We will conclude with a look at the Hebrew words and passages used by these scholars to reconstruct the so-called Hebrew cosmology. We will then look at how nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars viewed the cosmologies of these earlier periods. In this chapter, we will examine these two arguments, looking first at the history of the cosmological views of the ancient world, the early church, and the Middle Ages. It was not, reconstructionists argue, until the rise of modern science that it was finally recognized that the biblical view of cosmology was naive and untenable. This understanding continued to be accepted throughout the early history of the Christian church and the Middle Ages. Second, this view was common to other peoples of the ancient Near East, especially in Mesopotamia, which was considered the probable source of Hebrew cosmology. The first is textual and linguistic: the context and meaning of certain words such as rāqîa ʿ support this reconstruction. In support of this reconstruction of Hebrew cosmology, supporters bring two lines of argument to bear. This understanding of Hebrew cosmology is so common that pictures of it are frequently found in Bible dictionaries and commentaries. On the surface of the flat earth were terrestrial oceans (“waters below the firmament”) and dry land below the earth were subterranean waters (“fountains of the deep”) and the netherworld of the dead ( šĕ ʾ ôl).
#HEAVEN BIBLE FIRMAMENT WINDOWS#
The dome also possessed windows or gates through which celestial waters (“waters above the firmament”) could, upon occasion, pass. Attached to the dome and visible to observers below were the stars, sun, and moon. Above this solid dome was a celestial ocean (“waters above the firmament”). This understanding is built around the idea that the Hebrew word rāqîa ʿ, which appears in Genesis 1 and is usually translated “firmament” in English Bibles, was actually understood by the ancient Hebrews to be a solid, hemispherical dome or vault that rested upon mountains or pillars that stood along the outermost perimeter of a circular, flat disk-the earth.
This article was originally published as a chapter in the book “ The Genesis Creation Account and Its Reverberations in the Old Testament."Īnyone who wishes to study ancient Hebrew cosmology will quickly discover that the common understanding among most modern biblical scholars is that the Hebrews had a prescientific, even naive, view of the universe.
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