“He Has Founded It upon the Seas”: The Earth in Biblical Cosmology

This study addresses the Hebrew Bible’s cosmology in terms of its content, motivation, methodology, and the larger worldview behind it. Different from modern cosmology, the Hebrew Bible does not have a notion of a cosmos independent from divine design and manipulation, and therefore lacks interest in systematically forming, testing and developing scientific statements about the cosmos, and it tolerates the co-existence of different, sometimes contradictory, statements about the structure and workings of the cosmos. The present study articulates the Hebrew Bible’s unique cosmology from two angles. First, this study recovers the models of the cosmos behind the numerous cosmological references in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating the existence of varying traditions concerning the structure of the cosmos. Second, this study addresses the worldview and rationality that guides the Bible’s approach to the cosmos. Building on the wider scholarly discussion of ancient Near Eastern science and epistemology, this study addresses how the Hebrew Bible evaluates different kinds of cosmological knowledge (e.g., objective, practical, theological) and different ways of producing cosmological knowledge (e.g., observation, speculation, revelation). As this study demonstrates, for the Hebrew Bible, the significance of cosmological knowledge is primarily theological, as the cosmos is the locus for the realization of divine will, the demonstration of divine power, and the revelation of divine wisdom—a wisdom that is not focused on scientific data but the place of human beings in the divinely created order. Further, while Mesopotamia also lacked interest in the cosmos as an object of study for its own sake, it nevertheless acquired a detailed knowledge of the workings of the cosmos, and especially of planetary bodies, through its pursuit of divination, which was the core and summit of Mesopotamian intellectual life. The Hebrew Bible, however, explicitly rejects Mesopotamian divinatory science, and therefore also downplays the rigorous cosmological inquiry that serves it. Certain passages of the Hebrew Bible even present a contrast between knowledge of the cosmos and divine wisdom, claiming that although other nations have painstakingly gained knowledge of the natural world, only Israel has wisdom—which is centered on the fear of YHWH.