Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Water holds within itself the enigma of the origins and the evolution of life. It is the first and the most fundamental molecule that scholars of the natural sciences explore, and it is the first physical substance named in the Bible. Even before the advent of science, humans have always sensed that they are defined by water, as witnessed by the cosmological myths of the great civilizations, all of which agree that the universe, and life itself, originated from water.
In Indonesian mythology the supreme god Mahatala spread his ten fingers and posed them on the primordial ocean; from his fingers came some drops which created Djata, the divine virgin, from whom the cosmos then sprang forth. According to the Babylonians, before earth and sky there existed only a vast plain of water. In Greek mythology, Okeanos is the god that created the universe and the other gods. In the Hindu tradition water is identified with Prakriti, the eternal and primordial substance from whence the universe derives. Prakriti activates itself when the equilibrium between intelligence (sattva), dynamism (rajas) and inertia (tamas) is broken, allowing reality to reveal itself in the form of matter. Brahamanda, the primordial egg and source of all energy, is hatched on the surface of the primeval waters of Prakriti.
In the religious poem Bhagavad Gita, Krishna states, ‘I am the taste of the living waters’. In the New Testament, God and the Virgin Mary are called ‘fountain of living waters’. In the Koran it is written, ‘Water is the source of all living things’.
For science the ever evolving universe is polarized and asymmetric like the water molecule, it is composed of fractals, whose design follows water’s movements.
In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the birth of the universe, the formation of the Earth and the emergence of life appear allegorically in the same order proposed by scientific theory. Already by the 14th century the Kabbalist Rabbi Itzhak of Acco (1250–1350) had calculated that the universe was 14 billion years old, a number derived from the sum of the seven temporal sabbatical cycles, according to the chronologies in the Bible – an amazing result: it coincides with the conclusions of modern astrophysics.
From the Big Bang to Life on Earth
The most widely accredited theory of the birth of the universe, known by scientists as the ‘standard cosmological model’, states that at the moment of its creation some 14 billion years ago, the universe was contained in a single, originary point, a state of infinite compression that was then released by an inconceivably colossal explosion, commonly known as the ‘Big Bang’. From that moment, the universe has been continually expanding away from the source of that explosion.
The first element to manifest itself in the newborn universe was hydrogen. The velocity of expansion resulting from the Big Bang generated temperatures so high that heavier elements were able to form: helium within the first few minutes, and all the others at certain points throughout the billions of years that followed. The first life forms appeared on the Earth 3.8 billion years ago, not long after the birth of the planet itself, which is to say just a few hundred million years after the cooling of the Earth’s crust, the cessation of asteroid bombardment and the appearance of water some 4.5 billion years ago.
Taking account of the fact that water functioned as a solvent in the highly improbable transformation of inorganic compounds into organic ones, it all must have happened within the range of 100 °C that defines water’s freezing and boiling points.
Protein synthesis began with very simple substances: carbon monoxide (one atom of carbon paired with one of oxygen), carbon dioxide (one carbon with two oxygen atoms), ammonia (one nitrogen atom and three of hydrogen) and water (one oxygen, two hydrogen).
The first living beings, the prokaryotes, were able to live without oxygen. When certain of them began photosynthesizing, oxygen was produced, enabling more complex organisms to develop, the eukaryotes, which first appeared about 2.7 billion years ago. Subsequently, greater development and differentiation was possible because the Earth’s climatic conditions remained relatively stable. And this stability is owed, of course, to water, thanks to the exceptional capacity of the oceans to absorb heat. The Bible provides an account of the sequence of the development of life forms that corresponds with what we know from geology and paleontology. In the biblical story of Creation, vegetable life indeed precedes aquatic animal life, followed by land-based creatures, the last of which is humankind.
Primordial Waters
Abracadabra
From the Hebrew, meaning ‘I will create while I speak’
Knowing where we come from helps us to understand the direction we must pursue. The Bible’s aim is to shape human identity, both morally and spiritually, and towards this end it offers a synthetic description of the way the world was created, on the assumption that, by understanding the way the world evolved, we will learn to live correctly.
Moshe Ben Maimon (Maimonides) (1135–1204), physician, mathematician and biblical exegete, wrote: ‘The story of Creation is natural science, but because it is so profound, it appears to us as mere parables.’ Through the interpretation of Genesis, we can evaluate the role of water in the development of life on Earth from a perspective that is also both scientifically valid and spiritually stimulating.
"In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was chaos, and void; and darkness was upon the surface of the Deep. And the Spirit of God hovered upon the surface of the waters".
Genesis 1: 1–2
Right at the very beginning of everything, then, the Bible describes an aquatic Abyss – the ‘Deep’ – a vast and chaotic primordial place that preceded the formation of the cosmos. From this ‘Deep’, this abyss, the Heavens, Earth and everything they include were formed. And water is not only the first thing to be created, but it also anticipates Creation itself. We might want to imagine the Abyss as a sort of cosmic tsunami that only the Spirit of God could control.
‘Abyss’ can be interpreted variously: the primeval mass of hydrogen of the Big Bang, or whatever universe may have preceded the Big Bang. The Hebrew word for abyss, tehom, is formed from tohu (‘chaos’) and mem, the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet which, as we shall see, bears an interesting connection to water. According to the Big Bang theory, the birth of the universe is the result of the steady compression of an inconceivably huge quantity of mass (all that makes up the present universe, in fact) into a single point of infinitesimally tiny size, the ferocious explosion of which would have started the process of the expansion of the universe. This little point of mass would have been so concentrated as to have generated a gravitational force that nothing, not even light, could escape. The stories are familiar: the Bible calls this mass tehom, or ‘Abyss’, and science compares it to a primordial black hole. In the end, they both seem to be talking about the same thing.
Anyway, darkness covered the tehom which, according to Maimonides and Radak (acronym used by Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160–1214), consisted in a great undifferentiated mass of water that covered the Earth at the moment of its formation. Rabbi S R Hirsch links it to the root hem, which means both ‘boiling’ and ‘pelting of waves’. In any case it is clear that, for the biblical commentators, water was the first element, something that existed before the cosmos, even before light.
Many scientists agree that liquid water existed in the solar system before the Earth was formed. In 2002, salt crystals and water bubbles were found in a meteorite that currently stands as the oldest known material in our solar system, dating back more than 4.5 billion years, when the young solar system was made up of protoplanets and, apparently, salt water as well.
The mystical rabbi Arizal (Itzhak Luria, 1534–72) explains that in order to make room for Creation, God had to ‘contract’ Himself. The contraction of the Infinite Divine Light anticipated the formation of the Abyss and the Big Bang, after which the primordial space called Avir Kadmon, ‘Primordial Air’, was formed.
According to Arizal’s metaphorical image, Primordial Air was composed of 13 fluctuating mem letters (the word ‘water’ derives from them). These 13 mem represent the 13 different primordial states of the water that preceded Creation and constituted the aforementioned Abyss. They hide the secret of Creation of the 13 divine principles of mercy of the Ineffable Name. According to the mystics, they are the origin of all the sublime pleasures that would become manifest during Creation.
In the biblical narration, Creation starts when the Spirit of God begins hovering over the waters, provoking turbulence. It is the Spirit of God that sparks the expansion of the universe and the subsequent appearance of light. Interestingly, this is the only place in the Bible where we find the term ‘Spirit of God’.
The word ruach, ‘spirit’, used in the expression ‘Spirit of God’, also means ‘wind’. We find also here in the Bible the generative coupling of water and wind, reminding us of that ‘sensitive boundary’ between air and water, that creative border zone of the wave where the Spirit of God meets water and generates living forms.
"God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated between the light and the darkness".
Genesis 1: 3–4
The Bible informs us that from the huge aquatic Abyss, concentrated and dark like a black hole, originated the Heavens, the Earth and the separation of the waters, from which life will spring. To ensure the expansion of the universe, first light was created, whose speed is a necessary constant in the transmutations between masses and energies.
The Formation of the Earth
"For the land shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the waters cover the sea . . ."
Isaiah 11: 9
In the Hebrew language ‘Earth’ is Aretz, derived from ratz, which means ‘to run’, ‘to hurry’. Rabbi Hirsch explains that in the origins of the Hebrew language, the concept of the Earth as quickly rotating on itself and revolving around the Sun was implicit. Another concept was implicit, too: the matter constituting the earth appears solid, but is instead dynamic, composed of subatomic particles and strings that ‘run’ and vibrate vortically. These ancient words resonate in harmony with the most recent theories of modern physics.
The linguistic root of ‘earth’ can also mean ‘to compress’. In fact, the earth is condensed energy, the same energy we find in the heavens and in the waters, compressed in the end, concentrated. The Zohar, the main text of Jewish mysticism, ventures to describe the birth of the universe and the Earth with explicit sexual overtones and imagery, similar to those of the Indian Tantric cosmologies.
"When the higher world was filled and became pregnant, it gave forth two offspring at the same time, a male and a female. They were the Heavens and the Earth, in keeping with the supreme scheme. Earth is nourished by the waters of the Heavens that pour down upon it. These Superior Waters are male, while the Inferior Waters are female . . . they make their way to the Superior ones, like the woman who receives the man, and makes her waters gush out to meet his, and produce the seed".
Zohar 1: 113–14
We can find several similarities between the biblical account of the appearance of water on the earth and the two most accredited scientific theories on the issue.
The approach that today enjoys the greatest consensus in the scientific community states that the Earth was heated up by the continuous impact of meteorites. Elevated radioactivity and an increase in gravitational pressure would have made terrestrial matter more compact, making it possible for water to have formed from that moment on. The planet continued to heat up even more, to the point where it started melting from the centre outwards. Water would have evaporated, dissolving into oxygen and hydrogen, joining the other gases constituting the Earth’s early atmosphere. With the decrease of radioactivity, the process of concentration slowed down and the planet started to cool. The gases, now dispersed into space, were replaced by steaming exhalations of water. Afterwards, when the cooling process had advanced far enough to prevent water from vaporizing, a great deluge began that lasted centuries, finally stopping when the clouds became thin enough to float without precipitating and allow the Sun’s rays to reach the Earth’s surface.
The second theory, proposed by Harold C Urey (1893–1981), winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, claims that the Earth never melted, but was born cold, and that water emerged gradually from its solid crust. Urey’s hypothesis is based on the fact that the terrestrial crust is formed mostly of silicate rocks, namely hydrate crystals which include water molecules in their atomic structure: in keeping with the biblical scenario, Urey maintains that also the Earth’s crust was made of water. Intermittent sources of heat, caused for example by local collisions between large masses inherent in the formation of the planet, would have provoked the creation and then the exit of water from its crust. So, like Genesis, according to this theory, water has existed since the very beginning.
The Formation of Humankind
"At the beginning of the creation of the world, the praises to the Most Holy, Blessed Be He came only from the waters . . . He said: ‘If these, that have neither mouth nor the ability to utter a word, praise Me, who knows how much more when Adam shall be created!’"
MIDRASH, Genesis Rabbà 5: 1
In the Bible, human creation happens through the intake of divine breath of an alchemical mixture of dust and water. In the Talmud, the process is compared to kneading flour with water (Yerushalmi, Shabbat 20). According to the sages, dust represents inert, compliant matter, while water is the active matrix that ensures the dynamicity of change and organic transformation: in other words, the encounter between pure, simple water and the inherent impurity of dust triggers the generative/ creative process. In Chapter 2 we saw that it is enough to add impurities to water to change it completely: for example, the pinch of salt that turns it into an excellent electrical conductor. Impurities alter the architecture and electrical balance of the crystals, making them unstable and, precisely for this reason, triggering evolutionary processes.
Adam was basically androgynous. Humanity didn’t become itself until he was separated from Eve, and she from him.
A Midrash commentary teaches that, at the centre of the Garden of Eden, guarded by two angels, the Tree of Life stood nourished by all the waters of Creation. The Talmud states, ‘all the waters of the world flow beneath the Tree of Life’ (Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachot 1a) and derive from its roots. After the banishment of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden was hidden in the depths of the earth, and from it four underground rivers branched out, becoming the water sources for the rest of the world. (Talmud, Taanit 10a).
An analogous mystical river is described in the Hindu tradition, and is given the names Ganga (Ganges) and Saraswati, terms associated with the goddess Shakti. One Hindu myth in particular recounts how human awareness was born when a ripple of water, of all things, chose to leave the infinitely vast ocean of eternal, universal consciousness.
By Dr Paolo Consigli in "The Hidden Secrets of Water" (In Italian "L’Acqua Pura e Semplice: L’Infinita Sapienza di Una Molecola Straordinaria", translated by Jeffrey Jennings) Watkins (an imprint of Watkins Media Ltd), London, UK, 2008, excerpts chapter 9. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.