Not my pic, sad to say - we don’t get many dust storms in Devon. Lovely luminous aither here today, though - not a cloud in the firmament!
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Come on Jon, that’s 29 pages in a journal!
Alright, I’ll give it a shot.
What I wonder is: when did this paradigm shift occur? Surely people must have discussed it (and argued over it) before reaching our own complacency of thought on the non-solid nature of the sky! But which people first proposed the idea? When? What evidence did they use to rationalize? How long did it take to gain acceptance?
Haha, I may have to try googling this now…
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[[ Purpose of Edit: Correction!: I have edited this post to remove the description of forming brass into a firmament by making it more pliable by heating. I have re-examined the Hebrew, and it clearly uses the term “molten” as in “to pour” the metal, in the same way they made mirrors. First metal would be melted down into a molten and pourable state, then it would be poured into a mold and cooled. Then it would be polished. The relevance to making something as radiant as the sky seems even more clear when drawing a comparison to the actual nature of making a molten metal mirror! ]]
I don’t find your conclusion very persuasive. Let’s use the New International Version, and let’s start at verse 14:
Job 37:14-18
“Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders.
Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash?
Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?
You who swelter in your clothes when the land lies hushed under the south wind,
can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?
I think it all hangs together pretty well. The image is of God as a metal worker… heating the bronze hot enough that he can spread it out like an armorer spreading out a sheet of metal over a framework.
And the writer is throwing sarcasm at Job … he who swelters in something as “relatively” mild as the South Wind … how could you even expect to cope with the intense heat of God’s work on the firmament? [Edit: I put quote around the word “relatively” to indicate the irony of the comparison… not that the South Wind was mild.]
The impression is exquisitely clear … the writer thinks that the best imagery for God creating the firmament is made by melting down a vast quantity of metal and then pouring it into place (which, when cooled and strong, would be strong enough to hold back billions of gallons of heavenly ocean) … so hot and intense that only God could perform this work.
So what do you think of those Job verses now? This isn’t my first rodeo, my dear friend, Marty. Did some “unaffiliated Evangelical preacher” teach that business about the text fixating on “the south wind, hot and dry, not creation” ? I’m pretty sure the fixation was about how feeble Job is compared to God.
Post Note: I think the tone and content of these verses are quite consistent with the verses about snow and hail in Job. The writer has a classic “Ancient Near East” perspective on weather and the anatomy of the Earth and the sky above it. So you have a choice: is it literally intended (and thus, as some visitors here would say, “A Lie!” - - or is the writer using literal terminology … just like those words would mean all throughout the Bible … but knowing that no one would hold to the literal meaning once they learned more about the Cosmos?..
Come… let us be reasonable. Pax Vobiscum.
We all may be used to thinking of the south wind as mild, but a better interpretation follows if you recall what Jon said upthread:
I’d probably be sweltering in my clothes at the prospect, too!
I’m not sure which way you are pointing your insight. I can heartily agree with your comment; there was nothing in my discussion that I intended to suggest that I think the South Wind was mild. I’ll put some quote marks around the word “relatively” to make it more clear.
If anything, the comment is pointing out that “if you think the South Wind is bad … well how about this?”. Clearly the picture of a metal worker spreading “liquid metal” is intended to be shown as much worse than even the South Wind.
Let me add one more thought that helps make the comparison: the verse about Job sweating in a wind would be completely insensible if spreading the bronze of the firmament wasn’t intended to be convincing about the heat of that job.
In my posting above, I talk about spreading bronze like it was a semi-pliable sheet. But I confess, I believe I got it wrong!
Before an armorer can apply metal plate they have to make the bronze first … and this requires reducing the ore to a Molten state. Then they work the metal with a hammer. It seems more pertinent that the “hot phase” of creating the firmament would be making the huge volumes of molten metal that could then be worked into the heavenly structure.
Hebrew word for “molten” Strong’s Hebrew H3332:
Yaw-tsak’; a primitive root; properly,
to pour out (transitive or intransitive);
by implication, to melt or cast as metal; by extension, to place firmly, to stiffen or grow hard [from a molten state]
So while the metal is certainly “strong” … it is not because it was always “cold & hard” … but because it is like all metals that must first be melted down before becoming a finished work!
I have made the appropriate edits to my post above.
George - so first of all, thank you for the detailed analysis and discussion! I certainly weigh the ideas I read and enjoy trying to engage the topic well.
Ouch! Dude! Let’s not go there. Jon gave you a list, and you’re also disrespecting Francis Schaeffer and John Collins, both of whom thought/thinks that overall the Bible does not imply the vault view.
So maybe I could gently push back and suggest maybe you need to get a wider view. “Be reasonable” too often means “see it like I do.” But I don’t (at this time) see it like you do! And I’m in really good company. I’m just trying to explain myself and I am here to learn other peoples’ perspectives. If you convince me, great! But let’s keep the dialogue going (and I need more time!).
And George, I think Jay’s post and picture is a perfectly reasonable approach to the Job passage that does not require a vault.
Jon gave me a list ? Re
Jon and I frequently don’t get on the same page or even the same book.
Recently? Or anciently?
As far as my differing from the VIP’s of BioLogos, it’s been my experience that the thing we always end up parting ways about is the issue of what Kind of inspiration was behind the Bible.
When I read about Jonah, or Samson with the magical hair, or Balaam with the talking donkey … I don’t think any of this material is true. But I do think the writers thought it was true… or sometimes not the writer, but the latter-day editors.
But on the official BioLogos side … they hew to the idea that Everything is True … in one form or another. Naturally, I can’t abide by that view. But I think it should show you that the I.D. folks are pretty unfair with BioLogos when the leadership has this kind of devotion to what I think are patently silly ideas.
So, to me, it’s easy to think the writers would write about the firmament being firm … because that’s what they believed… not because it was true. Sure… God inspires people… but does that mean every thought that comes into an ancient man’s head is right?
Jesus talked about the mustard seed… and that sentence was wrong. I don’t need any fancy thinking about that. Jesus was divine … but in human form, do you really think he had access to all the mysteries of the Universe? Do you think Jesus could have performed brain surgery? Or know how to drive a stick shift Mazda ? I sure don’t. But I’m sure there are plenty of fine folks who think he could do all these things and more … even though his divine essence was locked up in a pretty confining mortal body.
Disputing the firmament scenario is like disputing Samson’s hair. I can hear you now … “But, George, why couldn’t Samson have had really magical hair?” Because it’s a borrowing from the pagan world around them… the hair was a symbol of solar worship … and when he was blind… it was like the sun being eclipsed… the solar god no longer had his power.
The miracle was that he regained his power … even while blind. But was he a real person?
Come on now, big feller, quit ribbing me … and let’s get down to business with the one (maybe two) I.D. fellow worth talking about …
Pax Vobiscum!
No gain without pain, Richard! 
Poythress’s good, in particular, on exposing our modern metaphysical presuppositions when coming to ancient texts.
29 pages … Francesca Rothberg’s book on Babylonian science without a concept of nature is 300 pages. Horowitz on Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography is 424 pages, but since that seems to come in at £1300 on Amazon I confess to reading only Google extracts and several articles based on it (and it’s the standard work on that subject, I think, for Assyriologists themselves).
But making sense even of the biblical text requires reading it in depth and breadth with a lexicon and concordance at your side. Coming to it with an assumed cosmological model and simply fitting the text to it is not a good approach, though it has the virtue of not being taxing.
For example, I don’t accept your assumption that we’re all talking about a “vault” because there is simply no mention of such anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, nor even an ancient Hebrew word for it. That’s not surprising in a way as the dome had not even been invented when Genesis was written, so they’d have had to think up the architectural idea before applying it to the sky. In NIV, “vault” is just a translator’s gloss based on the assumption that there must be a solid vault to keep the assumed cosmic ocean out. And there must be such an ocean, or else why would you need a solid vault?
Lynn
I don’t mind being contradicted when I’ve done the reading. The truth is out there, for those willing to do the legwork and see how ill-founded the popular assumptions are. But the elephant in the room, as that article by Poythress points out, is the (basically scientistic) idea that the ancients (a) even cared to have a consistent view of the shape and structure of the world as a whole and (b) saw it in material terms. Neither is really tenable, though it’s hard for us moderns to believe.
For example, the various Babylonian myths were inconsistent with each other, but as Horowitz explains, the most developed view was of seven flat heavens, of various materials, suspended on ropes, the uppermost of which was the home of Anu. The interesting thing is that the level below them - what we would call the air - was not even named, probably as it was considered immaterial (as, in all probability, were the heavens themselves, being divine, and “air” was first identified as a material substance only by the Greeks). The idea of lateral boundaries to those flat layers, or to the world, wasn’t even mentioned.
You’ll notice there’s no cosmic ocean. Where that does appear in Babylonian thought, as on the highly stylized “Babylonian world map”, it’s an ordinary flat ocean surrounding the land and extending to who knows where (on the map it has an outer bank). The same flat ocean is evident from a close reading of Enuma Elish - in which Tiamat is a primal goddess representing the salt water, and so is usually enlisted nowadays in that capacity as the cosmic ocean. But half of her body was later used to make the earth, and the other half to make the sky (ie the moderns’ “solid firmament”), so how does that work? Only by realising it’s nothing to do with material explanations at all, and doesn’t have any conceptual connection with the biblical account, apart from the phenomenological truths of the sky obviously being “up”, and the ground “down”.
The Egyptians had various cosmologies, but the famous one is those tomb-pictures of the sky-goddess Nut arched over the earth. Though she is portrayed as a human goddess representing an immaterial divinity, even on this forum I’ve been told she is slam-dunk evidence for a solid firmament holding out a cosmic ocean. But the very same pictures show her being held up by the air god, and the god of eternity, so what solid materials are they made of? Self-evidently the Egyptians weren’t doing “old material science” at all, but seeing the world as entirely divine and immaterial.
Those Egyptian pictures are the only ancient pictures that might be fitted into the “solid vault” cosmology. Though I’ve often been told that Mesopotamian art is full of them, it’s a complete myth. There isn’t a single one (and that’s a direct challenge to anyone to find one that predates the 19th century AD!).
The brief historical argument for the development of the solid sky (not the other) is that the 3rd century BCE Septuagint translators, well into the late Greek cosmology of a spherical earth surrounded by crystal layers, translated raqia as “stereoma” (solid foundation - not “vault”!), from which it spread to the Latin vulgate as “firmament”.
The concept of a “vault” arises directly from Peter Jensen’s mistranslation of a word in Enuma elish in the nineteenth century as “heavenly vault” (rather than simply “heavens”), and that mistranslation seems to have spread all round the ancient near east, by some kind of time travel, to become the basis of their cosmology!
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@Jon_Garvey, this last posting may be the most egregious mis-direction of a discussion I’ve ever seen you inflict on a BioLogos audience. Are you intentionally steering the discussion away from the evidence? While it is easy for a modern audience to perseverate on the terminology of a “dome” - - that’s not really the question, right?
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The use of a word or picture for “dome” is not essential to the “Firmament is Firm” world view.
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Even with that caveat, however, it is indisputable that Egyptian art repeatedly presented a goddess arching her essential being over the whole, flat, Earth.
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Artistic renderings of the “ancient cosmos” beyond the Egyptian sphere of influence are obviously not as fulsome, but written accounts are still to be found that do the job! Outside of the plethora of Egyptian representations, we can still extract a Babylonian world view from their cuneiform writings consistent with a Firm Firmament (presented by Gary David Thompson, link at bottom):
[Quoted Text]
- - where instead of the use of a metal working theme in the Old Testament, we find the use of solid exotic stone as the composition of the firmament (which is also found in the Old Testament!
Below is a clear discussion of this alternate world view:
"The existing accounts of Mesopotamian cosmology are rather limited. Unfortunately they are also conflicting. (The 2 key tablets are KAR 307 and AO 8196.) For a detailed discussion of Mesopotamian cosmology, including the Babylonian world map, see Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography by Wayne Horowitz (1998). "
“Babylonian cosmology distinguished 3 heavens. The lower two only were considered to be visible to humankind: the heaven of Enlil, where the main god Marduk/Bel had his particular dwelling, and the heaven of Ea, or lower sky on which the movements of the stars and planets could be observed.”
“The mystical religious text KAR 307 states that the sky (the lowest of the 3 heavens) is made of jasper (modern jasper is generally opaque but in ancient descriptions jasper is often described as translucent), the middle heaven above the sky is made of saggilmud-stone (a variety of the blue lapis-lazuli), and the upper heavens (the heaven of Anu) are made of luludānītu-stone.”
[As we can all see - - and marvel over - - the Babylonians may not have verbally presented a “dome”, they certainly presented a solid physical barrier that made up the sky – a “firm” firmament. And sometimes they presented more than one existing all at the same time!]
" Jasper from Persia was sky blue. Generally, the Mesopotamian accounts of the structure of the universe remained constant throughout the approximate 2500 years from the earliest evidence to the end of cuneiform writing."
“Some change in Mesopotamian conceptions of the universe did occur as Mesopotamian astronomy improved. No text deals with the bounds of the physical universe or what might exist beyond the described structure/limits of the universe.”
“It was believed that the floor of the Middle Heaven could be seen through the floor of the Lower Heaven. It was also believed that nothing existing above the blue saggilmud-stone floor could be seen (i.e., the residences of the gods/goddesses and the Upper Heaven).”"
[End of Quotes]
So enough of the red herring searches for “textual domes” and or “artistic domes.” The issue is the Firmament: Firm or Not Firm.
http://members.westnet.com.au/gary-david-thompson/page11-11.html
There are a few issues, actually, raised by your own post.
The first is that your neatly sidestepping the question of a “vault” doesn’t answer the fact that at least one poster on this thread treats the vault as the one indisputable fact, and that it’s all over the modern literature on this subject. It poses significant architectural and historical problems - why would the ANE folk perceive the sky to be supported by a kind of structure they couldn’t get to work at a large scale? Only the Romans mastered the art of building monumental domes in stone (and concrete).
The second is that your neatly sidestepping the claim that many images of such a vaulted earth exist in ANE literature doesn’t alter the fact that the claim has been made, and is false. And an Egyptian goddess arched over the earth, one must repeat, is not a Sumerian translucent stone vault showing the blue of water above, but still a goddess (supported by two other gods, and with a bunch of other deities in attendance). I have yet to meet a solid goddess of any sort, but there’s no reason to suppose Nut to be more solid (or even more dome-shaped and watertight) than Shu the air god or Heh the god of eternity holding her up.
The conflict between the Mesopotamian cosmologies (Horowitz mentions versions with seven or more heavens, and hence my figures) doesn’t disguise the fact that in your quote, there are three, not one, levels and that the uppermost is the dwelling of Anu, not an ocean.
You miss the information that Horowitz describes these heavens as flat and circular, like hoops, supported on ropes, and not as a single translucent vault under water.
You miss his mention of the varying traditions that the heavens are either made of various stones, or of some watery origin (the word for heaven is related to that for rain - an obviously phenomenological linkage, since rain comes from the heavens), nor that in any case these descriptions are made in a religious and mythological context, not a scientific materialist one. I mentioned above the way that Tiamat, basically the “salt water” opposed to Apsu, the “sweet water”, who is nowadays designated as the “Mesopotamian cosmic ocean”, actually cannot be conceived in that simplistic way from the literature itself, but you’ve not answered that.
You miss the fact that even three layers of stone (let alone seven or more) would block out any view of the supposed cosmic ocean and make generating rainfall a major plumbing problem for the gods - which is why the Mesopotamian myths name the opaque blue lapis lazuli as the visible layer, presumably showing up in sunlight.
You miss the fact that none of this corresponds to anything in the biblical accounts (and that Lambert, Horowitz and those like him recognise the lack of a consistent ANE cosmology on which the Bible draws), with the possible exception of lapiz lazuli, which is the appearance of the floor of the place where the elders of Israel eat a ritual meal before the Lord on Mount Sinai - without, it seems, either going through a trapdoor or getting drowned in a cosmic ocean. Maybe it was a visionary meal - but in that case, the lapis lazuli is visionary too, and your solid raqia may be no more substantial.
I’ll stop here with a couple of quotes from your own linked source, which perhaps you were too much in a hurry to read:
The assyriologist Wilfred Lambert (1926-2011) and Wayne Horowitz have pointed out there is no direct evidence that the ancient Mesopotamians thought the visible heavens comprised a (solid) dome. They had no clear word for sphere or dome. The ancient Babylonians viewed the cosmos as a series of flat, superimposed layers of the same size separated by space, held together by ropes (cosmic bonds).
Basically, they had 6 superimposed levels of the universe, 3 heavens and 3 earths (but some texts indicate slightly greater detail. The vertical levels of the (generalised) Mesopotamian (Sumero-Akkadian) universe are indicated as:
Region Above the Heaven of Anu (See: The Etana Epic, Section B 30-43) (Open space [not water] implied by The Etana Epic) [and then your layers].
Neither the Babylonian world map nor the Egyptian world map [ie the picture of Nut] have a geographical meaning. They both have only a religious or mythological meaning.
In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology there was a cosmic realm called Apsu (the Abyssal (subterranean waters) comprising watery depths beneath the earth. The Apsu was located directly beneath the earth’s surface. The Apsu contained the freshwater ocean and provided the source of water for all the springs, wells, streams, rivers, and lakes of the world. The Persian Gulf, which lay to the south of Sumer, was believed to be a source of an outflow of the Apsu… There are reasons for supposing the Apsu was a cosmic subterranean lake that maintained a constant level of water. No figure is mentioned for the depth of the Apsu beneath the earth’s surface (or the actual depth of the Apsu itself). One text indicates the Apsu had borders and it was possible to travel from the underworld to the the higher regions by passing outside the borders of the Apsu.
As I said… I can understand why a modern audience would perseverate or fixate on the word dome. And to the extent that “vaulted” is interpreted as “dome-like”, this same assessment applies to the word vault as well.
However, I suggest that “vault” is a much loser term, Jon.
Here is an architectural definition:
“Definition: Vault = an arched form extruded into the third dimension used to provide a space with a ceiling or roof. For the sake of argument, however, this article refers to vaulted ceilings as any ceiling that is higher than the standard 8’-10’ ceiling height (arched aspect not necessary).Sep 17, 2015
Vaulted Ceilings 101: History, Pros & Cons, and Inspirational Examples”
As you can see, the architectural sense of the word extends not only to merely “arched” ceilings… but any “high” ceiling!
This more expansive sense of the word is not how many of us prefer to use the word, and certainly people involved in the firmament discussion want to insist that “vault” equals “dome”.
Obviously, this isn’t so. Just look at the image below!
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What are you going on about?
I clearly provided textual support for the idea that the Babylonians (and probably even the Sumerians) believed in a rigid construction for a layer of the sky… in some cases, multiple layers of rigid construction.
You said there wasn’t a dome anywhere in the Mesopotamian literature. Right. Absolutely right!
But a “dome” is not really the point. And once you accept that “vault” can refer to a non-dome and even a non-arch architecture … you can see that “vault” is not an adequate synonym for “dome”.
Pax Vobiscum
I think you are right that a heavenly ocean is not uniformly present in even the broadest survey of the ANE literature.
I believe the heavenly ocean is either:
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implicit to the Egyptian renderings; and/or
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if not a legitimate part of Egyptian metaphysics, then an innovation of the Hebrew priests. I can safely offer (2) as an alternative because there is plenty of warrant in the Bible for rain coming from the upper ocean.
But, again, this has nothing to do with the issue of the Firmament being a solid (very solid) layer (or two or three) of the sky.
And ultimately, that’s the complaint … for any God who makes his home in “the heavens” should know what is really up there! … not storehouses of snow and hail … just waiting to be used …
I think now you are arguing just to argue.
I can’t invest too much into the concept of “a religious meaning, but not a geographical meaning”… because the writer doesn’t explain how he means this distinction!
Considering that “Religion” was very very real to the ANE populations … are you saying that it is okay to dismiss discussions of the firmament as “merely religious”? Or can we use the other part of the writer’s assessment: “they are merely mythological” !!!
If so, I’m all for it.
Let’s tell the Evangelicals that the Firmament is no “geographical” … it’s “merely mythological”.
That should make them quite happy.
Now all you need to do is provide citations (and before you quote the flood narrative, check out all the other instances of doors opening in heaven, and see how often they refer to rain ie, never).
([quote=“gbrooks9, post:138, topic:35661”]
I can’t invest too much into the concept of “a religious meaning, but not a geographical meaning”… because the writer doesn’t explain how he means this distinction!
[/quote]
The very description in the page gives it away: “mappa mundi”. I noticed the similarity in form and function between the Babylonian map and the mediaeval mappae mundi some years ago. It’s instructive, and a bit of reading (even of the web-page you cite but disparage) will show just what the difference is between religious and mythgological meanings and geographical ones.
No, let’s tell it like it actually is Genesis - it’s merely phenomenological, though it functions in a narrative with a religious purpose (including, as I agree with John Walton, Greg Beale and Richard Middleton, functioning as a divider in a universe conceived as a cosmic temple). That way we find we can actually _learn _ from the wordlview of the Bible, rather than dumping our scientistic materialist assumptions on it, finding it wanting scientifically, and dismissing it.
Ah! So when Jensen described heaven as “vaulted” in his mistranslation of Enuma elish, he actually only meant it was higher than 10’" Ahead of his time in DIY. Someone needs to amend all those “ANE cosmology” pictures, then, to show a flat stone (but transparent) firmament hanging on ropes from the cosmic ocean to stop it inundating the earth.
Better idea - just lose the idée fixé of a boundless cosmic ocean altogether. It’s entirely read into the texts anyway, whether Mesopotamian, Egyptian or Hebrew. Once it’s gone, your brass/crystal/stone/lapis lazuli/arched/flat firmament will soon disappear too, and you’ll be left looking at a clear blue sky called shemayim.
$350 used on Amazon in the US. But isn’t that what libraries (and interlibrary loan) are for?
Quite right Steve - it’s partly a question of reading list priorities. And partly a question that Cambridge University Library, where I have reading rights, is an entire day’s journey away from my rural retreat.