It’s a question that’s haunted mystics and philosophers for millennia, and the answers are, well, delightfully strange.
The Bible tells us that in the beginning, the earth was tohu and vohu – usually translated as "unformed and void," but really meaning something closer to chaos and emptiness. But where did that come from? Was there just… nothing?
Some ancient traditions suggest something even more primordial: darkness. But where did darkness come from? This is where things get really interesting.
According to a fascinating Gnostic myth found in On the Origin of the World, one of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, this darkness emanated from an infinite source, something that existed before absolutely everything else. Think of it as the ultimate origin point. This source, unnamed and unknowable, birthed darkness, and from that darkness sprang tohu and vohu – chaos itself. It's a bit like peeling back layers of an onion, each layer revealing a more fundamental "before."
This idea, by the way, isn't just some isolated weirdness. It’s deeply rooted in Jewish thought. The Gnostics, who were heavily influenced by Jewish ideas, were essentially offering their own commentary on the Genesis creation story, probing the origins of that initial chaos. They took that phrase "darkness was upon the face of the deep" (Genesis 1:2) and ran with it, imagining darkness not just as a condition, but as a primal force.
But it doesn't stop there. This infinite source also brought into being immortal beings, all kinds of divinities. And, crucially, it emanated a likeness, a reflection of itself, known as Ḥokhmah, Wisdom. This Wisdom took the form of primordial light.
Think about that for a moment. The very first thing God creates in Genesis is light. And here, in this Gnostic myth, Wisdom is intimately connected to that light. In fact, Wisdom acts as a veil, separating humanity from the divine realm above.
This concept of emanation – the idea that creation unfolds from a central source in successive stages – is a key element that would later become central to Kabbalah, particularly the system of the ten sefirot, divine attributes through which God manifests in the world. This myth suggests that chaos itself is not arbitrary, but rather the product of a chain reaction stemming from the ultimate source.
The figure of Wisdom, or Sophia in Greek, plays a huge role in Gnostic thought, far exceeding her role in most Jewish texts. Some Jewish sources do identify Ḥokhmah with the primordial light, but the Gnostics really amplified her importance. She becomes almost a co-creator, a partner in the divine act of bringing the universe into being.
So, next time you read the opening lines of Genesis, remember the layers beneath the surface. Remember the darkness before the light, the infinite source before the darkness, and the question that lingers: what came before even that? Maybe the most profound truths are found not in the answers, but in the endless quest to understand the questions.