ArchTale 4. The Waters of Chaos

Soon there was nothing but the deep waters of Chaos

His body had fallen apart

Nothing holding one thing to another

Nor anything to hold a thing

together as a thing in the firstplace

Just Chaos resembling anocean ofwater

Taino of West Indies

In the first era of creation Yaya the Supreme Spirit killed his son and placed his bones in the ground. When the ground was broken water flooded out and became the oceans.

Dictionary of Mythology. Coleman. J. A. p. 252.

Ancient Greek

“Verily at the first Khaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Gaia (Earth), the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus. From Khaos came forth Erebos and black Nyx (Night).”

Hesiod, Theogony 116

The Waters of Chaos

Yakima Indians

First there was water everywhere and only the great sky chief, Whe-me-me-ow-ah, to see it. 41

In the beginning, only Whememeowah “Great Chief” existed in the sky. To cure his boredom, he paddled in the primordial waters and made the world and all things in it from the mud at the bottom of the ocean.42

Yuma Indians

‘In the very beginning, there was nothing but water and darkness.’ 43

Islam

‘Are the disbelievers unaware that the heavens and the earth were but one solid mass which We [God] tore asunder, and that We made every living thing from water?’-44

‘It is He who created the heavens and the earth in six days and His Throne was upon the waters’45

Ancient China

‘Of old in the beginning, there was the great chaos, without form and dark. The five elements [planets] had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine. You, O Spiritual Sovereign, first divided the grosser parts from the purer. You made heaven. You made earth. You made man. All things with their reproducing power got their being’46

Christianity

‘By the Word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of and by water.’ 47

Shinto

Now when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were not yet manifest, and there was naught named, naught done, who could know its shape? Nevertheless heaven and earth first parted and the three deities performed the commencement of creation’. 48

Ancient Greek

“At the beginning there was only Khaos (Air), Nyx (Night), dark Erebos (Darkness), and deep Tartaros (Hell’s Pit). Ge (Earth), Aer (Air) and Ouranos (Heaven) had no existence. 50

“Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together. No Titan [Helios the Sun] as yet poured light upon the world, no waxing Phoebe [Selene the Moon] her crescent filled anew, nor in the ambient air yet hung the earth, self-balanced, equipoised, nor Amphitrite’s [the Sea’s] arms embraced the long far margin of the land. Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight.51

Mongolia

When there was no earth, but only water, the Lama (superior one) descended from the heavens and stirred the waters.52

Zoroastrianism

Ormazd began his work of creation by casting some of his pure light into the vast abyss of the cosmos. 53

Bushongo

In the beginning, in the dark there was nothing but water and Bumba was alone. 54

Berossus of Babylon

In the beginning there was only darkness and water.55

Judaism

‘The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God fluttered, brooding over the surface of the waters.’56

48 The Kojiki-Yasumro’s preface.

49 Hesiod, Theogony 116

50 Aristophanes, Birds 685

51 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.1

52 Sproul.p 218.

53 Hinnels. J. p. 21.

54 Leach.M. p 145.

55 Kramer. B. pp 142–146 and Sproul.pp 91–117, 120–122.

56 Genesis 1:1-2

40 Coleman. J. A. p. 252.

41 Erdoes. pp 117–118.

42 Coleman. J. A. p. 1098.

43 Curtis. N. p. 562.

44 The Koran (The Prophets)

45 The Koran-Hood 7

46 Legge. J. P. 28.

47 2Peter 3:5