>>15441174Most interesting of all, the Cambridge Bible commentary mentions that the Hebrew word for "waters" (מַיִם) is just one letter different from the Hebrew word for "heavens" (שָׁמַיִם), which is also the word for "sky".
Thus it appears that the word for "heaven" in hebrew is derived from the word for "waters", which makes sense given the context, that the Hebrews believed the sky was a vast ocean of water being held above their heads. In fact the word for "heaven" and the entire concept of "heaven" seems to be a belief in the firmament.
With this understanding, we can reinterpret Genesis 1.
In the beginning, god creates "the heavens and the earth". And how is the world described? It's described as basically a giant ball of water. Thus, it actually makes sense that this verse should read "god created the waters and the earth". Especially since he creates the "firmament" (and thus the sky) later on.
This would tend to suggest that the christian conception of "heaven" actually doesn't exist in the Old Testament. In fact, this is just a poor interpretation of Hebrew cosmology, which sought to communicate some deep truth about the nature of our world, a truth which happens to be completely wrong.
There is another oddity in Genesis 1. (Besides the fact that the text leaves out "and it was good" on the 2nd day, which appears to be a textual error). God creates "the heavens and the earth" in verse 1. And yet, he creates the firmament in verse 6, and calls it "heaven" (Although the NIV pulls a fast one on us, and changes the translation to "sky"). So isn't that strange, why did god create 2 "heavens"? Or did he create it twice? This sort of thing is the reason why some christian sects believe there are multiple "heavens", possibly as many as 7 of them.
But if we interpret the word "heaven" in verse 1 to mean "waters", suddenly it all makes sense.
