The Book of Genesis begins with an explanation of how the world came to be.

In the beginning, God created the skies and the land.

Genesis 1 has a lot of strange images, which hold of land emerging from chaotic waters.

A solid dome holding back waters in the sky.

The spirit of God hovering over a dark abyss.

Where did these images come from?

What we're going to see is that in Mesopotamia, ancient Babylon and Samaria and in ancient Egypt,

there were like fixed traditions, ways of understanding how the cosmos works, that involve the waters,

things emerging out of the waters, things being separated from each other, the God speaking,

or the God's acting.

And Genesis 1 is at home in that cultural environment.

And we are not.

This series is about ancient cosmology.

In other words, the way the ancients thought about the nature of reality, the images they use to think about it,

and what these images meant to them.

And so ancient cosmologies don't provide an account of the cosmos that's primarily concerned with the physical material processes,

by which what we call matter came into physical existence.

And the way that in ancient Near East, they accounted for the cosmos was completely different.

So today, we're inviting you to join us in being a good tourist,

leave your own cosmology behind for a second, and let's look at the world in a foreign way,

the way the authors of the Hebrew Bible looked at it.

In today's episode, we're going to set the stage for this conversation.

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