Jewish tradition offers some pretty wild and wonderful cosmologies. And a recurring image? Water. Waters upon waters, in fact.

According to some mystical teachings, long ago, primeval waters covered absolutely everything. And get this: God, in His infinite creativity, poured even more water into them, even after they were already full! As we learn in Genesis Rabbah (13:6), He pressed down upon these waters, forcing them to gather into one enormous, all-encompassing sea known as Okeanos.

Now, this isn’t just any sea. This is a mythic sea.

Where does it sit? Well, hold on tight. The great sea, Okeanos, stands on the fins of Leviathan, that legendary sea monster! And Leviathan? He dwells in the Lower Waters, appearing there as just a tiny fish in the vast ocean. And it doesn't stop there! The Lower Waters rest on the shore of the Waters of Ocean, appearing as a small well. And so on, and so on... layers upon layers, as described in Midrash Konen. The Waters of Creation, the Weeping Waters, the Abyss… finally, we reach tohu (chaos) and vohu (void). And all of this, unbelievably, is suspended from the very arm of God.

Mind-blowing, right?

The Okeanos Sea, we're told, surrounds the entire earth. But within this vastness lie even more mysteries. There's a place called the Place of Swallowing, a spot where the waters seem to… well, swallow all other waters that flow there.

There's a fascinating story about this in Pesikta Rabbati (48:2). Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, while on a voyage, stumbled upon this very place. Intrigued (as any good rabbis would be!), they took a barrel full of water from it. Later, Caesar, curious about the nature of Okeanos's waters, questioned them. The rabbis presented him with a jug of their special water. And here’s the kicker: they poured barrel after barrel of ordinary water into that jug, but it never overflowed! It just kept swallowing everything poured into it. Sounds like something out of a fairy tale, doesn't it? But this story, rooted in ancient wisdom, explains why all rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never full, as Ecclesiastes (1:7) observes.

But the wonders of Okeanos don't end there. According to Jewish lore, the sun's "candles" – its flames – are extinguished in these waters each night, leaving us in darkness. It's only when the sun journeys to the East and bathes in a River of Fire, called Nehar di-Nur, that its flames are rekindled.

And get this – sometimes, strange things fall from the sky. Once a month, the clouds descend to drink from Okeanos. One time, they accidentally swallowed a ship full of corn along with the water! The result? Corn raining down from the heavens, mixed with the rain. Talk about unexpected delivery!

Now, the name "Okeanos" itself is borrowed from Greek mythology. Okeanos was a Greek Titan, a river god who later became the god of the sea. Schwartz in Tree of Souls reminds us that he was the offspring of Ouranos (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). In Jewish mythology, Okeanos is a way of giving mythic qualities to the Great Sea, perhaps the Mediterranean Sea itself. But instead of islands of the blessed, we have the Place of Swallowing. Instead of Titans, we have Leviathan lurking beneath the surface.

So, what does it all mean? Perhaps these stories are a way of grappling with the immensity and mystery of creation, of understanding our place within a cosmos far larger and stranger than we can imagine. Perhaps they're a reminder that even the most familiar things – like the sea – can hold untold wonders, waiting to be discovered. And perhaps, just perhaps, they invite us to look a little closer at the world around us, to see the mythic in the mundane, and to find the echoes of ancient stories in our everyday lives.