The initial description, “without form and void,” “has been widely taken to refer to a primordial chaos, which was then transformed by God. This, again, appears deliberately to recall ancient Near Eastern mythology; though the absence of a conflict motif in Genesis 1 suggests that, as with tĕhôm [the deep], chaos is passive rather than in active opposition to the Creator.… The narrator in Genesis 1 is setting out an authentic and distinctive creation theology, but in so doing is willing to use familiar