I’ve started writing a new book. It starts like this:
Before the beginning, there was not nothing, not empty was the void at all — not completely. I had thought that, too, you know, that it was creation ex nihilo: out of nothing. (I also thought what was there was this certain other stuff when I heard that the Bible never says all things were once nothing.) Instead, before all things existed was a primordial chaos. To the Babylonians, this was symbolized by Tiamat. In the Old Testament, the beast of that chaos was named Rahab. Note that the term “chaos” may be misleading. One may think of things flying around randomly, electric like or a sandstorm. It was not that. Think, instead, of a watery goop, with little, if any, definition at all. So I had in my head that maybe the chaos may have been the remnants of a previous creation, after it had attained a heat death: maximal entropy. (That was the other stuff I was thinking of.) Maybe not. But whatever this formless mush may be likened to be, it was from this that God made the heaven and the earth. And out of the darkness He said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
