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Vájra or stylised thunderbolt from Tibet (17th
to 19th century CE), Arthur M. Sackler Museum of
Art and Anthropology, Bĕijīng Dàxúe Hăidiăn,
Beijing, China. In Buddhist mysticism, the
flattened sphere in the centre represents the
bindu, the original particle from which creation
exploded outward – following the contours of the
bilobate thunderbolt.
Does it Matter?
Dec
08, 2010
Does the universe have a
beginning in time? Was there a time
‘before time’, when the visible
world did not yet exist in any form?
Was visible matter once formed out
of nothing?
These questions have exercised human
minds for thousands of years. Yet
surprisingly, out of myriads of
traditional myths of creation
worldwide, very few support the
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo
or ‘formation out of nothing’.
One of the most perplexing cases
is the opening verse of the Hebrew
book of
Genesis.
This is commonly understood as
saying that ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’
were called into existence by the
deity and therefore had not hitherto
existed. But the matter is not quite
so easy. Serious objections have
been raised against this reading
from a purely grammatical point of
view.
Some have argued that this line
is really a dependent clause, so
that the sentence must be translated
as follows: ‘In the beginning of
God’s creation of heaven and earth,
when the earth was formless and
empty, darkness was over the face of
the abyss, and the spirit of God was
hovering over the water, God said:
‘Let there be light.’’ If this
translation is correct, the absolute
origins of heaven, earth and the
watery void remain unspecified,
while God’s activity is restricted
to bringing order into this
pre-existent chaos. Other
philologists have claimed that the
verb bārā, which is usually rendered
as ‘to create’, in this case
referred to ‘cleaving’ or
‘separating’ – which is an entirely
different matter: ‘In the beginning,
God cleft heaven and earth.’
Again, the upshot would be that
these two extremities of the known
world had already been present in
some form prior to God’s
involvement. And the medieval Jewish
commentator, Rashi (1040-1105),
commented on the matter at hand that
even those who prefer to read ‘In
the beginning God created heaven and
earth’ still run into the difficulty
that the provenance of the waters,
mentioned in verse 2, is not given.
Whichever way one looks at it, the
Hebrew myth of creation leaves a
strong impression that the act of
God’s creation consisted primarily
in the rearrangement of matter that
had already been present to begin
with.
On a global scale, traditional
enunciations of a ‘creation from
nothing’ do exist, but are
exceedingly rare. In the Judaeo-Christian
world, no examples are known prior
to the Hellenistic period. The Greek
version of the Hebrew scriptures,
the Septuagint, opens with words
meaning: ‘In the beginning, God
created heaven and earth.’ In a
version of the Hebrew legend of
Enoch, God is made to explain:
“Before anything existed at all,
from the very beginning, whatever
exists I created from the
non-existent, and from the invisible
the visible.”
In the Vedic cosmology of India,
it was repeatedly declared that “In
the beginning this was non-existent.
It became existent, it grew.”
“Verily, in the beginning there was
here the nonexistent.” And the
Jesuit historian, Bernabé Cobo
(1582-1657 CE), observed that some
of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of
the former Inca empire “believe that
creation came forth from nothing”
while “others hold that it came from
clay”.
This handful of examples
contrasts with the overwhelming
majority of creation myths,
according to which the earliest
remembered state of the world was
not one of an empty vacuum, but a
limitless expanse of ‘water’, the
unformed mass of sky and earth
joined in primordial union, or a sea
of intermingling elements, always
shrouded in permanent darkness.
Clearly, the philosophical question
whether there was an absolute
beginning to visible matter was
insubstantial and of no concern to
most people, with the exception of a
few isolated original thinkers
pioneering proto-scientific
traditions.
Modern scientists face the same
ontological dilemma as the old
myth-makers did when contemplating
the universe. Unlike the earlier
societies, proponents of the ‘Big
Bang’ theory claim that the entire
universe, including the concepts of
matter and of time, sprang into
existence at a single instant –
prior to which ‘pure energy’ alone
is thought to have existed in a
greatly condensed form. The
spiritual father of this theory, the
Belgian priest, physicist and
astronomer, Georges Lemaître
(1894-1966), did not conceal his
conviction that this explosive
event, billions of years ago,
vindicates the Christian teaching of
God’s creation from nothing.
Yet as in mythology, so in
science
creatio
ex nihilo is challenged
by champions of a universe that is
infinite in space as well as time –
first by advocates of a ‘steady
state’ cosmology, including Fred
Hoyle and Thomas Gold, and now again
by plasma cosmologists, who have
developed better ways to ‘save the
phenomena’ than the mind-boggling
postulate of a ‘singularity’
triggering uniform expansion.
To be sure, the concept of a
cosmos bursting into existence from
a primeval ‘atom’ has much in common
with age-old creation myths. Even
though archaic traditions did not
make much of the idea of a mystical
era of ‘nothingness’ preceding
creation, a very prevalent notion is
that of an ‘egg’, a ‘gourd’, a
‘womb’ or some other receptacle
pregnant with the ancestral seeds of
sky and earth and all their living
denizens. Hence, it is not for
nothing that historians of science
cannot help wondering whether Big
Bang theory rests on more than
mathematical derivation alone, owing
some ideational input to such
widespread cultural ideas.
Even so, in the cold light of day
ancient traditions about the
‘construction’ of the cosmos and the
‘formation’ of life are quite
immaterial with respect to the
actual origins of the universe or,
indeed, the solar system in deep
time. On current knowledge, it is
rather more likely that creation
myths began as recollections of
highly turbulent episodes in the
recent history of the earth,
involving geomagnetic storms,
earthquakes, floods and
conflagrations. As such catastrophic
events would have involved drastic
changes in geological, climatic and
atmospheric conditions, it is
understandable that early
myth-makers would conflate the most
recent ‘fashioning’ of sky and earth
with the question of their true
beginnings.
Not a single ancient civilisation
of any importance failed to
recognise that the universe goes
through periods of destruction and
renewal – perhaps in infinite
succession. For that reason, despite
the mythological aura that surrounds
Big Bang theory, there really is no
conflict between the world view
relayed in ancient lore and that
explored by modern plasma
cosmologists. The latter are,
indeed, much better placed to make
sense of the ‘cosmic egg’ and
similar recondite aspects of ancient
memory. What better authority to
cite, then, than Heraclitus of
Ephesus, who not only claimed that
'Thunderbolt steers all things', but
also said:
'This (world)order did none of
gods or men make, but it always was
and is and shall be: an everliving
fire, kindling in measures and going
out in measures'.
Contributed by Rens Van Der
Sluijs
http://mythopedia.info
Books by Rens Van Der Sluijs:
The Mythology of the World Axis
The World Axis as an Atmospheric
Phenomenon
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YouTube video, first glimpses of Episode Two in the "Symbols of an Alien Sky"
series.
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Three ebooks in the Universe Electric series are
now available. Consistently
praised for easily understandable text and exquisite graphics.
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