1. Makom. Our term “space” derives from the Latin,
and is thus relatively late. The nearest to it among
earlier terms in the West are the Hebrew makom and
the Greek topos (τόπος). The literal meaning of these
two terms is the same, namely “place,” and even the
scope of connotations is virtually the same (Theol.
Wörterbuch..., 1966). Either term denotes: area,
region, province; the room occupied by a person or
an object, or by a community of persons or arrange-
ments of objects. But by first occurrences in extant
sources, makom seems to be the earlier term and con-
cept. Apparently, topos is attested for the first time
in the early fifth century B.C., in plays of Aeschylus
and fragments of Parmenides, and its meaning there
is a rather literal one, even in Parmenides. Now, the
Hebrew book Job is more or less contemporary with
these Greek sources, but in chapter 16:18 makom
occurs in a rather figurative sense:
O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have
no place
(makom).
Late antiquity was already debating whether this
makom is meant to be a “hiding place” or a “resting
place” (Dhorme, p. 217), and there have even been
suggestions that it might have the logical meaning of
“occasion,” “opportunity.”
Long before it appears in Job, makom occurs in the
very first chapter of Genesis, in:
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place (makom) and the dry land appear,
and it was so
(Genesis 1:9).
This biblical account is more or less contemporary with
Hesiod's Theogony, but the makom of the biblical
account has a cosmological nuance as no corresponding
term in Hesiod.
Elsewhere in Genesis (for instance, 22:3; 28:11;
28:19), makom usually refers to a place of cultic sig-
nificance, where God might be worshipped, eventually
if not immediately. Similarly, in the Arabic language,
which however has been a written one only since the
seventh century A.D., the term makām designates the
place of a saint or of a holy tomb (Jammer, p. 27).
In post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, in the first
centuries A.D., makom became a theological synonym
for God, as expressed in the Talmudic sayings: “He
is the place of His world,” and “His world is His place”
(Jammer, p. 26). Pagan Hellenism of the same era did
not identify God with place, not noticeably so; except
that the One (τὸ ἕν) of Plotinus (third century A.D.)
was conceived as something very comprehensive (see
for instance J. M. Rist, pp. 21-27) and thus may have
been intended to subsume God and place, among other
concepts. In the much older One of Parmenides
(early fifth century B.C.), from which the Plotinian
One ultimately descended, the theological aspect was
only faintly discernible. But the spatial aspect was
clearly visible, even emphasized (Diels, frag. 8, lines
42-49).
