
The Fountains of the Deep

Introduction

There is evidence from several sources, both in the scriptures
and from pagan writers, that in ancient times men of learning
generally believed the earth's interior structure was such that a
layer of water was present under the earth's rocky crust. It was
these waters of the earth's interior breaking out to the surface,
and the foundering of the crust in waters of the interior which
brought the flood upon the world in the time of Noah, when the
"fountains of the deep" broke up.

The idea of "fountains" implies waters under pressure springing
up from below ground. The mention of fountains in connection
with the account of the flood, in Genesis 6:11, implies that waters
existed within the earth.

The ancient Babylonian legend of Eridu was woven around the
concept of the earth's interior waters. It went like this: In the
beginning, all land was sea. Marduk built a raft on the surface of
the water, and on it he built a reed-hut which became the earth.
So the earth rested above the waters of the deep. In Babylonian
mythology, Apsu and Tiamut represented the primeval waters.
Apsu became the waters underlying the earth.

For the ancient Greeks, Poseidon was the sea, and he also
represented the waters below the earth's crust. Thus during an
earthquake, Poseidon was said to be active. Homer referred to him
as "Earthshaker." This myth shows that the ancient Greeks, who
invented Poseidon and the other gods, originally believed there
were waters beneath the earth.

The Pythagoreans, especially Philolaus of Croton, who wrote in
the late fifth century BC, said the centre of the universe was fiery,
and the earth rotated about this central fire. The goddess of the
hearth, Hestia, (Vespa in the Roman religion) was identified with
this fire. This idea evolved into the concept of a fiery interior of
the earth, when the earth took its place at the centre of the
universe in the cosmologies of Plato and Aristotle. Volcanic
phenomena tended to support this idea, as it does, for most
people, to this day. Although Plato placed the earth at the centre,
he had doubts that it was worthy to occupy such an important
position.

In the Hellenistic age, the belief in a fiery interior generally
replaced the ancient view that waters were present under the
earth. There seemed to be a conflict with this belief, a concept
which was entirely of Greek origin, and belief in waters within the
earth, and people of the Hellenistic age tended to doubt the reality
of the interior waters. The flood tradition persisted, but its cause
seemed more and more mysterious, as the knowledge of the
interior waters was lost.

Creationists today have revived the belief in a global flood, but
some appear to be unwilling to accept the implications of the
statements in the Bible about the earth's composition, and so they
are forced to conclude the mechanism of the flood was
miraculous. Many retain the belief that Hades or hell exists within
the earth, which may be a factor. Perhaps their theology requires or
is dependent upon certain beliefs about the earth's composition. In
the following sections of this paper I review various sources
which offer support for the ancient concept of the earth's interior
waters.

Genesis 1:2

     And the earth was without form, and void, and
     darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit
     of God moved upon the face of the waters.

The word "deep" here refers to the primeval waters, which
covered the earth at the beginning of creation. Some of these
waters became the interior waters when the crust of the earth
was formed. These interior waters are the "great deep" or tehom.
Strong's Concordance defines this word as "an abyss, as a
surging mass of water, espec. the deep, the main sea or the
subterranean water-supply." [See Strong's no. 8415.] This
subterranean water is also referred to in Genesis 49:25, and
Deuteronomy 33:13.

The Fountains

The fountains of the deep are mentioned in connection with the
flood, in Genesis 7:11. They were no doubt the primary source of
the flood waters. There was abundant water within the earth from
the time of creation. In the modern world, a tiny vestage of these
fountains exists in the form of "black smokers" and similar
features associated with mid-ocean ridges.

At these sites, water from within the earth escapes into the
ocean. This water is usually  quite hot, up to 300 degrees C,
and contains dissolved minerals, such as sulphides, which cause
the black smoke-like discharge.

The Ten Commandments

In one of the ten commandments, which are listed in two
places in the scripture, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, there is a
reference to "waters under the earth." This phrase occurs in the
second commandment, which is the one against idolatry. Exodus
20:4 says:

     Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or
     any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or
     that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
     the earth...

The implication is that there are waters beneath the earth.

Job 38:8

     Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth,
     as if it had issued out of the womb?

God here demands of Job, who it was that sealed up the
earth's interior waters, when they broke out at the time of the
flood, as if from the womb, or from the deep interior. This
scripture clearly shows that the waters of the flood came from
inside the earth. They existed from the time of the earth's
creation. Also, since the sea was "shut up with doors," these
waters must still exist within the earth.

An interesting question is, what do these doors represent?
Were they great slabs of the earth's crust, which became
cemented together by sediments during the flood?

It is possible that the reference to "doors" indicates there were
hinge zones where the crust of the earth was bent during the
flood. Ancient raised shorelines, which are no longer horizontal,
found in some regions, such as the coasts of NE North America,
and in Scandinavia, suggest that there were "hinges" in the crust
at the time of the flood.

Proverbs 8:27,28

     When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he
     set a compass upon the face of the depth... When he
     strengthened the fountains of the deep.

In this passage from Proverbs there is a reference to the waters
of the deep being "encompassed" by the earth's crust during the
creation. It immediately followed the creation of the heavens, or
the universe. This verse has a parallel structure with Genesis 1:1,
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." First he
created the universe, then the earth. The creation of light on the
first day must have involved the creation of the stars and galaxies,
and it is possible the first day was open ended, and encompassed
a great span of time.

The KJV has the word "compass," which translates the
Hebrew word "chug," meaning a circle or a sphere. The raqia was
a solid spherical structure which encompassed or enclosed the
interior waters. It meant the earth's crust. This is in harmony with
the creation account in Genesis, when it is properly restored, and
the interpretation of the events of the second day as referring to
the formation of the earth's crust.

In verse 28, the word "deep" in the Hebrew is tehom, which
refers to the subterranean deep, the waters within the earth,
below the crust.

Psalm 24:2

     The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the
     world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded
     it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

In this psalm, the earth is said to be "founded on the floods."
The psalmist refers to the events of the second day of creation
week, which in his time were understood by all who had read
Moses. The earth was founded upon the floods, when the raqia
was made "in the midst of the waters." This was the rocky crust
of the earth. It divided the upper and lower waters, the waters
above becoming seas and lakes, when the land rose on the third
day, and the waters below being enclosed within the earth's
interior, by the rocks of the earth's crust. These waters enclosed
within the earth were the main source of the flood waters, as
Peter said.

Psalm 136:6

     O give thanks... to him that stretched out the earth
     above the waters...

Here the psalmist refers to the events of the second day of the
creation week. He says that the earth was "stretched out," a
phrase containing a Hebrew root related to raqia of Genesis 1.6.
Clearly he implied that the earth's crust rests on an interior layer
of water, which could exist today in the form of ice. The interior
waters caused the great flood described in Genesis.

Peter's Report

In the New Testament scriptures we have the record of the
apostle Peter, as to what the true text of Genesis once contained.
It is found in 2 Peter 3:5, where he wrote:

     For this they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word
     of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing
     out of the water and in the water, whereby the world
     that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.

Here Peter shows the heavens were formed before the earth.
When the earth was formed, it was "standing out of the water and
in the water," which is a statement that would apply to an
iceberg. He showed that what was made on the second day, in
the midst of the waters, was the earth's crust.

Peter said it was the waters from the earth's interior which
caused the flood in the time of Noah. It is possible these waters
exist within the earth, and that they are in a solid form, such as a
high pressure, high density phase of ice. If this is true, it is quite
plausible that geophysicists simply have not discovered it.

Peter also indicated a willingness on the part of men to ignore
evidence for the waters which exist in the earth's interior, such as
statements in the scripture which referred to the interior waters.
What happened in the early centuries of the Christian era was that
many writers, both Jews and Christians, interpreted the Bible in
such a manner that it seemed to support the cosmology of the
Greeks, with the rigid sphere of the sky, and the earth at the
centre of the universe.

Origen, in the third century AD, questioned the authenticity of
this second epistle of Peter. Origen admired Plato, who said the
study of the theory of the celestial spheres was far superior to the
investigation of earthly things.

People are ignorant of the waters of the earth's interior for the
most part today, but there is evidence that the earth's interior
layers, below the crust, are less dense than the rocks above. This
evidence comes from seismic data from earthquakes and
geophysical experiments. Sound or shock waves of earthquakes
increase in speed with decrease of density, and we know from
many observations that an abrupt increase in the velocity of shear
waves occurs at a few kilometres depth in most parts of the earth.
But this is often interpreted in other ways.

Thales of Miletus

One of the first Ionian philosophers, Thales claimed that all
things were derived from water. He claimed the earth floated on
water like a log of wood. Aristotle said of Thales, "he declared
that the earth floats on water," and Plutarch wrote of him, "They
say that Thales, first of all, posited water as the arche [origin] of
the whole universe, since from it all things have their being, and
into it all pass." Seneca wrote of him, "For he said that the world
is held up by water and rides like a ship, and when it is said to
'quake' it is actually rocking because of the water's movement."

Thales may have obtained some of his ideas from Egypt, as he
is believed to have visited Egypt. The Egyptians also believed the
earth was supported on the primeval ocean, named Nun.

Pseudo Longinus

An unknown Greek author, writing in the first century AD,
known to scholars as Pseudo Longinus, provided a quotation from
the opening verses of Genesis in a treatise called "On the
Sublime," in which he discussed the technique of sublime writing.
He gave examples from many ancient sources, and Moses was
one of them. His quotation differs somewhat from our existing
Bibles, and suggests the earth's crust was made on the second
day, immediately after the creation of light. This would identify the
earth's crust with the raqia or firmament, and confirms there is
water below the crust of the earth. Referring to the 'lawgiver of
the Jews,'  this unknown writer wrote:

     He was no insignificant man, especially as he had a
     worthy conception of the power of the deity and
     described it well, yet at the very beginning of his law he
     wrote 'God said'; and what did he say? 'let there be
     light, and there was light; let the earth be, and it was.'

Paul and the Corruption of Genesis

In the Book of Romans, Paul stated that men had "changed the
truth into a lie." (Romans 1:25) The statement occurs in an
analysis of the wisdom of the pagan world. The truth which was
changed to a lie was the true cosmology of the Bible, which was
corrupted by insertion of statements and phrases supporting the
Hellenistic cosmology.

Paul's statement referred to events in the second century BC,
in the time of Antiochus Epiphanies, who caused the corruption of
the scriptures, by identifying the raqia made on the second day
with the rigid sky. This was referred to in the prophecy of Daniel,
chapter 8, where he wrote of a "little horn" who "cast the truth to
the ground." This truth cast to the ground was the true cosmology
of scripture, which showed the earth's crust was made on the
second day, after the creation of the universe.

Daniel's prophecy said stars and the host of heaven were cast
to the earth, and the sense in which this occurred is that the raqia
was identified with heaven, so stars and the sun and moon were
located in the earth's crust! The raqia, or the earth's crust made
on the second day, was identified with heaven by the addition of
the phrase "And God called the firmament heaven," or its
equivalent, in the Greek and Hebrew texts of the scriptures,
beginning at the time of Antiochus IV.

Conclusion

The most ancient belief about the earth's interior, among
Hebrews, Babylonians, and Egyptians, and one which is well
supported in the Bible, is that there is a layer of water below the
earth's crust. It was the waters of the earth's interior which
caused the great flood of Noah's time.

The Genesis account of events on the second day, when the
raqia was made "in the midst of the waters," has been corrupted
by the insertion of statements that God gave names to things he
created. This was done in the second century BC in order to make
the Bible conform to the Greek cosmology, which required a rigid
rotating sky or firmament. The corruption of the scriptures was
predicted by the prophet Daniel, and his prophecy enables us to
properly restore the creation account, and identify other similar
cosmological corruptions in the scripture.

The quotation from Genesis by Pseudo Longinus preserves the
information content of an uncorrupted text of the first few verses.
In its original state, the Genesis creation account was viewed as
being among the most sublime writing ever contemplated by man.

Copyright by Douglas E. Cox, 1994 (All Rights Reserved)
170 University Avenue West, Suite 12 - 195
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3E9
Email: douglas.cox@canrem.com

