I am a little afraid of water. I can swim, absolutely, but sometimes the sight of deep water frightens me, for a reason I can’t quite explain. In the ancient world, broadly speaking, water represented fear and chaos as well. The sea is unpredictable, after all, and dangerous to traverse. Why else would we have so many legends of sea monsters?

In the Ancient Near East, there was an understanding that evil was represented by chaos, and good was represented by order. This idea is present in many forms and symbols in the Bible, all across the Old Testament and even in the New Testament. Often chaos and evil are represented either by waters, or by serpents that crawl out of them.

The depth of the symbolism is so rich in the Bible, and I want to share with you some thoughts that have been percolating in my mind for at least ten years. First, to bring it into a Western context, I want to share a couple legends of Irish saints. Then we’ll compare a little of the Babylonian creation account to the biblical one. Lastly, we’ll take a look at mythical water serpents mentioned in Isaiah, Job, and Psalms.

A Snakeless Island

Ireland, in case you didn’t know, doesn’t have any snakes. All of Europe has them, and even in Great Britain snakes can be found, but not in Ireland. And early Irish Christians, from the 7th century, have told legends about snakes being banished from Ireland. The most famous one, of course, is that St. Patrick banished all the island’s snakes after they began attacking him while he was fasting for 40 days atop a hill. Another similar version of this story, has to do with St. Kevin, abbot of Glendalough (d. 618). Glendalough, which means “valley of the two lakes,” holds the remains of an old monastic city, which remains a place of pilgrimage for the faithful. There are seven old churches on the site, which shows how important it was in Irish Christian history.

Glendalough is composed of two lakes: one small, round Lower Lake, and a larger Upper Lake (pictured above). The legend of St. Kevin says that one day he was fording his cattle across the shallow Lower Lake and the great serpent that lived there kept pulling his cows under and eating them. So St. Kevin, at one with nature and filled with the power of God, banished the creature to the deep Upper Lake, where it could no longer terrorize his poor sweet cows.

When I was studying early Celtic Christianity in Ireland for my master’s degree, we learned about these myths and legends with a sense of real reverence. For those of us who believe in the miraculous power of God, it’s feasible that, for instance, St. Patrick could banish both slavery and command the snakes to slither back into the sea. (Really, there’s no evidence of there ever being snakes in Ireland.) But regardless of how accurately or inaccurately these hagiographies (biographies of the saints) recount history, they preserve a kernel of truth at the center, and especially spiritual truth.

Chaos and Sea Serpents

In ancient Babylon, they too had a creation story, which told of the origins of the world. Their myth, called Enuma Elish, tells that before the world was created, there were two water deities: Tiamat, the sea goddess, and her husband Apsu, the fresh water god–and everything lay in chaos.

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven…

Later this myth tells how the great god Marduk won in battle with the sea goddess Tiamat, and splits her dead body in two like a dried fish, setting one half of her water-body above in the heavens and the other half below on earth.

In Genesis there are several parallels to this Babylonian myth. This includes a dividing of the waters from waters (Genesis 1:6-8), an etymological connection between the Hebrew word tehom, meaning the deep waters (v. 2), and the name Tiamat. More closely related, however, to our topic of chaos and waters, is a Hebrew phrase in that same verse:

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep (tehom). (Genesis 1:2 ESV)

The words here which mean ‘formless and empty,’ in Hebrew make a fun phrase called tohu wa bohu. It’s a kind of play on words, and the closest English equivalent would be something like topsy turvy, or maybe even upside down. This conveys that creation started from a place of complete chaos. Sometimes it is taught that creation came ex nihilo, meaning out of nothing, but in fact, what we have here clearly in Hebrew is the first biblical example of God bringing order out of primordial chaos.

If the biblical creation myth preceded Enuma Elish, then we might presume that the Babylonians and Sumerians copied the Hebrews. However, today, scholars date Enuma Elish as being at least several centuries older than the biblical text. I would argue that this is not incompatible with believing in the doctrine of creation, even if the Babylonians got there first, so to speak.

What does it mean then, that these two stories are so closely interlinked? What about these strange water deities and their fighting and clamoring? There are two main differences between the Babylonian and the biblical myths, and this is why it is important that the Babylonian myth predates the biblical recording of creation. First, unlike both the Babylonian and the Sumerian creation myths, in Genesis we are told that world is not born out of a great battle between equally powerful deities. Secondly, the noisy pantheon of Mesopotamian nature gods is swapped for the calm presence of the one true God, YHWH.

The biblical creation story retells this Mesopotamian tale in order to demythologize it. What that means is that, whereas the Sumerians and Babylonians needed lots of little gods for every part of life, the God YHWH is supreme over all. Whereas the world in ancient Mesopotamian eyes was chaos begotten of chaos, the creation of YHWH was absolutely perfect, reflecting His nature, for He brings chaos to calm.

Both in scholarship and in personal belief, there is a spectrum of ideas about the origins of the world, ranging from a literal six-day creation and a young earth, to an old-earth evolutionary perspective. Regardless of where one falls academically or personally on this, the spiritual truths about God remain the same.

Sea Serpents and Biblical Mythology

In other parts of the Old Testament, there is some vivid poetic imagery of God defeating sea creatures and chaos, known by three different names.

Isaiah 51:9 (NRSV) calls for God to:

Awake, awake, put on strength,
    O arm of the Lord!
Awake, as in days of old,
    the generations of long ago!
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
    who pierced the dragon (tannin)?

Here Rahab is used as a poetical name representative of Israel’s timeless foe, Egypt–not to be confused with the Rahab of Joshua who helped the Israelites conquer Jericho. The tannin is a type of sea serpent.

We find in Job 9 a retelling of creation in stunning language, speaking of how the creator God subdued the mythological creature of Rahab (v. 13), and trampled upon the back of the Sea (v. 8).

Finally, in Psalm 74:13-14, it says:

You divided the sea by your might;
    you broke the heads of the dragons (tanninim) in the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
    you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

Scholarly views of these texts would point to a certain development of Israelite religion over time, and that these texts are the remains of a Caananite pantheon, as Israel moved from the darkness of polytheism to the glory of serving the one true God. Pentecostal Christians, and more broadly in the evangelical world, would state that scripture is simply inerrant and inspired by God, and especially that Israel always served one God from the beginning.

I only share that contrast to say that, theologically, the truth of this text remains the same, regardless of one’s opinion of the biblical background. The Bible is ultimately the story of God and His power to triumph over evil.

The Spiritual Sea

If we reexamine the life of St. Patrick then, through this lens of metaphor and poetry, it tells us that St. Patrick was the one who banished evil from the island by bringing the light of Christianity to a once pagan land. St. Patrick is also attributed with being the one who abolished slavery, which is a pretty incredible step forward in the humanitarian realm. Thus we see that he was a special man who transformed Ireland with his missionary work.

The Bible uses the mysterious and the symbolic often to speak greater truths about God than we could possibly put into words or literal statements. This is why we need beautiful, ancient, and profound metaphors like we see in Isaiah, Psalms and Job. Once we can see the world in these sort of metaphysical and spiritual terms, for instance, it brings much more depth to the New Testament miracle in which Jesus calms the wind and subdues the waves with his voice…

Powerful, isn’t it?