I. Name

The Greek word χάος (related to χάσκω or χαίνω, ‘gape, yawn’) literally means ‘chasm’ or ‘yawning space’. There were various conceptions of it in Greco-Roman antiquity, because in various mythical cosmogonies Chaos played very different roles. The word occurs only twice in the Greek Bible, in Mic. 1.6 and Zech. 14.4, each time as a translation of the Hebrew gyʾ, ‘valley’; and 2 times in the Greek fragments of 1 Enoch (10:13) and Jubilees (2:2), where it seems to be used for the abyss where the…