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.: "The canon of the Hebrew Bible [...] was formed of [...] diverse writings composed by many men or women over a long period of time, under many different circumstances, and in the light of shifting patterns of religious belief and practice. [...] Indeed, the questions under investigation in this book concerning the end of an individual's life, the nature of death, the possibility of divine judgment, and the resultant reward or punishment [...] are simply too crucial to have attracted a single solution unanimously accepted over the near millennium of biblical composition." 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 the texts making up the 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 religious ideology promoted in a majority of the texts that now form the Hebrew Bible represent the beliefs of only a small portion of the ancient Israelite community: the late Judean individuals who collected, edited, and transmitted the biblical materials were, for the most part, members of a religious tradition centered in Jerusalem that worshipped the god Yahweh exclusively."
The ancient Israelites envisaged the universe as a flat disc-shaped Earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below.: "The archaic cosmology conceived of the world in terms of a three-tiered cosmos consisting of the earth as a flat disc in the middle, surrounded by the river Ocean (the Greek version) or floating on water (the Israelite version), with heaven above and the underworld beneath [...]" Humans inhabited Earth during life and the underworld after death; there was no way that mortals could enter heaven, and the underworld was morally neutral; only in Hellenistic times (after ) 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.: "During the Hellenistic period a geocentric model of the universe largely replaced the older three-tiered universe model, for Greek thinkers (such as Aristotle and Eratosthenes) proposed that the earth was a sphere suspended freely in space."
The opening words of the Genesis creation narrative () sum up the biblical editors' 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, implying Israel's superiority over all other nations.: "Biblical texts from all historical periods and a variety of literary genres demonstrate that in Yahwistic circles, that is, among people who worshipped Yahweh as the chief god, God was always understood as the one who alone created heaven, Earth, and all that is in them. [...] Yahweh, the Israelite god, had no rivals, and in a world where nations claimed that their gods were the supreme beings in the universe and that all others were subject to them, the Israelites' claim for the superiority of Yahweh enabled them to imagine that no other nation could rival her [...]. Phrases such as 'Yahweh, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth' [...] and related phrases for Yahweh as creator and almighty master of the cosmos have parallels in earlier Canaanite terminology for the god El. [...] In fact, the Israelites did not create these phrases but inherited them from earlier Canaanite civilizations. Moreover, later editors of the Hebrew Bible used them to serve their particular monotheistic theology: their god is the supreme god, and he alone created the universe." Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy, concluded that God's Wisdom, Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christian traditions then 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). Interpreting and producing expositions of biblical cosmology was formalized into a genre of writing among Christians and Jews called the Hexaemal literature. The genre entered into vogue in the second half of the fourth century, after it was introduced into Christian circles by the Hexaemeron of Basil of Caesarea.
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 the 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 1:1–2:3) 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 (God) is an act of "making into" emphasizing a sovereign imposition of structure; the word of Egyptian creator-god, by contrast, is an almost magical "activation" of something inherent in pre-creation (chaos) awakening its innate potential: 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 According to John H. Walton, in the ancient Near-East 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." Adopting the language conventions 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 Christ: the Epistle to the Colossians, commonly attributed to the Apostle Paul, calls Jesus "...the image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation...", and the Gospel of John also 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:ff) but fled from the dry land at his rebuke; he has now set a boundary or bar for it which it cannot pass ( and ). The cosmic sea is the home of monsters which God conquers: "By his power he stilled the sea, by his understanding he smote Rahab!" (f). (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), who then tramples over his enemy, (Jesus walking on water - Mark 6, ). 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), 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