Tehom (Hebrew תְּהוֹ×) is the primordial deep — the abyss, the chaotic waters that exist before the cosmos is ordered. It is the word in Genesis 1:2 — "darkness over the face of the tehom" — and surfaces again in the Hebrew Bible as the great deep of the Noah flood and the waters under the earth in Psalms. Etymologically tehom is a cognate of the Akkadian Tiāmat; both descend from a common Proto-Semitic root, *t-h-m. In Genesis 1, however, tehom is depersonalized and passive — the chaos God orders by speech. No goddess, no consort, no combat. The demythologization is itself the theological move: Israel's God doesn't have to defeat chaos, only order it.
The Babylonian saltwater goddess and etymological sister of tehom, slain by Marduk in the Enuma Elish.
The ancient Near Eastern combat motif Genesis 1 quietly inherits — and rewrites.
The Babylonian creation epic that names Tiamat as the personalized version of the same primordial water.
Reading Genesis 1 slowly, with tehom and its ancient Near Eastern background in view.