Is Space Actually Water? What the Ancient World Knew That We Forgot

Is Space Actually Water? What the Ancient World Knew That We Forgot

You’re invited on a sacred journey, somewhere most people never go when they read Genesis. The original Hebrew. The Sumerian clay tablets. The Egyptian cosmogonies. The lost books were found buried in caves and desert sands. When we go there, when we sit with what these ancient texts literally say, something extraordinary happens.

We realize the story is far stranger, far older, and far more cohesive than anyone told us. A picture starts to form.

Let's start with what the texts actually say. No interpretation yet. Just the facts.

PART ONE: Genesis 1:2

Everyone knows Genesis 1:1. But look at verse 1:2. In the original Hebrew: v'ruach Elohim merachefet al-p'nei ha-mayim. And the Spirit/Breath of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Before God said a single word. Before light existed. Before anything was made, there was already water. Boundless, unlit, undivided. And something was moving over it.

The Hebrew word for hovering is merachefet. It appears only one other time in the entire Hebrew Bible, in Deuteronomy 32:11, describing an eagle hovering over her nest, wings spread, warming her eggs. Not distant. Not passive. Intimate, active, incubating.

The Spirit moved over the face of the waters. A face implies depth beneath. This was not a shallow pool. It was an abyss.

That abyss has a name: tehom. The deep. And that word matters enormously.

The Firmament: Creation Happened Inside the Water

God's first creative act in Genesis is not making something from nothing. Genesis 1:6-7 says: let there be a raqia in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.

The word raqia means a beaten-out, hammered expanse, like a metalsmith pounding metal flat into a dome shape. The Greek Septuagint translates it as stereoma, a solid firm structure. Not sky. Not atmosphere. A physical dome.

And what is it dividing? Not water from land. Water above from water below.

Before the firmament was made, there was no division at all. Everything, everywhere, was water.

The ancient Hebrew cosmos is a disc of land covered by a solid dome, with an ocean of water above the dome, waters below the earth, and the earth resting on literal pillars. Psalm 148:4 refers to the waters above the heavens as a present ongoing reality, not just a pre-creation condition. Those waters are still up there. The dome is holding them back.

The Hebrew tehom, the deep, is linguistically connected to the Babylonian name Tiamat. Both derive from the Proto-Semitic root tiham-, meaning the primordial sea.

In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic on clay tablets discovered at Nineveh, Tiamat is the vast primordial saltwater ocean. Her body is split in two by the god Marduk: one half becomes the sky, the other the earth. Creation is made from her substance.

Genesis is clearly in conversation with this older story. Same primordial water. Same pre-creation chaos. But Genesis makes one radical edit: there is no battle. No monster. God does not defeat the water. He moves over it and begins differentiating it. The tehom remains, transformed from dragon to womb.

Every Ancient Culture Starts Here

Hebrew: the tehom pre-exists everything. The Spirit broods. The hammered dome divides waters above from below.

Babylonian and Sumerian: Tiamat, primordial saltwater, existed before gods or creation. The freshwater deep, the abzu, is the source of divine wisdom.

Egyptian: before all things was Nun, the formless infinite primordial ocean. From Nun rose the first mound and the Creator spoke existence into being.

Norse: before creation was Ginnungagap, a vast yawning void of primordial ice and mist. The meeting of opposites within this deep generated the first life.

No contact between these cultures. Thousands of miles apart. Thousands of years of independent development. They all begin at the same place: boundless water, then breath or word or fire, then separation and naming.

Ezekiel chapters 1 and 10 describe the merkavah, the divine chariot-throne. It moves in every direction simultaneously without turning. Wheels within wheels. Surrounded by fire and a radiance described with the word chashmal, so charged that the ancient rabbis restricted who could even read this chapter. The Talmud records that a child who began reading it was consumed by fire.

Nobody fully agrees on what chashmal means. The Greek translates it as electrum, a gold-silver alloy. Modern Hebrew uses the word to mean electricity.

Whatever Ezekiel saw, it did not move like anything that needed air, runway, or gravity. It moved omnidirectionally. Through any medium. Without resistance.

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 were texts that had been excluded from the official biblical canon but were clearly known to and quoted by the writers of the New Testament. The book of Jude, chapter 1 verses 14 and 15, directly quotes one of them. These are not fringe documents. They are ancient, they are real, and they add remarkable detail to the picture Genesis only sketches.

The Book of Enoch, also called 1 Enoch, is the most important of these for our purposes. It describes the cosmic architecture in extraordinary detail. In chapters 17 and 18, Enoch is taken on a journey through the structure of creation itself. He sees the foundations of the earth, the cornerstone of the deep, the storehouses of the winds, and the waters above the firmament described as a living bounded medium. He stands at the edge of the world and looks out into the deep beyond the dome. What he describes is not empty space. It is something more like an ocean, vast and dark, with fire at its far edges.

In chapters 6 through 9, the Watchers are named and described. These are the b'nei Elohim, the sons of God mentioned briefly in Genesis 6, and Enoch gives us their full story. They descended from their own realm into ours. They crossed whatever lies between. They brought knowledge of astronomy, metallurgy, the movements of the luminaries, and the secrets of the deep. They knew the architecture of creation because they came from outside it.

The Book of Luminaries, which is chapters 72 through 82 of 1 Enoch, is the section that keeps pulling at me. It is one of the oldest astronomical texts in existence. But it does not describe stars as burning objects. It describes them as beings with gates and paths and angels assigned to govern their movements. The sun has gates it passes through. The moon has phases governed by angelic instruction. The stars are not fixed points. They are travelers, moving through the depths on appointed courses, each one under the authority of a named celestial being.

This is not primitive misunderstanding of astronomy. This is a completely different framework for what the luminaries are and where they move. They travel through something. They pass through gates. They have governors. That language only makes sense if the space they move through is a medium, not a vacuum.

The Book of Jubilees, also found at Qumran and dated to around 150 BCE, adds one more stunning detail. It states that on the very first day of creation, God made not only light but also the angels of the presence, the angels of sanctification, and simultaneously, the depths and the firmament. The deep and the heavenly beings came into existence together, in the same creative moment. They are not separate categories. They belong to the same original order.

PART TWO: Expanding within the Deep

What if space, what we call outer space, the vast darkness between worlds, is not empty vacuum? What if it is the tehom? The primordial deep, still present, still surrounding every created realm, the same waters the ancients described above the firmament, the same deep Enoch stood at the edge of and looked out into? What we perceive as dark space could be a medium, a substance, something more like ocean than like nothing.

I believe the domed world of Genesis is not a flat primitive mistake. It is one kingdom within a vast architecture of kingdoms. Each world, each realm, enclosed in its own raqia, its own hammered dome, separated from the others by the primordial deep still flowing between them. The other planets. The other star systems. Other domes. Other kingdoms. Each one its own creation, its own order, maybe its own inhabitants.

The Book of Luminaries points directly at this. When Enoch describes the sun and moon passing through gates, when he describes angels governing the paths of stars through the deep, he describes beings moving between bounded realms through a medium. Not through empty space. Through something navigable. Something with structure. The luminaries are not just lights. They may be markers. Beacons. The visible signs of other domed kingdoms moving through the tehom on their appointed paths.

The stars the Hebrews called kokhavim, associated with the b'nei Elohim who sang together when the foundations of earth were laid in Job 38:7, these are not just burning gas. They are places. Inhabited, ordered places. Holy or otherwise.

Now come back to Ezekiel. A craft that moves omnidirectionally, in any direction, without turning, without aerodynamics, is a craft designed not for air travel but for medium travel. For moving through whatever substance surrounds it. Water. Air. The deep between worlds. If the primordial substance of reality is the tehom, then a being whose technology moves through that medium without resistance is not science fiction. It is the logical conclusion of ancient cosmology taken at face value.

Enki's domain is the abzu, the freshwater deep beneath the earth. His wisdom and his craft originate there. He does not descend from the sky. He rises from the water. The Apkallu, the seven sages of Sumerian tradition, emerged from the sea to bring civilization to humanity, then returned to the water when their work was done. They came from the deep. They moved through it. They went back into it.

The Watchers in Enoch descended from their realm into ours. They crossed something to get here. They brought knowledge of the luminaries and the deep as if that knowledge was native to where they came from. As if their home was closer to the architecture of the whole than ours is.

When I lay these texts side by side and follow the thread of the deep, the dome, the waters above, the luminaries moving through gates, the beings who travel between realms, a coherent picture emerges. One that ancient writers across cultures seem to be describing from direct experience or received knowledge. Not myth in the dismissive sense. Testimony.

PART THREE: The Waters Never Go Away

In the biblical narrative the waters above the firmament are never destroyed. They are held back. Psalm 104:3 describes God laying the beams of his dwelling in the waters. Psalm 148:4 praises him from the waters above the heavens, present tense, long after creation is complete. Proverbs 8:27 places Wisdom herself present when God drew a circle on the face of the deep. The deep is not a pre-creation condition that was eliminated. It is an ongoing reality that was organized and bounded. If it is the medium surrounding all created domed realms, of course it never goes away. It is the substance between the kingdoms.

The Book of Luminaries does not describe stars drifting through empty space. It describes them passing through gates, following paths, governed by angelic beings assigned specifically to their movement. Enoch chapter 72 describes the sun entering and exiting through twelve gates along the horizon, each gate marking a different season and angle of travel. Chapter 75 describes the leaders of the luminaries as angels who keep watch and guide the stars in their courses.

If the luminaries are moving through gates, there is something on either side of each gate. If angels govern their paths through the deep, the deep is navigable. It has structure. It has directions. It behaves more like water than an empty space, and the beings who know its architecture can move through it purposefully.

Enki rises from the abzu. The Apkallu emerge from the sea and return to it. The Watchers in Enoch descend from their realm through the boundary between worlds. Every tradition that describes contact between divine or celestial beings and humanity describes that contact as a crossing, a descent, a surfacing. Not a remote transmission. A physical movement through a medium from one bounded realm into another.

Every structural element of the ancient Hebrew cosmos points the same direction. Pillars below. Waters above. The deep beneath the foundations. God's dwelling described as being in the waters above the dome. The Hebrew word shamayim, heavens, is always plural, never singular. Paul refers to the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2. Jewish tradition speaks of seven heavens. Not floors of one building but layered realms, each separated from the next, each perhaps with its own dome, its own waters, its own order. Jubilees places the angelic beings and the deep in the same original creative moment. They were made together. They belong together.

Job 38:7, the morning stars sang at the founding of the earth. Isaiah 14:12, morning star, son of the dawn. Revelation 1:20, the seven stars are the seven angels. The word kokhav, star, is used interchangeably with divine beings and heavenly messengers throughout Hebrew scripture. Enoch's Book of Luminaries makes this explicit: the stars have governors, they have gates, they have paths through the deep. If each luminary marks a dome, a bounded kingdom, and each kingdom have its own inhabitants and its own orientation toward the divine source, then the distinction between holy stars and otherwise becomes deeply meaningful.

The primordial deep, tehom, Tiamat, Nun, the abzu, is the original substance of existence. Not empty space. A medium. Boundless, undivided, present before any created realm was formed. Into these deep, organized realms were shaped, domed and bounded kingdoms, each separated from the others by the waters still flowing between them. Our world is one such realm.

The beings the ancient writers called sons of God, Watchers, Apkallu, Anunnaki, they move between these realms through the medium of the deep, in craft that requires no aerodynamics because air is not what they navigate. They know the gates. They know the paths. They came here through the tehom and some of them went back the same way.

The creation story is not about making something from nothing. It is about one realm being organized within the undivided deep, shaped, named, inhabited, and loved by the intelligence that had been brooding over the water since before time began.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4 and 7.

There were witnesses. There were others present. The creation of this world was an event that other beings, from other kingdoms in the deep, observed and celebrated.

The deep was not emptied. It was not defeated. It was organized, and we live inside one beloved corner of it. There is more out there, moving through the deep on appointed paths, passing through gates we cannot see. There always was.

Lori Wayfair, Phoenix Tree Gallery

FOOTNOTES

1. merachefet, root r-ch-f, to hover, flutter, brood. Used only twice in the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 1:2 and Deuteronomy 32:11. The Piel stem indicates sustained intensive action. The Aramaic Targum Onkelos renders it as a wind from before God blowing over the waters.
2. tehom, the deep. 36 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible. No definite article in Genesis 1:2, functions almost as a proper name. Cognate with Akkadian Tiamat via Proto-Semitic tiham-. See Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 1942.
3. raqia, from root r-q-a, to beat out, stamp flat. Used for metalworking in Isaiah 40:19. Greek Septuagint: stereoma. Latin Vulgate: firmamentum. All ancient translations understood this as a physical solid dome.
4. Pillars of the earth: Job 9:6, Psalm 75:3, 1 Samuel 2:8. Treated as structural realities throughout Hebrew wisdom literature.
5. Tiamat and tehom connection: Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis, 1942. Tsumura, The Earth and the Waters in Genesis 1 and 2, 1989.
6. merkavah, chariot. Ezekiel 1 and 10. Talmud Chagigah 13a records restrictions on studying this text. Entire schools of Jewish mysticism, Ma'aseh Merkavah, developed around these chapters.
7. chashmal, Ezekiel 1:4, 1:27, 8:2. Unique in Biblical Hebrew. Greek Septuagint: ēlektron, electrum. Modern Hebrew: electricity. Talmud Chagigah 13a records a child consumed by fire upon reading this passage.
8. 1 Enoch, also called the Book of Enoch. Found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, 1947. Quoted directly in Jude 1:14-15 in the New Testament. Canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Dated by scholars to approximately 300-200 BCE for the oldest sections. The Book of Luminaries, chapters 72-82, is considered among the oldest sections and represents one of the earliest known systematic astronomical texts.
9. Book of Luminaries, 1 Enoch chapters 72-82. Describes the sun passing through twelve gates, the moon's phases governed by angelic instruction, and named angels assigned to govern the paths of stars. The framework is not observational astronomy but a cosmological system in which celestial bodies are beings or are governed by beings moving through a structured medium.
10. 1 Enoch chapters 6-9, the Watchers. Names and describes the b'nei Elohim of Genesis 6 as beings who descended from their own realm, crossed into ours, and brought knowledge of astronomy, metallurgy, and the movements of the luminaries. Their knowledge of cosmic architecture is presented as native to their origin, not learned.
11. 1 Enoch chapters 17-18. Enoch's cosmic journey. He is taken to the foundations of the earth, the cornerstone of the deep, the storehouses of winds, and stands at the edge of the world looking out into the deep beyond the dome. The deep is described as a vast dark medium with fire at its far boundaries.
12. Book of Jubilees. Found at Qumran, dated approximately 150 BCE. Retells Genesis with the detail that on the first day of creation God made simultaneously the angels of the presence, the angels of sanctification, and the depths and the firmament. The heavenly beings and the deep are presented as belonging to the same original creative order.
13. Apkallu. Seven sages of Sumerian tradition. Described in the Uruk List of Kings and Sages as part-human part-fish beings emerging from the sea, the apsu, before the flood to bring civilization to humanity, then returning to the water. Associated with Enki/Ea whose domain is the abzu, the freshwater deep.
14. Multiple heavens: 2 Corinthians 12:2, Paul refers to the third heaven. 2 Enoch describes seven heavens with their respective inhabitants in detail. Talmud Chagigah 12b enumerates seven heavens. The Hebrew shamayim is grammatically plural throughout the entire Hebrew Bible, never singular.
15. Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Found at Qumran. Describes the architecture of the heavenly temple and the angelic liturgy in language so specific and technical that scholars debate whether the writer had experiential rather than visionary knowledge of what they described. Presents the upper realms as structured, inhabited, and governed, consistent with the multi-dome framework.
16. Apocryphon of John. A Gnostic text discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, 1945. Describes multiple archons governing layered realms, with the primordial waters as the medium of the whole structure. While outside orthodox tradition, it represents an independent ancient witness to the same cosmological architecture described in the canonical and pseudepigraphal texts above.