Where does it all come from, and where does this urge inside us come from, this need to know? We lay the Big Bang next to the first sentence of Genesis. We hear who actually wrote this text: a defeated, deported people in Babylonian exile who, in the middle of their catastrophe, composed not a lament but a celebration of the beginning. We learn what the "dust" we are said to be made of really consists of. And we hear how two physicists found the echo of the beginning while looking for a fault in their antenna.

Topics: The Big Bang, Genesis 1 and 2, the Babylonian exile, Enuma Elish, stellar nucleosynthesis, cosmic background radiation, Georges Lemaitre, and the myth of the eternal war between faith and science.

Sources and notes: Genesis 1 and 2 (creation in seven days; the human formed from dust), retold freely; short quotations follow the public-domain World English Bible. The Priestly source written in the Babylonian exile (conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II, 587/586 BC): broad historical-critical consensus, detailed dating debated. Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic (public domain). Formation of the elements in stars and supernovae: B2FH paper by Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler and Fred Hoyle (1957); Fowler received the Nobel Prize in Physics 1983. Cosmic microwave background: discovered 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson (Holmdel horn antenna; the pigeon anecdote is documented); Nobel Prize 1978; measured in detail by the Planck satellite. Georges Lemaitre: 1931 hypothesis of the "primeval atom"; Catholic priest and astrophysicist. Einstein's verdict ("your physics is abominable") and his later change of mind are documented, rendered here in essence. The Galileo trial of 1633; the Catholic Church publicly acknowledged the error in 1992 (John Paul II). Gregor Mendel, Augustinian friar, founder of genetics. The limit of physics near the beginning (Planck era): consensus in physics. "Continuing creation" (creatio continua): a theological concept going back to Augustine.

Conceived by a human, narrated with the support of AI. Old stories. New knowledge.