Page 227 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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206 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
Something was missing.
This all changed with the launch of COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer)

satellite, back in 1989. The satellite gathered highly accurate measurements
throughout 1990 and 1991, and the public announcement of the results of
the statistical analysis of these data was made in April 1992. The results were
staggering: “The COBE satellite had found evidence that nearly 300,000 years

or so after the moment of creation, there were tiny variations in CMB radiation

across the universe at the level of 1 part in 100,000” (Singh 2004, 462). In other
words, ripplelike variations, amounting to about ten millionths of a degree, were

discovered. These were the first signs of structures emerging in the early universe.
These variations grew with time and ultimately resulted in the galaxies that we see
today.
The connection between modern-day cosmology and the succinct description
of the universe at its infancy epoch now becomes clear: “the Earth”—namely,
the universe—was at the beginning, even before observable light was created, so

uniformly distributed in space that no information was conveyed. There was no
sense of that which existed; everything was absolutely homogenous. An observing
person would be alarmed, paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to make any sense
of that which was observed—because there was nothing to observe; there was no
information. Everything was uniform, like … in the desert.
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The tohu and bohu, as their meanings were inferred from verbs associated with
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shmamah, convey accurately the uniformity of the universe at the beginning,

with a complete lack of information in the just-born universe. The description of
the observable light in Genesis as the result of the command of God after the depic-
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tion of “the earth” as toho va-vohu is also consistent with modern cosmology.
Comments
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1. It is interesting to note that in modern Hebrew the meaning of tohu and
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bohu is far displaced from its original meaning as “wilderness.” In modern
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Hebrew, tohu va-vohu simply means “chaos , complete disorder.” Although

this meaning is far removed from any connotations of a desert, in a twisted
way, the original sense has been revoked—but from an altogether different
perspective: one is confused and cannot make sense of what is observed not
because it is a “desolate wilderness,” but because there is complete chaos.
Thus, just as in biblical discourse, one is bewildered and confused in the
desert because “there is nothing to observe.” So in chaos, one is confused and
bewildered because there are no patterns or structures to observe that would
allow making sense of the observed. The desert becomes, for the Bible, the
epitome of that which cannot make sense, and therefore is confusing.