Steve Wiggins wrote another great post about water as a force of chaos in the Bible and its world<\/a>. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n More than a theological statement, the story of creation was actually a singular episode in Yahweh\u2019s ongoing struggle against chaos.\u00a0 Step outside and look at the sky.\u00a0 If it\u2019s blue it\u2019s because there\u2019s unruly water being held back by a great dome over our heads.\u00a0 If it\u2019s gray, it may be raining, or it probably will be soon.\u00a0 Stroll to where the land ends.\u00a0 What do you see?\u00a0 Water.\u00a0 That water is lapping at land, trying to take it over.\u00a0 Although the ancients didn\u2019t have geologic ages (the Mesopotamians came close, with ancient kings living thousands of years) rivers eroded land and they had tendencies to flood.\u00a0 The thing about chaos is that it makes you start again, from the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You should definitely click through to his blog<\/a> and read the whole thing. The element about heroes doing battle with powerful supernatural forces definitely resonated with me differently than it might have if I had not been attending Gen Con during the time period when I read the post! (I also find myself thinking of a game about worldbuilding, Creation at the meta-level.)<\/p>\n The ancient Israelite view of the world, like that of any ancient people, is hard for us to truly imagine. I tried once when driving and getting a nice wide view of the sky while passing into, out of, and near stormy weather. I found it hard to think of those billowing clouds as anything other than water vapor. But perhaps they imagined a stormy sky as having waves like a turbulent sea, generating froth? Do any ancient authors actually elaborate on what they thought those things were up in the sky in detail?<\/p>\n For more on that, see Ben Stanhope\u2019s video<\/a> (and accompanying blog post) about the ancient Israelites\u2019 assumption (shared with other ancient peoples) that there was a solid dome over the earth:<\/p>\n