: but to them who were
detained in Purgatory he gave hope of attaining to glory: while upon the holy Fathers detained in Hell solely on account of original sin, he shed the light of glory everlasting."
While some maintain that Christ merely descended into the "limbo of the fathers", others, notably theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (inspired by the visions of Adrienne von Speyr), maintain that it was more than this and that the descent involved suffering by Jesus.
Some maintain that this is a matter on which differences and
theological speculation are permissible without transgressing the limits
of orthodoxy. However, Balthasar's point here has been forcefully condemned by conservative Catholic outlets.
Lutheranism
Martin Luther, in a sermon delivered in Torgau in 1533, stated that Christ descended into Hell.
The Formula of Concord
(a Lutheran confession) states, "we believe simply that the entire
person, God and human being, descended to Hell after his burial,
conquered the devil, destroyed the power of Hell, and took from the
devil all his power" (Solid Declaration, Art. IX).
Many attempts were made following Luther's death to systematize
his theology of the descensus, whether Christ descended in victory or
humiliation. For Luther, however, the defeat or "humiliation"
of Christ is never fully separable from His victorious glorification.
Luther himself, when pressed to elaborate on the question of whether
Christ descended to Hell in humiliation or victory responded, "It is
enough to preach the article to the laypeople as they have learned to
know it in the past from the stained glass and other sources."
Anglicanism
"Anglican
orthodoxy, without protest, has allowed high authorities to teach that
there is an intermediate state, Hades, including both Gehenna and
Paradise, but with an impassable gulf between the two." The traditional language of the Apostles' Creed affirms that Jesus "descended into hell"; the contemporary Book of Common Prayer says that Jesus "descended to the dead" (BCP, pp. 53, 96).
Calvinism
John Calvin
expressed his concern that many Christians "have never earnestly
considered what it is or means that we have been redeemed from God's
judgment. Yet this is our wisdom: duly to feel how much our salvation
cost the Son of God."
Calvin's conclusion is that "If any persons have scruples about
admitting this article into the Creed, it will soon be made plain how
important it is to the sum of our redemption: if it is left out, much of
the benefit of Christ’s death will be lost."
Calvin strongly opposed the notion that Christ freed prisoners, as
opposed to traveling to Hell as part of completing his sufferings.
The Reformed interpret the phrase "he descended into Hell" as referring to Christ's pain and humiliation prior
to his death, and that this humiliation had a spiritual dimension as
part of God's judgement upon the sin which he bore on behalf of
Christians. The doctrine of Christ's humiliation is also meant to assure
believers that Christ has redeemed them from the pain and suffering of
God's judgment on sin.
The Harrowing of Hell has been a unique and important doctrine among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since its founding in 1830 by Joseph Smith, although members of the church (known as "Mormons") usually call it by other terms, such as "Christ's visit to the spirit world". Like Christian exegetes distinguishing between Sheol and Gehenna, Latter-day Saints distinguish between the realm of departed spirits (the "spirit world") and the portion (or state) of the wicked ("spirit prison"). The portion or state of the righteous is often referred to as "paradise".
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Latter-day Saint beliefs
regarding the Harrowing of Hell is their view on the purpose of it, both
for the just and the wicked. Joseph F. Smith,
the sixth president of the Church, explained in what is now a canonized
revelation, that when Christ died, "there were gathered together in one
place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just, ... rejoicing
together because the day of their deliverance was at hand. They were
assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the spirit world,
to declare their redemption from the bands of death".
In the Latter-day Saint view, while Christ announced freedom from
physical death to the just, he had another purpose in descending to
Hell regarding the wicked. "The Lord went not in person among the wicked
and the disobedient who had rejected the truth, to teach them; but
behold, from among the righteous, he organized his forces ... and
commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them
that were in darkness, even to all the spirits of men; and thus was the
gospel preached to the dead, ... to those who had died in their sins,
without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected
the prophets".
From the Latter-day Saint viewpoint, the rescue of spirits was not a
one-time event but an ongoing process that still continues. This concept goes hand-in-hand with the doctrine of baptism for the dead,
which is based on the Latter-day Saint belief that those who choose to
accept the gospel in the spirit world must still receive the saving
ordinances in order to dwell in the kingdom of God.
These baptisms and other ordinances are performed in Latter-day Saint
temples, wherein a church member is baptized vicariously, or in behalf
of, those who died without being baptized by proper authority. The
recipients in the spirit world then have the opportunity to accept or
reject this baptism.
Rejection of the doctrine
Although
the Harrowing of Hell is taught by the Lutheran, Catholic, Reformed,
and Orthodox traditions, a number of Christians reject the doctrine of
the "harrowing of hell", claiming that "there is scant scriptural
evidence for [it], and that Jesus's own words contradict it". John Piper,
for example, says "there is no textual [i.e. Biblical] basis for
believing that Christ descended into hell", and, therefore, Piper does
not recite the "he descended into hell" phrase when saying the Apostles'
Creed. Wayne Grudem
also skips the phrase when reciting the Creed; he says that the "single
argument in ... favor [of the "harrowing of hell" clause in the Creed]
seems to be that it has been around so long. ...But an old mistake is
still a mistake". In his book Raised with Christ,
Pentecostal Adrian Warnock agrees with Grudem, commenting, "Despite
some translations of an ancient creed [i.e. the Apostles' Creed], which
suggest that Jesus ... 'descended into hell', there is no biblical
evidence to suggest that he actually did so."
Augustine,
in his 99th epistle, confesses that this text is replete with
difficulties. This he declares is clear, beyond all doubt, that Jesus
Christ descended in soul after his death into the regions below, and
concludes with these words: Quis ergo nisi infidelis negaverit fuisse apud inferos Christum?
("Who, then, but an unbeliever, has denied that Christ was in hell?")
In this prison souls would not be detained unless they were indebted to
divine justice, nor would salvation be preached to them unless they were
in a state that was capable of receiving salvation.
Christian mortalism
The above views share the traditional Christian belief in the immortality of the soul. The mortalist view of the intermediate state requires an alternative view of the Acts 2:27 and Acts 2:31, taking a view of the New Testament use of Hell as equivalent to use of Hades in the Septuagint and therefore to Sheol in the Old Testament. William Tyndale and Martin Bucer of Strassburg argued that Hades in Acts 2 was merely a metaphor for the grave. Other reformers Christopher Carlisle and Walter Deloenus in London, argued for the article to be dropped from the creed. The Harrowing of Hell was a major scene in traditional depictions of Christ's life avoided by John Milton due to his mortalist views. Mortalist interpretations of the Acts 2 statements of Christ being in Hades are also found among later Anglicans such as E. W. Bullinger.
While those holding mortalist views on the soul would agree on
the "harrowing of hell" concerning souls, that there were no conscious
dead for Christ to literally visit, the question of whether Christ
himself was also dead, unconscious, brings different answers:
To most Protestant advocates of "soul sleep" such as Martin Luther,
Christ himself was not in the same condition as the dead, and while his
body was in Hades, Christ, as second person of the Trinity, was
conscious in heaven.
To Christian mortalists who are also non-Trinitarian, such as Socinians and Christadelphians, the maxim "the dead know nothing" includes also Christ during the three days.
Of the three days, Christ says "I was dead" (Greek egenomen nekros ἐγενόμην νεκρὸς, Latin fui mortuus).
The
richest, most circumstantial accounts of the Harrowing of Hell are
found in medieval dramatic literature, such as the four great cycles of
English Mystery plays which each devote a separate scene to depict it.
Christ was portrayed as conquering Satan, and then victoriously leading
out Adam and Eve, the prophets, and the patriarchs. The earliest
surviving Christian drama probably intended to be performed is the Harrowing of Hell found in the 8th-century Book of Cerne.
The subject is found also in the Cornish Mystery plays and the
York and Wakefield cycles. These medieval versions of the story derive
from scripture, but the details come from the Gospel of Nicodemus.
Literature
Middle Ages
In Dante's Inferno the Harrowing of Hell is mentioned in Canto IV by the pilgrim's guide Virgil.
Virgil was in Limbo (the first circle of Hell) in the first place
because he was not exposed to Christianity in his lifetime, and
therefore he describes Christ in generic terms as a "mighty one" who
rescued the Hebrew forefathers of Christianity, but left him and other virtuous pagans behind in the very same circle. It is clear that Virgil does not fully understand the significance of the event as Dante does.
Although the Orfeo legend has its origin in pagan antiquity, the medieval romance of Sir Orfeo has often been interpreted as drawing parallels between the Greek hero and Jesus freeing souls from Hell, with the explication of Orpheus' descent and return from the Underworld as an allegory for Christ's as early as the Ovide Moralisé (1340).
Parallels in Jewish literature refer to legends of Enoch and
Abraham's harrowings of the Underworld, unrelated to Christian themes.
These have been updated in Isaac Leib Peretz's short story "Neilah in Gehenna", in which a Jewish hazzan descends to Hell and uses his unique voice to bring about the repentance and liberation of the souls imprisoned there.
Music
The Harrowing of Hell is the subject of baroqueoratorios including Salieri's Gesù al Limbo (1803) to a text by Luigi Prividali.
Art
A follower of Hieronymus Bosch depicts Christ in Limbo in a vivid composition, now owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Tree of Life by Eli Content at the Joods Historisch Museum. The Tree of Life, or Etz haChayim (עץ החיים) in Hebrew, is a mystical symbol used in the Kabbalah of esoteric Judaism to describe the path to HaShem and the manner in which he created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing).
Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation out of nothing") is the doctrine that matter is not eternal but had to be created by some divine creative act. It is a theistic answer to the question of how the universe came to exist. It is in contrast to creation ex materia, sometimes framed in terms of the dictumEx nihilo nihil fit or "nothing comes from nothing", meaning all things were formed ex materia (that is, from pre-existing things).
Creatio ex materia refers to the idea that matter has always
existed and that the modern cosmos is a reformation of pre-existing,
primordial matter; it sometimes articulated by the philosophical dictum
that nothing can come from nothing.
In ancient near eastern cosmology, the universe is formed ex materia from eternal formless matter, namely the dark and still primordial ocean of chaos. In Sumerian myth this cosmic ocean is personified as the goddess Nammu "who gave birth to heaven and earth" and had existed forever; in the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish, pre-existent chaos is made up of fresh-water Apsu and salt-water Tiamat, and from Tiamat the god Marduk created Heaven and Earth; in Egyptian creation myths a pre-existent watery chaos personified as the god Nun
and associated with darkness, gave birth to the primeval hill (or in
some versions a primeval lotus flower, or in others a celestial cow); and in Greek traditions the ultimate origin of the universe, depending on the source, is sometimes Oceanus (a river that circles the Earth), Night, or water.
Similarly, the Genesis creation narrative opens with the Hebrew phrase bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz, which can be interpreted in at least three ways:
As a statement that the cosmos had an absolute beginning (In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth).
As a statement describing the condition of the world when God began creating (When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless).
As background information (When in the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth, the earth being untamed and shapeless, God said,
Let there be light!).
Though option 1 has been the historic and predominant view,
it has been recently suggested (since the Middle Ages) that it cannot
be the preferred translation based on strictly linguistic and exegetical
grounds.
Whereas our modern societies see the origin of matter as a question of
crucial importance, this may not have been the case for ancient
cultures. Some scholars assert that when the author(s) of Genesis wrote
the creation account, they were more concerned with God bringing the
cosmos into operation by assigning roles and functions.
Creatio ex nihilo in religion
Creatio ex nihilo
is the doctrine that all matter was created out of nothing by God in an
initial or a beginning moment where the cosmos came into existence. It has been suggested that ex nihilo creation can also be found in creation stories from ancient Egypt (the Memphite Theology), the Rig Veda (X:129, also known as Nasadiya Sukta), and many animistic cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America. The third-century founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, argued that the cosmos was distinct from God but was instead an emanation from God. This idea was rejected by Christian thinkers of the time on the basis of the creatio ex nihilo concept, and was also later rejected by Arabic and Hebrew philosophers.
Ancient Near East
Although ancient near eastern cosmology is widely seen as invoking a process of creatio ex materia, occasional suggestions have been made that the concept of creatio ex nihilo can be found at least in some texts, including the EgyptianMemphite Theology and the Genesis creation narrative. Hilber has rejected these interpretations, viewing both as consistent with creatio ex materia, but instead suggests some passages in the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Proverbs, and the Psalms might indicate a notion of creatio ex nihilo. The cosmogonical doxologies of the Book of Amos also present a view of creation ex-nihilo.
Judaism
One view is that the earliest statement articulating the concept of creatio ex nihilo is attributed to a Jewish text from ~100 BC, 2 Maccabees:
"I implore you, my child, observe heaven and earth, consider all that
is in them, and acknowledge that God made them out of what did not
exist, and that mankind comes into being the same way" (2 Macc. 7:28). Others, however, have argued against interpreting Maccabees in this way. Other historians have disputed the presence of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo
among pre-Christian Jewish authors, on the basis of the sparsity of
possible relevant texts in Jewish later to the concept, the large number
of Jewish texts from this period which unambiguously posit creatio ex materia, and the general disinterest in creatio ex nihilo prior to medieval rabbinic writers.
In the first century, Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jew, lays out the basic idea of ex nihilo
creation, though he is not always consistent, he rejects the Greek idea
of the eternal universe and he maintains that God has created time
itself. In other places it has been argued that he postulates pre-existent matter alongside God. But other major scholars such as Harry Austryn Wolfson see that interpretation of Philo's ideas differently and argue that the so-called pre-existent matter was created.
Saadia Gaon introduced ex nihilo creation into the readings of the Jewish bible in the 10th century CE in his work Book of Beliefs and Opinions
where he imagines a God far more awesome and omnipotent than that of
the rabbis, the traditional Jewish teachers who had so far dominated
Judaism, whose God created the world from pre-existing matter. Today Jews, like Christians, tend to believe in creation ex nihilo, although some Jewish scholars maintain that Genesis 1:1 allows for the pre-existence of matter to which God gives form.
Jewish philosophers of the 9th and 10th century adopted the concept of "yesh me-Ayin", contradicting Greek philosophers and Aristotelian view that the world was created out of primordial matter and/or was eternal.
Christianity
Mainstream
Christians believe that originally there was nothing except for a
single, infinite and eternal God and that God alone brought all matter,
energy, time, and space into existence out of nothing. That belief developed in the second century of the Christian era.
The doctrine of creation ex nihilo was also widely adopted in Christian circles from an early period. It received its first explicit articulation by Theophilus of Antioch in a work of his known as To Autolycus in a chapter titled Absurd Opinions of the Philosophers Concerning God.:
"As, therefore, in all these respects God is more powerful than man, so
also in this; that out of things that are not He creates and has
created things that are" (2.4).Creation ex nihilo had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology by the 3rd century. In late antiquity, John Philoponus was its most prominent defender.
In modern times some Christian theologians argue that although the Bible does not explicitly mention creation ex nihilo,
it gains validity from the tradition of having been held by so many for
so long; and others find support in modern cosmological theories
surrounding the Big Bang. Some examine alternatives to creatio ex nihilo,
such as the idea that God created from his own self or from Christ, but
this seems to imply that the world is more or less identical with God;
or that God created from pre-existent matter, which at least has
biblical support, but this implies that the world does not depend on God
for its existence. The notion of creatio ex nihilo
also underlies modern arguments for the existence of God among
Christian and other theistic philosophers, especially as articulated in
the cosmological argument and its more particular manifestation in the Kalam cosmological argument.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not
believe, as do traditional Christians, that God created the universe ex nihilo (from nothing).
Rather, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the act of
creation is to organize or reorganize pre-existing matter or
intelligence.
Most scholars of Islam share with Christianity and Judaism the concept that God is a First Cause and absolute Creator; He did not create the world from pre-existing matter.
However, some scholars, adhering to a strict literal interpretation of the Quran such as Ibn Taimiyya whose sources became the fundament of Wahhabism and contemporary teachings, hold that God fashioned the world out of primordial matter, based on Quranic verses.
Hinduism
The Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1 says before the world was manifested, there was only existence, one unparalleled (sat eva ekam eva advitīyam). Swami Lokeshwarananda commented on this passage by saying "something out of nothing is an absurd idea".
Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC, includes the belief that creation out of nothing is impossible and that Zeus created the world out of his own being.
The Big Bang
theory, in contrast to theology, is a scientific theory; it offers no
explanation of cosmic existence but only a description of the first few
moments of that existence.
Ancient near eastern cosmology can be divided into its cosmography, the physical structure and features of the cosmos; and cosmogony, the creation myths that describe the origins of the cosmos in the texts and traditions of the ancient near eastern world.
The cosmos and the gods were also related, as cosmic bodies like
heaven, earth, the stars were believed to be and/or personified as gods,
and the sizes of the gods were frequently described as being of cosmic
proportions.
Cosmography
Ancient
near eastern civilizations held to a fairly uniform conception of
cosmography. This cosmography remained remarkably stable in the context
of the expansiveness and longevity of the ancient near east, but changes
were also to occur. Widely held components of ancient near eastern cosmography included:
a primordial cosmic ocean. When the firmament is created, it separates the cosmic ocean into two bodies of water:
the heavenly upper waters located on top of the firmament, which act as a source of rain
the lower waters that the earth is above and that the earth rests
on; they act as the source of rivers, springs, and other earthly bodies
of water
the region above the upper waters, namely the abode of the gods
the netherworld, the furthest region in the direction downwards, below the lower waters
Keyser, categorizing ancient near eastern cosmology as belonging to a
larger and more cross-cultural set of cosmologies he describes as a
"cradle cosmology," offers a longer list of shared features. Some cosmographical features have been misattributed to Mesopotamian cosmologies, including the idea that ziggurats represented cosmic objects reaching up to heaven or the idea of a dome- or vault-shaped (as opposed to a flat) firmament.
Another controversy concerns if the ancient near eastern
cosmography was purely observational or phenomenological. However, a
number of lines of evidence, including descriptions from the
cosmological texts themselves, presumptions of this cosmography in
non-cosmological texts (like incantations),
anthropological studies of contemporary primitive cosmologies, and
cognitive expectations that humans construct mental models to explain
observation, support that the ancient near eastern cosmography was not
phenomenological.
Cosmogony
Ancient near eastern cosmogony also included a number of common features that are present in most if not all creation myths from the ancient near east. Widespread features included:
Creatio ex materia from a primordial state of chaos;
that is, the organization of the world from pre-existing, unordered and
unformed (hence chaotic) elements, represented by a primordial body of
water
the separation of undifferentiated elements (to create heaven and earth)
the creation of mankind
Lisman uses the broader category of "Beginnings" to encompass three
separate though inter-related categories: the beginning of the cosmos
(cosmogony), the beginning of the gods (theogony), and the beginning of
humankind (anthropogeny).
There is evidence that Mesopotamian creation myths reached as far as Pre-Islamic Arabia.
Cosmographies
Overview of the whole cosmos
The
Mesopotamian cosmos can be imagined along a vertical axis, with
parallel planes of existence layered above each other. The uppermost
plane of existence was heaven, being the residence of the god of the sky
Anu. Immediately below heaven was the atmosphere. The atmosphere extended from the bottom of heaven (or the lowermost firmament) to the ground. This region was inhabited by Enlil,
who was also the king of the gods in Sumerian mythology. The cosmic
ocean below the ground was the next plane of existence, and this was the
domain of the sibling deities Enki and Ninhursag. The lowest plane of existence was the underworld. Other deities inhabited these planes of existence even if they did not reign over them, such as the sun and moon gods. In later Babylonian accounts, the god Marduk alone ascends to the top rank of the pantheon and rules over all domains of the cosmos. The three-tiered cosmos (sky-earth-underworld) is found in Egyptian artwork on coffin lids and burial chambers.
Descriptions
A
variety of terms or phrases were used to refer to the cosmos as a
whole, acting as rough equivalents to contemporary terms like "cosmos"
or "universe". This included phrases like "heaven and earth" or "heaven
and underworld". Terms like "all" or "totality" similarly connoted the
entire universe. These motifs are found in temple hymns and royal
inscriptions located in temples. The temples symbolized cosmic
structures that reached heaven at their height and the underworld at
their depths/foundations.
Surviving evidence does not specify the exact physical bounds of the
cosmos or what lies beyond the region described in the texts.
Three heavens and earths
In Mesopotamian cosmology, heaven and earth both had a tripartite
structure: a Lower Heaven/Earth, a Middle Heaven/Earth, and an Upper
Heaven/Earth. The Upper Earth was where humans existed. Middle Earth,
corresponding to the Abzu (primeval underworldly ocean), was the residence of the god Enki. Lower Earth, the Mesopotamian underworld, was where the 600 Anunnaki gods lived, associated with the land of the dead ruled by Nergal. As for the heavens: the highest level was populated by 300 Igigi
(great gods), the middle heaven belonged to the Igigi and also
contained Marduk's throne, and the lower heaven was where the stars and
constellations were inscribed into. The extent of the Babylonian
universe therefore corresponded to a total of six layers spanning across
heaven and Earth.Notions of the plurality of heaven and earth are no later than the 2nd
millennium BC and may be elaborations of earlier and simpler
cosmographies. One text (KAR 307) describes the cosmos in the following manner, with each of the three floors of heaven being made of a different type of stone:
30
“The Upper Heavens are Luludānītu stone. They belong to Anu. He (i.e.
Marduk) settled the 300 Igigū (gods) inside. 31 The Middle Heavens are
Saggilmud stone. They belong to the Igīgū (gods). Bēl (i.e. Marduk) sat
on the high throne within, 32 the lapis lazuli sanctuary. And made a
lamp? of electrum shine inside (it). 33 The Lower Heavens are jasper.
They belong to the stars. He drew the constellations of the gods on
them. 34 In the … …. of the Upper Earth, he lay down the spirits of
mankind. 35 [In the …] of the Middle earth, he settled Ea, his father.
36 […..] . He did not let the rebellion be forgotten. 37 [In the … of
the Lowe]r earth, he shut inside 600 Anunnaki. 38 […….] … […. in]side
jasper.
Another text (AO 8196) offers a slightly
different arrangement, with the Igigi in the upper heaven instead of the
middle heaven, and with Bel placed in the middle heaven. Both agree on
the placement of the stars in the lower heaven. Exodus 24:9–10
identifies the floor of heaven as being like sapphire, which may
correspond to the blue lapis lazuli floor in KAR 307, chosen potentially for its correspondence to the visible color of the sky. One hypothesis holds that the belief that the firmament is made of stone (or a metal, such as iron in Egyptian texts) arises from the observation that meteorites, which are composed of this substance, fall from the firmament.
Some texts describe seven heavens
and seven earths, but within the Mesopotamian context, this is likely
to refer to a totality of the cosmos with some sort of magical or
numerological significance, as opposed to a description of the
structural number of heavens and Earth. Israelite texts do not mention the notion of seven heavens or earths.
Unity of the cosmos
Mythical
bonds, akin to ropes or cables, played the role of cohesively holding
the entire world and all its layers of heaven and Earth together. These
are sometimes called the "bonds of heaven and earth". They can be
referred to with terminology like durmāhu (typically referring to a strong rope made of reeds), markaṣu (referring to a rope or cable, of a boat, for example), or ṣerretu (lead-rope passed through an animals nose). A deity can hold these ropes as a symbol of their authority, such as the goddess Ishtar
"who holds the connecting link of all heaven and earth (or
netherworld)". This motif extended to descriptions of great cities like Babylon which was called the "bond of [all] the lands," or Nippur which was "bond of heaven and earth," and some temples as well.
Center of the cosmos
The
idea of a center to the cosmos played a role in elevating the status of
whichever place was chosen as the cosmic center and in reflecting
beliefs of the finite and closed nature of the cosmos. Babylon was
described as the center of the Babylonian cosmos. In parallel, Jerusalem became "the navel of the earth" (Ezekiel 38:12).
The finite nature of the cosmos was also suggested to the ancients by
the periodic and regular movements of the heavenly bodies in the visible
vicinity of the Earth.
The firmament was believed to be a solid boundary above the Earth, separating it from the upper or celestial waters. In the Book of Genesis, it is called the raqia. In ancient Egyptian
texts, and from texts across the near east generally, the firmament was
described as having special doors or gateways on the eastern and
western horizons to allow for the passage of heavenly bodies during
their daily journeys. These were known as the windows of heaven or the
gates of heaven. Canaanite text describe Baal as exerting his control over the world by controlling the passage of rainwater through the heavenly windows in the firmament.
In Egyptian texts particularly, these gates also served as conduits
between the earthly and heavenly realms for which righteous people could
ascend. The gateways could be blocked by gates to prevent entry by the
deceased as well. As such, funerary texts included prayers enlisting the
help of the gods to enable the safe ascent of the dead. Ascent to the celestial realm could also be done by a celestial ladder made by the gods.
Multiple stories exist in Mesopotamian texts whereby certain figures
ascend to the celestial realm and are given the secrets of the gods.
Four different Egyptian models of the firmament and/or the
heavenly realm are known. One model was that it was the shape of a bird:
the firmament above represented the underside of a flying falcon, with
the sun and moon representing its eyes, and its flapping causing the
wind that humans experience. The second was a cow, as per the Book of the Heavenly Cow. The cosmos is a giant celestial cow represented by the goddess Nut or Hathor. The cow consumed the sun in the evening and rebirthed it in the next morning.
The third is a celestial woman, also represented by Nut. The heavenly
bodies would travel across her body from east to west. The midriff of
Nut was supported by Shu (the air god) and Geb
(the earth god) lay outstretched between the arms and feet of Nut. Nut
consumes the celestial bodies from the west and gives birth to them
again in the following morning. The stars are inscribed across the belly
of Nut and one needs to identify with one of them, or a constellation,
in order to join them after death.
The fourth model was a flat (or slightly convex) celestial plane which,
depending on the text, was thought to be supported in various ways: by
pillars, staves, scepters, or mountains at the extreme ends of the
Earth. The four supports give rise to the motif of the "four corners of the world".
The ancient near eastern earth was a single-continent disk resting on a body of water sometimes compared to a raft. An aerial view of the cosmography of the earth is pictorially elucidated by the Babylonian Map of the World. Here, the city Babylon is near the Earth's center and it is on the Euphrates river. Other kingdoms and cities surround it. The north is covered by an enormous mountain range, akin to a wall. This mountain range was traversed in some hero myths, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh where Gilgamesh travels past it to an area only accessible by gods and other great heroes. The furthest and most remote parts of the earth were believed to be inhabited by fantastic creatures. In the Babylonian Map, the world continent is surrounded by a bitter salt-water Ocean (called marratu, or "salt-sea") akin to Oceanus described by the poetry of Homer and Hesiod in early Greek cosmology, as well as the statement in the Bilingual Creation of the World by Marduk that Marduk created the first dry land surrounded by a cosmic sea. Egyptian cosmology appears to have also shared this view, as one of the words used for sea, shen-wer, means "great encircler". World-encircling oceans are also found in the Fara tablet VAT 12772 from the 3rd millennium BC and the Myth of Etana.
Four corners of the earth
A common honorific that many kings and rulers ascribed to themselves was that they were the rulers of the four quarters (or corners) of the Earth. For example, Hammurabi (ca. 1810–1750 BC) received the title of "King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Four Quarters of the World". Monarchs of the Assyrian empire like Ashurbanipal
also took on this title. (Although the title implies a square or
rectangular shape, in this case it is taken to refer to the four
quadrants of a circle which is joined at the world's center.) Likewise,
the 'four corners' motif would also appear in some biblical texts, such
as Isaiah 11:12.
According to iconographic and literary evidence, the cosmic mountain, known as Mashu in the Epic of Gilgamesh,
was thought to be located at or extend to both the westernmost and
easternmost points of the earth, where the sun could rise and set
respectively. As such, the model may be called a bi-polar model of
diurnal solar movement. The gates for the rising and setting of the sun
were also located at Mashu.
Some accounts have Mashu as a tree growing at the center of the earth
with roots descending into the underworld and a peak reaching to heaven.
The cosmic mountain is also found in Egyptian cosmology, as Pyramid
Text 1040c says that the mountain ranges on the eastern and western
sides of the Nile act as the "two supports of the sky." In the Baal Cycle, two cosmic mountains exist at the horizon acting as the point through which the sun rises from and sets into the underworld (Mot). The tradition of the twin cosmic mountains may also lie behind Zechariah 6:1.
Heavenly bodies
Sun
The sun god
(represented by the god Utu in Sumerian texts or Shamash in Akkadian
texts) rises in the day and passes over the earth. Then, the sun god
falls beneath the earth in the night and comes to a resting point. This
resting point is sometimes localized to a designated structure, such as
the chamber within a house in the Old Babylonian Prayer to the Gods of the Night.
To complete the cycle, the sun comes out in the next morning. Likewise,
the moon was thought to rest in the same facility when it was not
visible.
A similar system was maintained in Egyptian cosmology, where the sun
travelled beneath the surface of the earth through the underworld (known
among ancient Egyptians as Duat) to rise from the same eastern location each day. These images result from anthropomorphizing the sun and other astral bodies also conceived as gods.
For the sun to exit beneath the earth, it had to cross the solid
firmament: this was thought possible by the existence of opening ways or
corridors in the firmament (variously illustrated as doors, windows or
gates) that could temporarily open and close to allow astral bodies to
pass across them. The firmament was conceived as a gateway, with the
entry/exit point as the gates; other opening and closing mechanisms were
also imagined in the firmament like bolts, bars, latches, and keys.
During the sun's movement beneath the earth, into the netherworld, the
sun would cease to flare. This enabled the netherworld to remain dark.
But when it rose, it would flare up and again emit light.
This model of the course of the sun had an inconsistency that later
models evolved to address. The issue was to understand how, if the sun
came to a resting point beneath the earth, could it also travel beneath
the earth the same distance under it that it was observed to cross
during the day above it such that it would rise periodically from the
east. One solution that some texts arrived at was to reject the idea
that the sun had a resting point. Instead, it remained unceasing in its
course.
Overall, the sun god's activities in night according to Sumerian
and Akkadian texts proceeds according to a regular and systematic series
of events: (1) The western door of heaven opens (2) The sun passes
through the door into the interior of heaven (3) Light falls below the
western horizon (4) The sun engages in certain activities in the
netherworld like judging the dead (5) The sun enters a house, called the
White House (6) The sun god eats the evening meal (7) The sun god
sleeps in the chamber agrun (8) The sun emerges from the chamber (9) The
eastern door opens and the sun passes through as it rises.
In many ancient near eastern cultures, the underworld had a prominent
place in descriptions of the sun journey, where the sun would carry out
various roles including judgement related to the dead.
In legend, many hero journeys followed the daily course of the sun god. These have been attributed to Gilgamesh, Odysseus, the Argonauts, Heracles and, in later periods, Alexander the Great. In the Epic of Gilgamesh,
Gilgamesh reaches the cosmic mountain Mashu, which is either two
mountains or a single twin-peaked mountain. Mashu acts as the sun-gate,
from where the sun and sets in its path to and from the netherworld. In
some texts, the mountain is called the mountain of sunrise and sunset. According to the Epic:
The name of the mountain was Mashu. When [he] arrived at Mount Mashu,
which daily guards the rising [of the sun,] – their tops [abut] the
fabric of the heavens, their bases reach down to Hades – there were
scorpion-men guarding its gate, whose terror was dread and glance was
death, whose radiance was terrifying, enveloping the uplands – at both
sunrise and sunset they guard the sun…
Another texts describing the relationship between the sun and the cosmic mountain reads:
O Shamash, when you come forth from the great mountain, When you come
forth from the great mountain, the mountain of the deep, When you come
forth from the holy hill where destinies are ordained, When you [come
forth] from the back of heaven to the junction point of heaven and
earth…
A number of additional texts share descriptions like these.
Moon
Mesopotamians believed the moon to be a manifestation of the moon god,
known as Nanna in Sumerian texts or Sîn in Akkadian texts, a high god
of the pantheon, subject to cultic devotion, and father of the sun god
Shamash and the Venus god Inanna. The path of the moon in the night sky and its lunar phases
were also of interest. At first, Mesopotamia had no common calendar,
but around 2000 BC, the semi-lunar calendar of the Sumerian center of Nippur became increasingly prevalent. Hence, the moon god was responsible for ordering perceivable time. The lunar calendar
was divided into twelve months of thirty days each. New months were
marked by the appearance of the moon after a phase of invisibility. The Enuma Elish
creation myth describes Marduk as arranging the paths of the stars and
then spends considerable space on Marduk's ordering of the moon:
12
He made Nannaru (=the moon-god) appear (and) entrusted the night to
him. 13 He assigned him as the jewel of the night to determine the days.
14 Month by month without cease, he marked (him) with a crown: 15 “At
the beginning of the month, while rising over the land, 16 you shine
with horns to reveal six days. 17 On the seventh day, (your) disc shall
be halved. 18 On the fifteenth day, in the middle of each month, you
shall stand in opposition. 19 As soon as Šamaš (= the sun-god) sees you
on the horizon, 20 reach properly your full measure and form yourself
back. 21 At the day of disappearance, approach the path of Šamaš. 22 […
3]0. day you shall stand in conjunction. You shall be equal to Šamaš.
The ideal course of the moon was thought to form one month every thirty days. However, the precise lunar month
is 29.53 days, leading to variations that made the lunar month counted
as 29 or 30 days in practice. The mismatch between the predictions and
reality of the course of the moon gave rise to the idea that the moon
could act according to its expected course as a good omen or deviate
from it as a bad omen. In the 2nd millennium BC, Mesopotamian scholars
composed the Enūma Anu Enlil,
a collection of at least seventy tablets concerned with omens. The
first fourteen (1–14) relate to the appearance of the moon, and the next
eight (15–22) deal with lunar eclipses.
The moon was also assigned other functions, such as providing
illumination during the night, and already in this period, had a known
influence on the tides.
During the day when the moon was not visible, it was thought that the
moon descended beneath the flat disk of the earth and, like the sun,
underwent a voyage through the underworld. The cosmic voyage and motion
of the moon also allowed it to exert influence over the world; this
belief naturally allowed for the practice of divination to arise.
Mesopotamian cosmology would differ from the practice of astronomy in
terms of terminology: for astronomers, the word "firmament" was not
used but instead "sky" to describe the domain in which the heavenly
affairs were visible. The stars were located on the firmament. The
earliest texts attribute to Anu, Enlil, and Enki (Ea) the ordering of
perceivable time by creating and ordering the courses of the stars.
Later, according to the Enuma Elish, the stars were arranged by Marduk
into constellations representing the images of the gods. The year was
fixed by organizing the year into twelve months, and by assigning (the
rising of) three stars to each of the twelve months. The moon and zenith
were also created. Other phenomena introduced by Marduk included the
lunar phases and lunar scheme, the precise paths that the stars would
take as they rose and set, the stations of the planets, and more. Another account of the creation of the heavenly bodies is offered in the Babyloniaca of Berossus, where Bel
(Marduk) creates stars, sun, moon, and the five (known) planets; the
planets here do not help guide the calendar (a lack of concern for the
planets also shared in the Book of the Courses of the Heavenly Luminaries, a subsection of 1 Enoch).
Concern for the establishment of the calendar by the creation of
heavenly bodies as visible signs is shared in at least seven other
Mesopotamian texts. A Sumerian inscription of Kudur-Mabuk,
for example, reads "The reliable god, who interchanges day and night,
who establishes the month, and keeps the year intact." Another example
is to be found in the Exaltation of Inanna.
The word "star" (mul in Sumerian; kakkabu in Akkadian) was inclusive to all celestial bodies, stars, constellations, and planets. A more specific term for planets existed however (udu.idim in Sumerian; bibbu in Akkadian, literally "wild sheep")
to distinguish them from other stars (of which they were a
subcategory): unlike the stars thought to be fixed into their location,
the planets were observed to move. By the 3rd millennium BC, the planet Venus was identified as the astral form of the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar), and motifs such as the morning and evening star were applied to her. Jupiter became Marduk (hence the name "Marduk Star", also called Nibiru), Mercury was the "jumping one" (in reference to its comparatively fast motion and low visibility) associated with the gods Ninurta and Nabu, and Mars was the god of pestilence Nergal and thought to portend evil and death. Saturn was also sinister. The most obvious characteristic of the stars were their luminosity and their study for the purposes of divination, solving calendrical calculations,
and predictions of the appearances of planets, led to the discovery of
their periodic motion. From 600 BC onwards, the relative periodicity
between them began to be studied.
Above the firmament was a large, cosmic body of water which may be referred to as the cosmic ocean or celestial waters. In the Tablet of Shamash, the throne of the sun god Shamash is depicted as resting above the cosmic ocean. The waters are above the solid firmament that covers the sky.In the Enuma Elish, the upper waters represented the waters of Tiamat, contained by Tiamat's stretched out skin. Canaanite mythology in the Baal Cycle describes the supreme god Baal as enthroned above the freshwater ocean.
Egyptian texts depict the sun god sailing across these upper waters.
Some also convey that this body of water is the heavenly equivalent of
the Nile River.
Both Babylonian and Israelite texts describe one of the divisions of
the cosmos as the underworldly ocean. In Babylonian texts, this is
coincided with the region/god Abzu. In Sumerian mythology, this realm was created by Enki.
It was also where Enki lived and ruled over. Due to the connection with
Enki, the lower waters were associated with wisdom and incantational
secret knowledge. In Egyptian mythology, the personification of this subterranean body of water was instead Nu.
The notion of a cosmic body of water below the Earth was inferred from
the realization that much water used for irrigation came from under the
ground, from springs,
and that springs were not limited to any one part of the world.
Therefore, a cosmic body of water acting as a common source for the
water coming out of all these springs was conceived.
The Underworld/Netherworld (kur or erṣetu in Sumerian)
is the lowest region in the direction downwards, below even Abzu (the
primeval ocean/lower waters). It is geographically parallel with the
plane of human existence, but was so low that both demons and gods could
not descend to it. One of its names was "Earth of No Return". It was,
however, inhabited by beings such as ghosts, demons, and local gods. The
land was depicted as dark and distant: this is because it was the
opposite of the human world and so did not have light, water, fields,
and so forth. According to KAR 307, line 37, Bel cast 600 Annunaki into the underworld. They were locked away there, unable to escape, analogous to the enemies of Zeus who were confined to the underworld (Tartarus) after their rebellion during the Titanomachy. During and after the Kassite period, Annunaki were largely depicted as underworld deities; a hymn to Nergal praises him as the "Controller of the underworld, Supervisor of the 600".
In Canaanite religion, the underworld was personified as the god Mot. In Egyptian mythology, the underworld was known as Duat and was ruled by Osiris, the god of the afterlife. It was also the region where the sun (manifested by the god Ra) made its journey from west (where it sets) to the east (from where it would rise again the next morning).
Cosmogonies
Main themes
Origins of the cosmos
The world was thought to be created ex materia. That is, out of pre-existing, and unformed, eternal matter. This is in contrast to the later notion of creation ex nihilo,
which asserts that all the matter of the universe was created out of
nothing. The primeval substance had always existed, was unformed,
divine, and was envisioned as an immense, cosmic, chaotic mass of water
or ocean (a representation that still existed in the time of Ovid).
In the Mesopotamian theogonic process, the gods would be ultimately
generated from this primeval matter, although a distinct process is
found in the Hebrew Bible
where God is initially distinct from the primeval matter. For the
cosmos and the gods to ultimately emerge from this formless cosmic
ocean, the idea emerged that it had to be separated into distinct parts
and therefore be formed or organized. This event can be imagined of as
the beginning of time. Furthermore, the process of the creation of the
cosmos is coincident or equivalent to the beginning of the creation of
new gods. In the 3rd millennium BC, the goddess Nammu
was the one and singular representation of the original cosmic ocean in
Mesopotamian cosmology. From the 2nd millennium BC onwards, this cosmic
ocean came to be represented by two gods, Tiamat and Abzu who would be separated from each other to mark the cosmic beginning. The Ugaritic god Yam from the Baal Cycle may also represent the primeval ocean.
Sumerian and Akkadian sources understand the matter of the
primordial universe out of which the cosmos emerges in different ways.
Sumerian thought distinguished between the inanimate matter that the
cosmos was made of and the animate and living matter that permeated the
gods and went on to be transmitted to humans. In Akkadian sources, the
cosmos is originally alive and animate, but the deaths of Abzu (male deity of the fresh waters) and Tiamat (female sea goddess) give rise to inanimate matter, and all inanimate matter is derived from the dead remains of these deities.
Origins of the gods
The core Mesopotamian myth to explain the gods' origins begins with the primeval ocean, personified by Nammu, containing Father Sky and Mother Earth within her.
In the god-list TCL XV 10, Nammu is called 'the mother, who gave birth
to heaven and earth'. The conception of Nammu as mother of Sky-Earth is
first attested in the Ur III period (early 2nd millennium BC), though it may go back to an earlier Akkadian era. Earlier in the 3rd millennium BC, Sky and Earth were the starting point with little apparent question about their own origins.
The representation of Sky as male and Earth as female may come
from the analogy between the generative power of the male sperm and the
rain that comes from the sky, which respectively fertilize the female to
give rise to newborn life or the Earth to give rise to vegetation. In the desert-dweller milieu, life depended on pastureland.
Sky and Earth are in a union. Because they are the opposite sex, they
inevitably reproduce and their offspring are successive pairs or
generations of gods known as the Enki-Ninki deities. The name comes from Enki and Ninki ("Lord and Lady Earth") being the first pair in all versions of the story. The only other consistent feature is that Enlil and Ninlil are the last pair. In each pair, one member is male (indicated by the En- prefix) and the other is female (indicated by the Nin-
prefix). The birth of Enlil results in the separation of heaven and
earth as well as the division of the primordial ocean into the upper and
lower waters. Sky, now Anu, can mate with other deities after being separated from Earth: he mates with his mother Nammu to give birth to Enki
(different from the earlier Enki) who takes dominion over the lower
waters. The siblings Enlil and Ninlil mate to give birth to Nanna (also known as Sin), the moon god, and Ninurta, the warrior god. Nanna fathers Utu (known as Shamash in Akkadian texts), the sun god, and Inanna (Venus). By this point, the main features of the cosmos had been created/born.
A variation of this myth existed in Egyptian cosmology. Here, the primordial ocean is given by the god Nu.
The creation act neither takes its materials from Nu, unlike in
Mesopotamian cosmology, nor is Nu eliminated by the creation act.
Separation of heaven and earth
3rd millennium BC texts speak of the cosmic marriage or union of Heaven and Earth. Only one towards the end of this era, the Song of the hoe, mentions their separation. By contrast, 2nd millennium texts entirely shift in focus to their separation. The tradition spread into Sumerian, Akkadian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and early Greek mythology. The cause of the separation involves either the agency of Enlil or takes place as a spontaneous act. One recovered Hittite
text states that there was a time when they "severed the heaven from
the earth with a cleaver", and an Egyptian text refers to "when the sky
was separated from the earth" (Pyramid Text 1208c). OIP 99 113 ii and 136 iii says Enlil separated Earth from Sky and separated Sky from Earth. Enkig and Ninmah 1–2 also says Sky and Earth were separated in the beginning. The introduction of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld says that heaven is carried off from the earth by the sky god Anu to become the possession of the wind god Enlil. Several other sources also present this idea.
There are two strands of Mesopotamian creation myths regarding
the original separation of the heavens and earth. The first, older one,
is evinced from texts in the Sumerian language
from the 3rd millennium BC and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.
In these sources, the heavens and Earth are separated from an original
solid mass. In the younger tradition from Akkadian texts,
such as the Enuma Elish, the separation occurs from an original water
mass. The former usually has the leading gods of the Sumerian pantheon,
the King of Heaven Anu and the King of Earth Enlil, separating the mass over a time-frame of "long days and nights", similar to the total timeframe of the Genesis creation narrative
(six days and nights). The Sumerian texts do not mention the creation
of the cosmic waters but it may be surmised that water was one of the
primordial elements.
Stretching out the heavens
The idiom of the heavens and earth being stretched out plays both a cultic and cosmic role in the Hebrew Bible where it appears repeatedly in the Book of Isaiah (40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:13; 51:13, 16), with related expressions in the Book of Job (26:7) and the Psalms
(104:2). One example reads "The one who stretched out the heavens like a
curtain / And who spread them out like a tent to dwell in" (Is 40:22).
The idiom is used in these texts to identify the creative element of Yahweh's
activities and the expansion of the heavens signifies its vastness,
acting as Yahweh's celestial shrine. In Psalmic tradition, the
"stretching" of the heavens is analogous to the stretching out of a
tent. The Hebrew verb for the "stretching" of the heavens is also the
regular verb for "pitching" a tent. The heavens, in other words, may be
depicted as a cosmic tent (a motif found in many ancient cultures).
This finds architectural analogy in descriptions of the tabernacle,
which is itself a heavenly archetype, over which a tent is supposed to
have been spread.
The phrase is frequently followed by an expression that God sits
enthroned above and ruling the world, paralleling descriptions of God
being seated in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle where he is stated to exercise rule over Israel.
Biblical references to stretching the heavens typically occur in
conjunction with statements that God made or laid the foundations of the
earth.
Similar expressions may be found elsewhere in the ancient near east. A text from the 2nd millennium BC, the Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi,
says "Wherever the earth is laid, and the heavens are stretched out",
though the text does not identify the creator of the cosmos. The Enuma Elish also describes the phenomena, in IV.137–140:
137
He split her into two like a dried fish: 138 One half of her he set up
and stretched out as the heavens. 139 He stretched the skin and
appointed a watch. 140 With the instruction not to let her waters
escape.
In this text, Marduk takes the body of Tiamat,
who he has killed, and stretches out Tiamat's skin to create the
firmamental heavens which, in turn, comes to play the role of preventing
the cosmic waters above the firmament from escaping and being unleashed
onto the earth. Whereas the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible states that Yahweh stretched heaven like a curtain in Psalm 104:2, the equivalent passage in the Septuagint
instead uses the analogy of stretching out like "skin", which could
represent a relic of Babylonian cosmology from the Enuma Elish.
Nevertheless, the Hebrew Bible never identifies the material out of
which the firmament was stretched. Numerous theories about what the firmament was made of sprung up across ancient cultures.
Origins of humanity
Many stories emerged to explain the creation of humanity and the birth of civilization. Earlier Sumerian language texts from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC can be divided into two traditions: those from the cities of Nippur or Eridu.
The Nippur tradition asserts that Heaven (An) and Earth (Ki) were
coupled in a cosmic marriage. After they are separated by Enlil, Ki
receives semen from An and gives rise to the gods, animals, and man. The
Eridu tradition says that Enki,
the offspring of An and Namma (in this tradition, the freshwater
goddess) is the one who creates everything. Periodical relations between
Enki and Ninhursaga
(in this tradition, the personification of Earth) gives rise to
vegetation. With the help of Namma, Enki creates man from clay. A famous
work of the Eridu tradition is Eridu Genesis. A minority tradition in Sumerian texts, distinct from Nippur and Eridu traditions, is known from KAR 4, where the blood of a slaughtered deity is used to create humanity for the purpose of making them build temples for the gods.
Later Akkadian language tradition can be divided into various minor cosmogonies, cosmogonies of significant texts like Enuma Elish and Epic of Atrahasis, and finally the Dynasty of Dunnum placed in its own category. In the Atrahasis Epic, the Anunnaki gods force the Igigi gods to do their labor. However, the Igigi became fed up with this work and rebel. To solve the problem, Enlil and Mami
create humanity by mixing the blood of gods with clay, who in the stead
of the Igigi are assigned the gods' work. In the Enuma Elish, divine
blood alone is used to make man.
Limitations of these types of texts (papyri, cuneiform, etc) is
that the majority are administrative and economic in their nature,
saying little about cosmology. Detailed descriptions are unknown before
the first millennium BC. As such, reconstructions from that time depend
on gleaning information from surviving creation myths and etiologies.
The Enuma Elish
is the most famous Mesopotamian creation story and was widely known in
among learned circles across Mesopotamia, influencing both art and
ritual. It is also the only complete cosmogony, whereas others must be reconstructed from disparate sources.
The story was, in many ways, an original work, and as such is not a
general representative of ancient near eastern or even Babylonian
cosmology as a whole, and its survival as the most complete creation
account appears to be a product of it having been composed in the milieu
of Babylonian literature that happened to survive and get discovered in
the present day.
On the other hand, recent evidence suggests that after its composition,
it played an important role in Babylonian scribal education. The story is preserved foremost in seven clay tablets discovered from the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. The creation myth seeks to describes how the god Marduk created the world from the body of the sea monster Tiamat after defeating her in battle, after which Marduk ascends to the top of the heavenly pantheon.
The Enuma Elish is one of a broader set of near eastern traditions
describing the cosmic battle between the storm and sea gods, but only
Israelite cosmogonies share with it the act of creation that follows the
storm gods victory.
The following is a synopsis of the account. The primordial universe is alive and animate, made of Abzu, commonly identified as a male deity of the fresh waters, and Tiamat, the female sea goddess of salt waters.
The waters mingle to create the next generations of deities. However,
the younger gods are noisy and this noise eventually incenses Abzu so
much that he tries to kill them. In trying to do so, however, he is
killed by Ea (Akkadian equivalent of the Sumerian Enki). This eventually
leads to a battle between Tiamat and the son of Ea, Marduk.
Marduk kills Tiamat and fashions the cosmos, including the heavens and
Earth, from Tiamat's corpse. Tiamat's breasts are used to make the
mountains and Tiamat's eyes are used to open the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Parts of the watery body were used to create parts of the world
including its wind, rain, mist, and rivers. Marduk forms the heavenly
bodies including the sun, moon, and stars to produce periodic astral
activity that is the basis for the calendar, before finally setting up
the cosmic capital at Babylon. Marduk attains universal kingship and the Tablet of Destinies. Tiamat's helper Kingu is also slain and his life force is used to animate the first human beings.
The Enuma Elish is in continuity with other texts like the Myth of Anzû, the Labbu Myth, and KAR 6.
In both the Enuma Elish and the Myth of Anzu, a dragon (Anzu or Tiamat)
steals the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil, the chief god and in
response, the chief god looks for someone to slay the dragon. Then, in
both stories, a champion among the gods is chosen to fight the dragon (Ninurta
or Marduk) after two or three others before them reject the offer to
fight. The champion wins, after which he is acclaimed and given many
names. The Enuma Elish may have also drawn from the myth of the Ninurta
and the dragon Kur.
The dragon is formerly responsible for holding up the primordial
waters. Upon being killed, the waters begin to rise; this problem is
solved by Ninurta heaping stones upon them until the waters are held
back. One of the most significant differences between the Enuma Elish
and earlier creation myths is in its exaltation of Marduk as the highest
god. In prior myths, Ea was the chief god and creator of mankind.
The Genesis creation narrative, composed perhaps in the 7th or 6th
century BC, spans Gen 1:1–2:3 and covers a one-week (seven-day) period.
In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one
divides the darkness from light,
day two the "waters above" from the "waters below", and day three the
sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are
populated: day four populates the darkness and light with "greater
light" (Sun), "lesser light" (Moon) and stars; day five populates seas
and skies with fish and fowl; and finally land-based creatures and
mankind populate the land.
According to Victor Hamilton, most scholars agree that the choice of
"greater light" and "lesser light", rather than the more explicit "Sun"
and "Moon", is anti-mythological rhetoric intended to contradict
widespread contemporary beliefs that the Sun and the Moon were deities
themselves.
In 1895, Hermann Gunkel related this narrative to the Enuma Elish via an etymological relationship between Tiamat and təhôm ("the deep" or "the abyss") and a sharing of the Chaoskampf
motif. Today, another view rejects these connections and groups the
Genesis creation narrative with other West Semitic cosmologies like
those of Ugarit.
More biblical cosmogonies
Other prominent biblical cosmogonies include Psalm 74:12–17; Psalm 89:6–13; and Job 26:7–13, with a variety of additional briefer passages expounding on subsections of these lengthier passages (like Isaiah 51:9–10).
Like traditions from Babylon, Egypt, Anatolia, and Canaan and the
Levant, these cosmogonies describe a cosmic battle (on the part of Yahweh in the biblical versions) with a sea god (named Leviathan, Rahab)
but only with Babylonian versions like the Enuma Elish is the victory
against the sea god followed by an act of creation. The seemingly
well-known cosmogony proceeded as follows: Yahweh fights and subdues the
sea god while portrayed as holding a weapon and fighting with
meteorological forces; the Sea that previously covered the earth is
forced to make way for dry land and parts of it are confined behind the
seashore, in the clouds, and into storehouses below the earth; Mount Zaphon is established and a temple for Yahweh is erected; finally, Yahweh is enthroned above all the gods.
An alternative cosmogony appears in the doxologies of Amos
(4:13; 5:8; 9:5–6). Instead of the earth being already covered by a
primal sea, the earth is originally in a dry state and only later is the
sea stretched over it. No cosmic battle takes place. The winds and
mountains, which elsewhere primordially exist, in this account are both
created. Like some passages in Deutero-Isaiah, these doxologies appear to present a view of creation ex-nihilo.
These cosmogonies are relatively mythologized compared to the
Genesis cosmogony. In addition, the Genesis cosmogony differs by
describing the separation of the upper and lower waters by the creation
of a firmament, whereas here, they are typically assembled into clouds. The closest cosmogony to Genesis is the one in Psalm 104.
The first book of the Babyloniaca of the Babylonian priest Berossus,
composed in the third century BC, offers a variant (or, perhaps, an
interpretation) of the cosmogony of the Enuma Elish. This work is not
extant but survives in later quotations and abridgements. Berossus'
account begins with a primeval ocean. Unlike in the Enuma Elish, where
sea monsters are generated for combat with other gods, in Berossus'
account, they emerge by spontaneous generation
and are described in a different manner to the 11 monsters of the Enuma
Elish, as it expands beyond the purely mythical creatures of that
account in a potential case of influence from Greek zoology. The fragments of Berossus by Syncellus and the Armenian of how he described his cosmogony are as follows:
Syncellus: There was a time, he says, when everything was [darkness
and] water and that in it fabulous beings with peculiar forms came to
life. For men with two wings were born and some with four wings and two
faces, having one body and two heads, male and female, and double
genitalia, male and female ... [a list of monstrous beings follows].
Over all these a woman ruled named Omorka. This means in Chaldaean
Thalatth, in Greek it is translated as ‘Sea’ (Thalassa) ... When
everything was arranged in this way, Belos rose up and split the woman
in two. Of one half of her he made earth, of the other half sky; and he
destroyed all creatures in her ... For when everything was moist, and
creatures had come into being in it, this god took off his own head and
the other gods mixed the blood that flowed out with earth and formed
men. For this reason they are intelligent and share in divine wisdom.
Belos, whom they translate as Zeus, cut the darkness in half and
separated earth and sky from each other and ordered the universe. The
creatures could not endure the power of the light and were destroyed.
When Belos saw the land empty and barren, he ordered one of the gods to
cut off his own head and to mix the blood that flowed out with earth and
to form men and wild animals that were capable of enduring the air.
Belos also completed the stars and the sun and the moon and the five
planets. Alexander Polyhistor says that Berossus asserts these things in
his first book.
Syncellus: They say that in the beginning all was water, which
was called Sea (Thalassa). Bel made this one by assigning a place to
each, and he surrounded Babylon with a wall.
Armenian: All, he said, was from the start water, which was called Sea.
And Bel placed limits on them (the waters) and assigned a place to each,
allocated their lands, and fortified Babylon with an enclosing wall.
The
conclusion of the account states that Belus then created the stars,
sun, moon, and five planets. The account of Berossus agrees largely with
the Enuma Elish, such as its reference to the splitting of the woman
whose halves are used to create heaven and earth, but also contain a
number of differences, such as the statement about allegorical exegesis,
the self-decapitation of Belus in order to create humans, and the
statement that it is the divine blood which has made humans intelligent.
Some debate has ensued about which elements of these may or may not go
back to the original account of Berossus.
Some of the information Berossus got for his account of the creation
myth may have come from the Enuma Elish and the Babylonian Dynastic Chronicle.
Other cosmogonies
Additional minor texts also present varying cosmogonical details. The Bilingual Creation of the World by Marduk describes the construction of Earth as a raft over the cosmic waters by Marduk. An Akkadian text called The Worm
describes a series of creation events: first Heaven creates Earth,
Earth creates the Rivers, and eventually, the worm is created at the end
of the series and it goes to live in the root of the tooth that is
removed during surgery.
Influence
Survival
Copies from the Sippar Library indicate the Enuma Elish was copied into Seleucid times. One Hellenistic-era Babylonian priest, Berossus, wrote a Greek text about Mesopotamian traditions called the Babyloniaca (History of Babylon). The text survives mainly in fragments, especially by quotations in Eusebius
in the fourth-century. The first book contains an account of Babylonian
cosmology and, though concise, contains a number of echoes of the Enuma
Elish. The creation account of Berossus is attributed to the divine
messenger Oannes in the period after the global flood and is derivative of the Enuma Elish but also has significant variants to it.Babylonian cosmology also received treatments by the lost works of Alexander Polyhistor and Abydenus. The last known evidence for reception of the Enuma Elish is in the writings of Damascius (462–538), who had a well-informed source. As such, some learned circles in late antiquity continued to know the Enuma Elish. Echoes of Mesopotamian cosmology continue into the 11th century.
Early Greek cosmology was closely related to the broader domain of
ancient near eastern cosmology, reflected 8th century BC works like the Theogony of Hesiod and the works of Homer, and prior to the emergence of an independent and systematic Hellenistic system of cosmology that was represented by figures such as Aristotle and the astronomer Ptolemy, starting with the Ionian School of philosophy at the city of Miletus
from the 6th to 4th centuries BC. In early Greek cosmology, the Earth
was conceived of as being flat, encircled by a cosmic ocean known as Oceanus, and that heaven was a solid firmament held above the Earth by pillars. Many believe that a Hurro-Hittite work from the 13th century BC, the Song of Emergence (CTH 344), was directly used by Hesiod on the basis of extensive similarities between their accounts.
The notion of heaven and earth originally being in unity followed
by their separation continues to be attested in later Greek
cosmological texts, such as in the descriptions of Orphic cosmology
according to the Wise Melanippe of Euripides in the 5th century BC and the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC, as well as in other and still later Greek accounts, such as the writings of Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC.
The earliest Zoroastrian sources describe a tripartite sky, with an
upper heaven where the sun exists, a middle heaven where the moon
exists, and a lower heaven where the stars exist and are fixed.
Significant work has been done on comparing this cosmography to ones
present in Mesopotamian, Greek, and Indian parallels. In light of
evidence which has emerged in recent decades, the present view is that
this idea entered into Zoroastrian thought through Mesopotamian channels
of influence. Another influence is that the name that one of the planets took on in Middle Persian literature, Kēwān (for Saturn), was derived from the Akkadian language.
Mesopotamian cosmology, especially as it manifested in the biblical Genesis creation narrative, exerted continued substantial influence on Jewish cosmology, especially as it is described in the rabbinic literature. Not all influence appears to have been mediated through the Bible. The dome-shaped firmament was described in Hebrew as a kippah, which has been related to its Akkadian cognate kippatšamê, though the latter only refers to flat objects.
The Jewish belief in seven heavens, as it is absent from the Hebrew
Bible, has often been interpreted as being taken from early interactions
with Mesopotamian cosmologies.
Christian texts were familiar with ancient near eastern cosmology
insofar as it had shaped the Genesis creation narrative. A genre of
literature emerged among Jews and Christians dedicated to the
composition of texts commenting precisely on this narrative to
understand the cosmos and its origins: these works are called
Hexaemeron. The first extant example is the De opificio mundi ("On the Creation of the World") by the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Philo preferred an allegorical form of exegesis, in line with that of the School of Alexandria, and so was partial to a Hellenistic cosmology as opposed to an ancient near eastern one. In the late fourth century, the Hexaemeral genre was revived and popularized by the Hexaemeron of Basil of Caesarea,
who composed his Hexaemeron in 378, which subsequently inspired
numerous works including among Basil's own contemporaries. Basil was
much more literal in his interpretation than Philo, closer instead to
the exegesis of the School of Antioch.
Christian authors would heavily dispute the correct degree of literal
or allegorical exegesis in future writings. Among Syrian authors, Jacob of Serugh was the first to produce his own Hexaemeron in the early sixth century, and he was followed later by Jacob of Edessa's Hexaemeron in the first years of the eighth century. The most literal approach was that of the Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes, which presented a cosmography very similar to the traditional Mesopotamian one, but in turn, John Philoponus wrote a harsh rebuttal to Cosmas in his own De opificio mundi. Syrian Christian texts also shared topographical features like the cosmic ocean surrounding the earth.
Cosmographies were described in works other than those of the Hexaemeral genre. For example, in the genre of novels, the Alexander Romance would portray a mythologized picture of the journeys and conquests of Alexander the Great, ultimately inspired by the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The influence is evident in the texts cosmography, as Alexander reaches
an outer ocean circumscribing the Earth which cannot be passed. Both in the Alexander Romance, and in later texts like the Syriac Alexander Legend
(Neshana), Alexander journeys to the ends of the Earth which is
surrounded by an ocean. Unlike in the story of Gilgamesh, however, this
ocean is an unpassable boundary that marks the extent to which Alexander
can go.
The Neshana also aligns with a Mesopotamian cosmography in its
description of the path of the sun: as the sun sets in the west, it
passes through a gateway in the firmament, cycles to the other side of
the earth, and rises in the east in its passage through another
celestial gateway. Alexander, like Gilgamesh, follows the path of the
sun during his journey. These elements of Alexander's journey are also
described as part of the journey of Dhu al-Qarnayn in the Quran. Gilgamesh's journey takes him to a great cosmic mountain Mashu; likewise, Alexander reaches a cosmic mountain known as Musas. The cosmography depicted in this text greatly resembles that outlined by the Babylonian Map of the World.
The Quran
conceives of the primary elements of the ancient near eastern
cosmography, such as the division of the cosmos into the heavens and the
Earth, a solid firmament, upper waters, a flat Earth, and seven
heavens.
As with rabbinic cosmology, however, these elements were not directly
transmitted from ancient near eastern civilization. Instead, work in the
field of Quranic studies
has identified the primary historical context for the reception of
these ideas to have been in the Christian and Jewish cosmologies of late antiquity. This conception of the cosmos was carried on into the traditionalist cosmologies that were held in the caliphate, though with a few nuances that appear to have emerged.
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