Biblical cosmology is the biblical writers'
conception of the cosmos as an organised,
structured entity, including its origin, order,
meaning and destiny.
The Bible was formed over many centuries,
involving many authors, and reflects shifting
patterns of religious belief; consequently,
its cosmology is not always consistent.
Nor do the biblical texts necessarily represent
the beliefs of all Jews or Christians at the
time they were put into writing: the majority
of those making up Hebrew Bible or Old Testament
in particular represent the beliefs of only
a small segment of the ancient Israelite community,
the members of a late Judean religious tradition
centered in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive
worship of Yahweh.The ancient Israelites envisaged
a universe made up of a flat disc-shaped Earth
floating on water, heaven above, underworld
below.
Humans inhabited Earth during life and the
underworld after death, and the underworld
was morally neutral; only in Hellenistic times
(after c.330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt
the Greek idea that it would be a place of
punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous
would enjoy an afterlife in heaven.
In this period too the older three-level cosmology
in large measure gave way to the Greek concept
of a spherical earth suspended in space at
the center of a number of concentric heavens.The
opening words of the Genesis creation narrative
(Genesis 1:1-26) sum up a view of how the
cosmos originated: "In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth"; Yahweh, the God
of Israel, was solely responsible for creation
and had no rivals.
Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from
Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom,
Word and Spirit penetrated all things and
gave them unity.
Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and
identified Jesus with the Logos (Word): "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).
== Cosmogony (origins of the cosmos) ==
=== Divine battle and divine speech ===
Two different models of the process of creation
existed in ancient Israel.
In the "logos" (speech) model, God speaks
and shapes unresisting dormant matter into
effective existence and order (Psalm 33: "By
the word of YHWH the heavens were made, and
by the breath of his mouth all their hosts;
he gathers up the waters like a mound, stores
the Deep in vaults"); in the second, or "agon"
(struggle) model, God does battle with the
monsters of the sea at the beginning of the
world in order to mark his sovereignty and
power.
Psalm 74 evokes the agon model: it opens with
a lament over God's desertion of his people
and their tribulations, then asks him to remember
his past deeds: "You it was who smashed Sea
with your might, who battered the heads of
the monsters in the waters; You it was who
crushed the heads of Leviathan, who left them
for food for the denizens of the desert..."
In this world-view the seas are primordial
forces of disorder, and the work of creation
is preceded by a divine combat (or "theomachy").Creation
in the "agon" model takes the following storyline:
(1) God as the divine warrior battles the
monsters of chaos, who include Sea, Death,
Tannin and Leviathan; (2) The world of nature
joins in the battle and the chaos-monsters
are defeated; (3) God is enthroned on a divine
mountain, surrounded by lesser deities; (4)
He speaks, and nature brings forth the created
world, or for the Greeks, the cosmos.
This myth was taken up in later Jewish and
Christian apocalyptic literature and projected
into the future, so that cosmic battle becomes
the decisive act at the end of the world's
history: thus the Book of Revelation (end
of the 1st century CE) tells how, after the
God's final victory over the sea-monsters,
New Heavens and New Earth shall be inaugurated
in a cosmos in which there will be "no more
sea" (Revelation 21:1).The Genesis creation
narrative (Genesis 1) is the quintessential
"logos" creation myth.
Like the "agon" model it begins with darkness
and the uncreated primordial ocean: God separates
and restrains the waters, but he does not
create them from nothing.
God initiates each creative act with a spoken
word ("God said, Let there be..."), and finalises
it with the giving of a name.
Creation by speech is not unique to the Old
Testament: it is prominent in some Egyptian
traditions.
There is, however, a difference between the
Egyptian and Hebrew logos mythologies: in
Genesis 1 the divine word of the Elohim is
an act of "making into"; the word of Egyptian
creator-god, by contrast, is an almost magical
activation of something inherent in pre-creation:
as such, it goes beyond the concept of fiat
(divine act) to something more like the Logos
of the Gospel of John.
=== Naming: God, Wisdom, Torah and Christ
===
In the ancient world, things did not exist
until they were named: "The name of a living
being or an object was ... the very essence
of what was defined, and the pronouncing of
a name was to create what was spoken."
The pre-Exilic (before 586 BCE) Old Testament
allowed no equals to Yahweh in heaven, despite
the continued existence of an assembly of
subordinate servant-deities who helped make
decisions about matters on heaven and earth.
The post-Exilic writers of the Wisdom tradition
(e.g. the Book of Proverbs, Song of Songs,
etc.) develop the idea that Wisdom, later
identified with Torah, existed before creation
and was used by God to create the universe:
"Present from the beginning, Wisdom assumes
the role of master builder while God establishes
the heavens, restricts the chaotic waters,
and shapes the mountains and fields."
Borrowing ideas from Greek philosophers who
held that reason bound the universe together,
the Wisdom tradition taught that God's Wisdom,
Word and Spirit were the ground of cosmic
unity.
Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and
applied them to Jesus: the Epistle to the
Colossians calls Jesus "...image of the invisible
God, first-born of all creation...", while
the Gospel of John identifies him with the
creative word ("In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God").
== Cosmography (shape and structure of the
cosmos) ==
=== Heavens, Earth, and underworld ===
The Hebrew Bible depicted a three-part world,
with the heavens (shamayim) above, Earth (eres)
in the middle, and the underworld (sheol)
below.
After the 4th century BCE this was gradually
replaced by a Greek scientific cosmology of
a spherical earth surrounded by multiple concentric
heavens.
=== The cosmic ocean ===
The three-part world of heavens, Earth and
underworld floated in Tehom, the mythological
cosmic ocean, which covered the Earth until
God created the firmament to divide it into
upper and lower portions and reveal the dry
land; the world has been protected from the
cosmic ocean ever since by the solid dome
of the firmament.The tehom is, or was, hostile
to God: it confronted him at the beginning
of the world (Psalm 104:6ff) but fled from
the dry land at his rebuke; he has now set
a boundary or bar for it which it can no longer
pass (Jeremiah 5:22 and Job 38:8-10).
The cosmic sea is the home of monsters which
God conquers: "By his power he stilled the
sea, by his understanding he smote Rahab!"
(Job 26:12f).
(Rahab is an exclusively Hebrew sea-monster;
others, including Leviathan and the tannin,
or dragons, are found in Ugaritic texts; it
is not entirely clear whether they are identical
with Sea or are Sea's helpers).
The "bronze sea" which stood in the forecourt
of the Temple in Jerusalem probably corresponds
to the "sea" in Babylonian temples, representing
the apsu, the cosmic ocean.In the New Testament
Jesus' conquest of the stormy sea shows the
conquering deity overwhelming the forces of
chaos: a mere word of command from the Son
of God stills the foe (Mark 4:35-41), who
then tramples over his enemy, (Jesus walking
on water - Mark 6:45, 47-51).
In Revelation, where the Archangel Michael
expels the dragon (Satan) from heaven ("And
war broke out in heaven, with Michael and
his angels attacking the dragon..."
- Revelation 12:7), the motif can be traced
back to Leviathan in Israel and to Tiamat,
the chaos-ocean, in Babylonian myth, identified
with Satan via an interpretation of the serpent
in Eden.
=== Heavens ===
==== 
Form and structure ====
In the Old Testament the word shamayim represented
both the sky/atmosphere, and the dwelling
place of God.
The raqia or firmament - the visible sky - was
a solid inverted bowl over the Earth, coloured
blue from the heavenly ocean above it.
Rain, snow, wind and hail were kept in storehouses
outside the raqia, which had "windows" to
allow them in - the waters for Noah's flood
entered when the "windows of heaven" were
opened.
Heaven extended down to and was coterminous
with (i.e. it touched) the farthest edges
of the Earth (e.g. Deuteronomy 4:32); humans
looking up from Earth saw the floor of heaven,
which they saw also as God's throne, as made
of clear blue lapis-lazuli (Exodus 24:9-10),and
(Ezekiel 1:26).
Below that was a layer of water, the source
of rain, which was separated from us by an
impenetrable barrier, the firmament (Genesis
1:6-8).
The rain may also be stored in heavenly cisterns
(Job: 38:37) or storehouses (Deut 28:12) alongside
the storehouses for wind, hail and snow.Grammatically
the word shamayim can be either dual (two)
or plural (more than two), without ruling
out the singular (one).
As a result, it is not clear whether there
were one, two, or more heavens in the Old
Testament, but most likely there was only
one, and phrases such as "heaven of heavens"
were meant to stress the vastness of God's
realm.The Babylonians had a more complex idea
of heaven, and during the Babylonian exile
(6th century BCE) the influence of Babylonian
cosmology led to the idea of a plurality of
heavens among Jews.
This continued into the New Testament: Revelation
apparently has only one heaven, but the Epistle
to the Hebrews and the epistles to the Colossians
and the Ephesians have more than one, although
they don't specify how many, and the apostle
Paul tells of his visit to the third heaven,
the place, according to contemporary thought,
where the garden of Paradise is to be found.
==== God and the heavenly beings ====
Israel and Judah, like other Canaanite kingdoms,
originally had a full pantheon of gods.
The chief of the old Canaanite pantheon was
the god El, but over time Yahweh replaced
him as the national god and the two merged
("Yahweh-El, creator of heaven and earth"
- Genesis 14:22).
The remaining gods were now subject to Yahweh:
"Who in the sky is comparable to Yahweh, like
Yahweh among the divine beings?
A god dreaded in the Council of holy beings...?"
(Psalm 89:6-9).
In the Book of Job the Council of Heaven,
the Sons of God (bene elohim) meet in heaven
to review events on Earth and decide the fate
of Job.
One of their number is "the Satan", literally
"the accuser", who travels over the Earth
much like a Persian imperial spy, (Job dates
from the period of the Persian empire), reporting
on, and testing, the loyalty of men to God.The
heavenly bodies (the heavenly host - Sun,
Moon, and stars) were worshiped as deities,
a practice which the bible disapproves and
of which righteous Job protests his innocence:
"If I have looked at the sun when it shone,
or the moon ... and my mouth has kissed my
hand, this also would be an iniquity..."
Belief in the divinity of the heavenly bodies
explains a passage in Joshua 10:12, usually
translated as Joshua asking the Sun and Moon
to stand still, but in fact Joshua utters
an incantation to ensure that the sun-god
and moon-god, who supported his enemies, would
not provide them with oracles.In the earlier
Old Testament texts the bene elohim were gods,
but subsequently they became angels, the "messengers"
(malakim), whom Jacob sees going up and down
a "ladder" (actually a celestial mountain)
between heaven and Earth.
In earlier works the messengers were anonymous,
but in the Second Temple period (539 BCE-100
CE) they began to be given names, and eventually
became the vast angelic orders of Christianity
and Judaism.
Thus the gods and goddesses who had once been
the superiors or equals of Yahweh were first
made his peers, then subordinate gods, and
finally ended as angels in his service.
==== Paradise and the human soul ====
There is no concept of a human soul, or of
eternal life, in the oldest parts of the Old
Testament.
Death is the going-out of the breath which
God once breathed into the dust (Genesis 2:7),
all men face the same fate in Sheol, a shadowy
existence without knowledge or feeling (Job
14:13; Qoheloth 9:5), and there is no way
that mortals can enter heaven.
In the centuries after the Babylonian exile,
a belief in afterlife and post-death retribution
appeared in Jewish apocalyptic literature.
At much the same time the Bible was translated
into Greek, and the translators used the Greek
word paradaisos (Paradise) for the garden
of God and Paradise came to be located in
heaven.
=== Earth ===
==== Cosmic geography ====
In the Old Testament period, the Earth was
most commonly thought of as a flat disc floating
on water.
The concept was apparently quite similar to
that depicted in a Babylonian world-map from
about 600 BCE: a single circular continent
bounded by a circular sea, and beyond the
sea a number of equally spaced triangles called
nagu, "distant regions", apparently islands
although possibly mountains.
The Old Testament likewise locates islands
alongside the Earth; (Psalm 97:1) these are
the "ends of the earth" according to Isaiah
41:5, the extreme edge of Job's circular horizon
(Job 26:10) where the vault of heaven is supported
on mountains.
Other OT passages suggest that the sky rests
on pillars (Psalm 75:3, 1 Samuel 2:8, Job
9:6), on foundations (Psalms 18:7 and 82:5),
or on "supports" (Psalm 104:5), while the
Book of Job imagines the cosmos as a vast
tent, with the Earth as its floor and the
sky as the tent itself; from the edges of
the sky God hangs the Earth over "nothing",
meaning the vast Ocean, securely supported
by being tied to the sky (Job 26:7).
If the technical means by which Yahweh keeps
the earth from sinking into the chaos-waters
are unclear, it is nevertheless clear that
he does so by virtue of his personal power.The
idea that the Earth was a sphere was developed
by the Greeks in the 6th century BCE, and
by the 3rd century BCE this was generally
accepted by educated Romans and Greeks and
even by some Jews.
The author of Revelation, however, assumed
a flat Earth in 7:1.
==== Temples, mountains, gardens and rivers
====
In the cosmology of the ancient Near East,
the cosmic warrior-god, after defeating the
powers of chaos, would create the world and
build his earthly house, the temple.
Just as the abyss, the deepest deep, was the
place for Chaos and Death, so God's temple
belonged on the high mountain.
In ancient Judah the mountain and the location
of the Temple was Zion (Jerusalem), the navel
and center of the world (Ezekiel 5:5 and 38:12).
The Psalms describe God sitting enthroned
over the Flood (the cosmic sea) in his heavenly
palace (Psalm 29:10), the eternal king who
"lays the beams of his upper chambers in the
waters" (Psalm 104:3).
The Samaritan Pentateuch identifies this mountain
as Mount Gerizim, which the New Testament
also implicitly acknowledges (John 4:20).
This imagery recalls the Mesopotamian god
Ea who places his throne in Apsu, the primeval
fresh waters beneath the Earth, and the Canaanite
god El, described in the Baal cycle as having
his palace on a cosmic mountain which is the
source of the primordial ocean/water springs.The
point where heavenly and earthly realms join
is depicted as an earthly "garden of God",
associated with the temple and royal palace.
Ezekiel 28:12-19 places the garden in Eden
on the mountain of the gods; in Genesis 2-3
Eden's location is more vague, simply far
away "in the east", but there is a strong
suggestion in both that the garden is attached
to a temple or palace.
In Jerusalem the earthly Temple was decorated
with motifs of the cosmos and the Garden,
and, like other ancient near eastern temples,
its three sections made up a symbolic microcosm,
from the outer court (the visible world of
land and sea), through the Holy Place (the
visible heaven and the garden of God) to the
Holy of Holies (the invisible heaven of God).
The imagery of the cosmic mountain and garden
of Ezekiel reappears in the New Testament
Book of Revelation, applied to the messianic
Jerusalem, its walls adorned with precious
stones, the "river of the water of life" flowing
from under its throne (Revelation 22:1-2).A
stream from underground (a subterranean ocean
of fresh water?) fertilises Eden before dividing
into four rivers that go out to the entire
earth (Genesis 2:5-6); in Ezekiel 47:1-12
(see Ezekiel's Temple) and other prophets
the stream issues from the Temple itself,
makes the desert bloom, and turns the Dead
Sea from salt to fresh.
Yet the underground waters are ambiguous:
they are the source of life-giving rivers,
but they are also associated with death (Jeremiah
2:6 and Job 38:16-17 describe how the way
to Sheol is through water, and its gates are
located at the foot of the mountain at the
bottom of the seas).
=== Underworld ===
==== Sheol and the Old Testament ====
Beneath the earth is Sheol, the abode of the
rephaim (shades), although it is not entirely
clear whether all who died became shades,
or only the "mighty dead" (compare Psalm 88:10
with Isaiah 14:9 and 26:14).
Some biblical passages state that God has
no presence in the underworld: "In death there
is no remembrance of Thee, in Sheol who shall
give Thee thanks?"
(Psalm 6).
Others imply that the dead themselves are
in some sense semi-divine, like the shade
of the prophet Samuel, who is called an elohim,
the same word used for God and gods.
Still other passages state God's power over
Sheol as over the rest of his creation: "Tho
they (the wicked) dig into Sheol, from there
shall my hand take them..."
(Amos 9:2).
==== Intertestamental period ====
The Old Testament Sheol was simply the home
of all the dead, good and bad alike.
In the Hellenistic period the Greek-speaking
Jews of Egypt, perhaps under the influence
of Greek thought, came to believe that the
good would not die but would go directly to
God, while the wicked would really die and
go to the realm of Hades, god of the underworld,
where they would perhaps suffer torment.
The Book of Enoch, dating from the period
between the Old and New Testaments, separates
the dead into a well-lit cavern for the righteous
and dark caverns for the wicked, and provides
the former with a spring, perhaps signifying
that these are the "living" (i.e. a spring)
waters of life.
In the New Testament, Jesus' parable of the
rich man and Lazarus reflects the idea that
the wicked began their punishment in Hades
immediately on dying.
==== Satan and the end of time ====
The New Testament Hades is a temporary holding
place, to be used only until the end of time,
when its inhabitants will be thrown into the
pit of Gehenna or the Lake of Fire (Revelation
20:10-14).
This lake is either underground, or will go
underground when the "new earth" emerges.
The Satan does not inhabit or supervise the
underworld – his sphere of activity is the
human world – and is only to be thrown into
the fire at the end of time.
He appears throughout the Old Testament not
as God's enemy but as his minister, "a sort
of Attorney-General with investigative and
disciplinary powers", as in the Book of Job.
It was only with the early Church Fathers
that he was identified with the Serpent of
the Garden of Eden and came to be seen as
an active rebel against God, seeking to thwart
the divine plan for mankind.
== See also
