I have pondered how to engage with your response, cuz you seem very upset that someone could take a concordist position in any form. I wondered if you come out of a Young Earth background, and you find any reference to “science and the Bible” distasteful as a result.
That assertion is way too strong. If you have been told “In the beginning” is not allowed, you need to talk to some more people. I find that the translation “when God began” is only used by people who are determined that there is not and cannot be any concordism, and they can’t allow 1:1 to refer to the Big Bang. That seems to me to be translation by eisegesis. People also like to quote the Greek Old Testament when it serves their purpose for “firmament” but ignore the clear Greek “In the beginning” for G1:1. Lastly, you’d also need to explain to the apostle John that the first verse of his gospel was based on an unfortunate misunderstanding. Then explain to Peter, and several other Bible authors.
I’m being a bit firm, cuz your statement is too authoritative.
Honestly, it’s not that I “try to figure out.” It kinda jumps off the page at me starting at verse 1. It has for a long time.
I find it odd that G1 has to be either accurate, 21st century science or a totally ancient, mythological world view. Why the dichotomy, and why those two goal posts? By contrast, it’s such a stark polemic against the pantheism and polytheism of that time that it doesn’t even use the word for the sun and moon cuz those are the names of the sun god and moon god. It’s like, “Listen up! Stop worshipping these things! The One and Only God made it all. Worship him, not what he created.” That’s hardly just “the thought forms of that day.” G1 was never a popular or common view of God and nature. Yet it is from that separation that science even finds meaning, and it started here.
And it’s obvious in G2 that order is not always primary to the purpose of the text. When people criticize G1 from G2, or complain about the order of either, it’s from a perspective that the text does not share.
So I guess I don’t accept those two goal posts. Compared to other ANE mythology, it is unique. And I’m not surprised to find bread crumbs in there that dropped off God’s table and into the text from how it actually happened.
Lastly, most of Genesis is history, and it seems out of character to suggest it starts with three chapters with zero history. Many people attempt to concord G1 simply because it seems to invite that. Why not join in the fun?
So let me ask you, 1) Why must the text either completely conform to 21st century science standards or contain zero truths that we might recognize from science? And 2) Why so much energy against soft concordism?
I for one am happy to set aside Greek and Latin, and let the Hebrew text speak. I am aware through posts by you and @Jon_Garvey that “hard dome” is far from a certain translation of the Hebrew raqi’a. At the same time, in Genesis 7:11 we have a window (or some kind of aperture)that lets enormous amounts of water flow through from heaven to earth in a one-time event. Thus Genesis 7:11 seems to suggest that the raqi’a, whatever shape it had, was solid.
Actually, one of the big problems in Biblical hermeneutics is that the NT authors generally quoted from the Septuagint, which resulted in their adopting all of the mistakes of the Greek translation from Hebrew. It’s not a problem that I’m going to try to solve in this thread. I am content to let the Hebrew text speak for itself and the Greek NT speak for itself, even if they seem to strike dissonant notes at times. A skilled composer can use dissonance to write beautiful music.
I agree wholeheartedly. Great point.
Note that this has nothing to do with concordism vs. the framework approach, but rather is a philosophy of science that emerges from the G1 account regardless of the hermeneutic.
I agree that this is not the perspective of the text. And it is precisely for this reason that I am unconvinced by concordism. Science as we know it today does care very much about the order of events. And once we start talking about the Big Bang and the Cambrian era, we are talking about modern science. Which is not the perspective of the text.
As a happy point of clarification - the word that was challenged (and probably for good reason) was the word “dome”. I would agree that “dome” is by far too ambitious. And “vault” is only a little better.
The firmament may well have been characterized as a form of “flooring” … and thus flat. Above the firmament was a heavenly ocean of water (this is quite explicitly described in Genesis 1). But what dimension of space there might have been above the heavenly ocean … I’ve never seen any compelling treatment on the matter.
The Context of the Firmament is Confirmed by the Tower of Babylon
But the real question is … was the firmament infinitely high? Apparently not! It was the perception that the sky/firmament could only be “so high” that informs the entire context of the story of Babylon. Any modern child laughs when told that there was an ambition, and even a risk, that someone could attain the heavens by means of any tower at all. Indeed, the Bible reveals that the builders wanted to touch the firmament itself!
Without such an idea, the story of the tower is foolish even to a well informed child.
I too am unconvinced by concordism of the Day Age type. to me it misses the function of the text as much as does trying to pin “ancient science” on it does.
But I find it hard to see why the “windows” (literally “lattices”) of heaven in Gen 7 are definitely literal, when all the several other instances of doors or windows in heaven in Scripture, through which emerge drought and burning, or corn, or other blessings or curses, and sometimes angels, are equally definitely figurative. If corn from the doors of heaven does not entail a solid heaven and literal granaries above (with watertight masonry?), then surely neither does Gen 7 entail a solid heaven with an ocean above.
The Babylonians had a metaphor for rain as coming from the "teats " or “breasts” of heaven, which at least conjures up (if there are enough of them!) a plausible explanation for thin rain, rather than the Niagara falls that doors into a cosmic ocean would deliver. But it was a metaphor - one text poetically parallels those texts with rainclouds, just as some Scripture texts parallel “shamayim” - the proper name of the raqia - with clouds… though I suppose the clouds might be a metaphor for breasts or domes, rather than the reverse.
Incidentally the Mesopotamian Flood stories don’t have either floodgates or a cosmic ocean - instead Adad the storm god works from a black cloud and a south wind that arises at the horizon and delivers rain… it seems the Sumerians and Babylonians failed to study the ANE cosmology correctly!
But it appears that even pulling the plug out of a cosmic ocean was insufficient for the task in Genesis, because it also (unlike Atrahasis or Gilgamesh) speaks of the springs of water from underground contributing to the Flood by being “cleft”, as a city is broken by a battering ram. The picture is of dams being smashed with hammers - but is that necessarily what the author understood literally?
One way or another, @Jon_Garvey, the Sumerians are a significant source of the world view. The Sumerians, even the Greeks, believed that deep within the Earth was the ultimate source of all “sweet water” (fresh water), located in what some cultures called the Apsu or the Abzu.
The island of Bahrain was identified as an Eden, not so much because of its perfect environs, but because it was a mound of Earth, rising above a salt water sea, that had a miraculous source of fresh spring water - - surely the humble island had a direct connection to the destination of most human souls - - the Underworld.
In your post above, you write this:
You seem to think that if an ANE culture saw more than one source for water, they must have been “crazy” or “allegorical”. I see no such false dilemma. There was the Abzu and there were rain clouds and - for some it would seem - there was a heavenly ocean providing the color of the sky as well as a source for rain if the culture was not convinced that clouds were enough to do the job.
You also write:
" But it was a metaphor - one text poetically parallels those texts with rainclouds, just as some Scripture texts parallel “shamayim” - the proper name of the raqia - with clouds… though I suppose the clouds might be a metaphor for breasts or domes, rather than the reverse."
How convenient. Everything’s a metaphor, except the idea that God made all the Earth and all Earth’s life in six days.
The raqia (firmament) is a component of the “shamayim”, not a technical equivalent.
Why is that not a metaphor, other than to YECs, of which I’m not one? The teats and the heavens are seen to be metaphors because they’re used in parallel with a straightforwrad phenomenon, ie clouds. Poetic parallelism is the fundamental component of Hebrew poetry: repetition in new words is the rule, describing two different things the exception.
Still, maybe the cosmology is developing in gratuitous complexity as we speak, for a number of people seem to have realised that rain does come from clouds in the Bible, so that God’s entire purpose of heaving up a massive cosmic ocean in Gen 1 was in order to be able to produce a 1-off Flood in ch7, the water cycle and underground waters being insufficient. The Babylonians needed no such extra water source (and did not describe one), so the Hebrews were inventing new science - a shame they got it wrong when they could have asked an Akkadian-speaker.
No, you’re flat wrong, in terms of the Genesis creation story. The raqia is created, set in place, and given the name “shamayim”, just as the darkness is christened “night”, the created light “day”, the dry land “eretz” and the deep, “seas”. All the separated realms are first given a descriptive term, then a name, and “shamayim” is the raqia’s name.
That makes “the heavens” on first pass what the raqia is, as a straight synonym: ie that how God made the heavens was to make a raqia and name it functionally as “the heavens”.
However, it is true that nearly all these terms are used somewhat flexibly, not least because you have to call the materials being manipulated something before you describe their naming. But there is a principle as to what is included as, say, “heavens”. If the “lower atmosphere” is included in the “shamayim”, then it should be part of the raqia that is doing its stated job of separating the waters (not supporting the upper ones), at least in suitable contexts. And both in Hebrew and cuneiform texts, the space above the earth is sometimes counted as “heavens” and sometimes not, according to context.
The confounding issue is the “highest heaven” in which God sets his presence.Those who see Gen 1.1 as an initial creation have no problem - the space above the surface of the tehom in v2 is the primordial heavens, which become the “highest heavens” once the raqia is created. If v1 is taken as a summary, as more scholars contend, then one has to conclude that the highest heaven, like the deep and the formless earth, is just assumed as being in existence without being specifically created.
But it’s above the upper waters even in those dreadful diagrams with God’s dwelling balanced precariously on top of a dome of water… making a profound conceptual diffficulty for the writer of Genesis (if he believed in the heavenly ocean) when he described Jacob seeing a ladder set up from earth to the highest heaven, somehow including an unmentioned tunnel through the cosmic ocean he described earlier… another set of complications for the heavenly-ocean cosmology to negotiate every time God or an angel visits earth, apart from the need for air-locks and breathing gear if not using such a staircase…
You say that I’m flat wrong … and then you follow-up by pointing out that the “empty air” is also part of the Heavens… and yet, I have never once heard any Bible scholar suggest that the open air is either able to keep an ocean in the sky from being separate from the Earth, nor that empty air = water.
It is exactly this shifting around in terminology that allows us to see that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the meaning of Raqia and the meaning of Sky.
When you refer to cuneiform texts, you are eager to repeat the word “Heavens” … but this English word is literally translated in Hebrew and in Sumerian texts as “sky” - - and the only time I know of when “sky” is plural is when the topic of levels of sky is being discussed, if even then. “Highest Heavens” is best understood as “Highest Sky”.
“Heaven” is the English word that has come to mean “that part of the sky where God (Gods) dwell”, amplified by the idea that it is also where the souls of the Righteous (with or without bodies, Paul cannot say) join God.
This whole topic has been corrupted by the metaphysical innovation introduced to the West by the Persian Zoroastrian priests (with a special energy in the spread of these ideas after Alexander took over the Persian empire, and the Hellenistic combination of global span, creative philosophical investigations, and a general decline in royal patronage to the Magi caste when the Persian emperor was removed).
Baal was a sky god, but even he spent some time in EL’s realm “in the Mountain of EL” (as opposed to on the mountain). Enki/Ea, Lord of the Earth, dwelled in the Underworld, along with Nergal. Tammuz dwelled in the underworld. And so forth. While deities existed in the sky - - this seems to be on a “need to be there” basis.
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And then the Persians conquered most of the known world!
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In your additional discussion, are you saying that you think the Bible specifically describes what is above the ocean in the sky? I don’t recall any. But after the period of the Old Testament closes, Jewish writers start developing all sorts of ideas (frequently associated with the traditions of Enoch).
As I have said earlier, Jon, I will studiously avoid the odious word of “dome”. Don’t need a dome. But we do need a non-porous Firmament if we are going to store an ocean in the sky. That is inescapable, and the firmness of the firmament is inescapable as well.
I wonder to what extent it is even accurate to speak of the ancient Hebrew cosmology? Look at how much “modern” cosmology has changed in just 500 years! Perhaps Hebrew views did not change quite as quickly, but I would be very surprised if their cosmology did not change at all during the Biblical period.
Why is this important? Well, various ones of us have been quoting from various books of the Jewish Scriptures and then saying to one another, “Your view based on Malachi and Genesis 2 is wrong, because look at what Genesis 1 and Genesis 7 say!” Or vice versa. Or something…it’s easy to lose track, frankly. The point is this: perhaps we are using different sources to arrive at different conclusions because the sources differ among themselves.
We in this thread have been portraying the Bible as one book with one author, which is only true from the divine side. From the human side, the Bible is many books with many authors, written at many places and times in history.
Let me start by humbly apologizing for coming across arrogant. In the spirit of humility, I should have stated that, “in my opinion” G1 can’t be accorded. Two, I should have explained further that many OT scholars and people whose opinions I respect here and elsewhere think that 1:1 should be translated as something like (Young’s Literal Translation), “In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth”. “Preparing” can also mean, “forming”, and that translation alludes to earth and heavens already present. I don’t think that those who hold to that are forcing that in, it’s that they don’t feel the need to force it say anything. I realize to you that the NIV version connotes a strong sense of concordance. But remember, the ancients in that day didn’t have a concept of an earth like we do, it should say, “land”. And, “heavens” was to them what was anything above the sky, including God’s thrown, not a universe as we think of it now. But even if it did translate to, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, IMO that doesn’t lock one into assuming that G1 was intended to be historically scientifically valid.
Firmamentum is Latin, not Greek
G1 doesn’t have to be, “either” theological or historical, you’re right - it could have been both. God can communicate to us whatever He likes, it’s not up to us to tell Him what the scriptures are supposed to say. It’s just that any honest reading of it, IMO, rules our historical.[quote=“Marty, post:237, topic:35661”]
Stop worshipping these things! The One and Only God made it all. Worship him, not what he created." That’s hardly just “the thought forms of that day.”
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I’ve written plenty of times here and in my paper that G1 stands out in it’s theology, so I’m in complete agreement with you here.
I’m not sure that you mean by this. The first sentence I agree with, because the intent of G2, IMO, is not historical at all. But it’s clearly in contradiction to G1, so that makes it hard to make the case that G1 is historical when it doesn’t agree with the only other creation story in the bible.
But the real issue here is that, correct me if I’m wrong, you seem to hold to inerrancy, and most people who do insist that G1 has to have some, “real science” in it because, “God would never teach lies”. As well, most inerrantists assume that G2 is an expansion of Day 6 of G1, when, not only do the contradictions rule that out, and there’s lots of reasons IMO that it isn’t, but I don’t think that assumption is warranted in the first place. I believe they are 2 separate Hebrew creation accounts from different authors, and were not meant to correlate to each other. They each have their own strong, but distinct message.[quote=“Marty, post:237, topic:35661”]
Lastly, most of Genesis is history, and it seems out of character to suggest it starts with three chapters with zero history. Many people attempt to concord G1 simply because it seems to invite that. Why not join in the fun?
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If fact, I did join the fun, for most of my Christian life, even after accepting evolution! But not only did I not believe my own theories most of the time, when I started getting into apologetics and looked at the evidence more closely, I came to the conclusion that it just doesn’t work, no matter how hard we may try.
And I wouldn’t say, “history”, at least not the way you mean it. It might be hard for some to accept, but there is legend building in the bible. I would describe G1-11 as a series of, “traditions”. I’m actually open to some historical elements in the flood account.
I had held to a soft concordism for a long time. But when I took an honest look at the text, like I’ve said, the sun 3 days after daylight and a sky holding up an ocean doesn’t allow it There’s was only so far that, “soft” could take me. That should answer your first question as well.
@Jon_Garvey, Perhaps you shouldn’t call it a Vault … and stick with the Firmament?
The idea of having an ocean above the sky seems peculiar to the Hebrew priesthood… other than what appears to be an Egyptian view that boats buried with their pharaohs would somehow be useful - - but I have yet to find anything definitive that the Egyptians didn’t simply feel that the Pharaoh would need a boat to travel the Nile !
There are verses mentioning windows of heaven, and 3 of them quite explicitly link the windows to water and rain:
Gen 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Gen 8:2
The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
Mal 3:10
Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Below is a catalog of the different translations of the firmament clause:
KJV
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
NKJV
Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
NLT
Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.”
And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens.
NIV
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”
So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so.
ESV
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.
HCSB
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.”
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so.
NASB
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
NET
God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water.
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. It was so.
RSV
And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.
ASV
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
YLT
And God saith, ‘Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and let it be separating between waters and waters.’
And God maketh the expanse, and it separateth between the waters which are under the expanse, and the waters which are above the expanse: and it is so.
DBY
And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it be a division between waters and waters.
And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters that are under the expanse and the waters that are above the expanse; and it was so.
WEB
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament; and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
HNV
God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so.
VUL
Dixit quoque Deus fiat firmamentum in medio aquarum et dividat aquas ab aquis
Et fecit Deus firmamentum divisitque aquas quae erant sub firmamento ab his quae erant super firmamentum et factum est ita
I’m with you on that, actually. From the start (ie years before this thread) I’ve been objecting to the Enns/Seely practice of collating disparate texts into a single pseudo-scientific cosmology, which Peter Enns even plants on to Paul’s understanding, despite his being an educated Jew in the Hellenic diaspora.
And so if Job uses the poetic metaphor of “pillars”, they must be the mountains the Hebrews believed to surround the world and hold up the solid vaulted firmament that keeps out the infinite ocean… etc.
The fact is that the disparate pieces of evidence are then made to reinforce each other in that way (why would you have pillars without a roof? Why would you have floodgates without an ocean to keep out (or in that case, why would windows into an ocean not be called floodgates, despite the lack of linguistic support!) - especially since the whole world believed there was such an ocean (even though they didn’t).
At the same time, in the same way that Horowitz says the basic Mesopotamian cosmic geography remained similar throughout 2,500 years, it’s likely that unless some theological or scientific revolution occurred, the broad worldview in Israel would be similar. The context must decide whether one is making just comparisons, as in the case of Malachi, on which I’ll reply to George below…
I’m glad you raised Malachi, since he serves my point about “floodgates” in heaven well. Here’s what I wrote elsewhere:
Malachi 3.10 is part of God’s argument against Judah that the spiritual blessing of his presence is withheld because they are, in various ways, unfaithful. He asks them to test him by bringing in the full tithes, when he will throw open the windows of heaven (or, if you insist on the NIV Septuagint Fest, “floodgates”!) and “pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” You will note with interest that it does not say “let in so much water that you all drown”, which would be the inevitable result of throwing open floodgates in a solid firmament with a cosmic ocean above. But we needn’t fear that to be the correct translation, because God goes on to specify the blessing – prevention of pests in the crops, prevention of vines dropping their fruit, and the esteem of the nations at such a delightful land.
There are, I suppose, some scholars who will say the Hebrews truly believed the infinitely malleable cosmic ocean contained special reservoirs of pesticides and international reputation.
So, am I to conclude, that the only reason you reject the idea that the Bible explicitly presents to the reader the notion of a heavenly ocean is - - well - - that such would be physically unrealistic? <. .<. . really?
Well, no kidding! Nevertheless, the Bible presents such an ocean . . .no matter the consequences of natural philosophy!
It presents no such ocean at all, whatsoever, anywhere, anyhow. You’ve simply listed umpteen versions of Gen 1.6 to prove that mayim is translated “waters”, which was never in doubt. Your task was to prove that mayim means “ocean”, which it doesn’t. It means simply “water”, or “waters”, being a plural noun.
Your Malachi quote neatly disproved a belief in the cosmic ocean by opening up doors in heaven for everything apart from water, so you need to ask the Hebrews why they thought it was unrealistic, not me.
In Job 26.8 “he wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight”. Similar meanings are in Judges 5.4, 2 Sam 22.12, Job 5.10, 36.27, Ps 77.17, Jer 10.13 (and 51.6). Common parlance. No ocean.
In Judges 6.38 “the waters” even refers to what Gideon could squeeze from a dewy fleece: the quantity implied by mayim depends, then, entirely on what is being described. In Genesis the obvious reason for creating upper waters is to provide rain, the one essential life-giving element not otherwise mentioned in the account, as contrasted to the salt ocean of lower waters that became seas full of fish.
Rationally, the amount of water needed for rain at any one time is the amount contained in the clouds, which I doubt any Hebrew would venture to estimate. They did, however, note that the heavens were constantly replenished by clouds “rising from the ends of the earth” or “from the sea”, or water drops being “drawn up and distilled as rain”, which would fit with their observation that the rivers are filled with rain and flow into the sea, but that the sea is never full.
So you are reading “ocean” into Gen 1.6, when all it actually says is that some water went in the sea, and some went in the sky. That may have been slightly justified in the days when western academics had convinced themselves that the whole ANE believed in a celestial ocean, but since no such ocean exists (as you seem to concede) either in Mesopotamian or Egyptian cosmology, there’s no legitimate justification, apart from prejudice, for attributing it to Genesis.
“They must have meant an ocean by ‘waters’, because everybody knows they did” isn’t an argument, and is still less of one when other Bible passages happily talk about “the waters” in the clouds, and when even early Christian expositors like St Basil read it as the water in the clouds.
OK, so we’ve now moved completely away from “all ANE people believed in a heavenly ocean” to “Only Hebrew priests did.” Progress of a kind, I suppose. The scholarly consensus on the documentary hypothesis has disappeared in the last few decades, so a priestly authorship for Gen 1 is now just “one theory”, as my RI teacher used to say.
Your contention, then, is that “the Hebrew priesthood dreamed up an ocean in the sky from wholecloth”, and your evidence for it is that (a) some people believe that priests wrote Genesis 1, and (b) the writer of Genesis 1 mentioned some “water” above the raqia. Then these priests forgot to mention this ocean in the rest of the Scriptures, though the same hypothetical priests mentioned some windows in the Flood story.
I wouldn’t want to convict anyone on that evidence, even on the balance of probabilities.
Ahhhh… so that is what you have been going on about?
This is a replay of your “Dome” controversy. You fixate on the word, even though altering the specific meaning of the word doesn’t seem to solve your problem at all.
Fortunately, somebody long ago aggregated all the various uses of this word for waters into their various applications:
The KJV translates Strong’s H4325 [waters] in the following manner:
You can go through all the uses of that word, Jon, and in no place will you find a use that corresponds with reality when it comes to what is up in the sky!
Hebrew has the words for “vapors”… “clouds”… “mist” … and none of these things were “divided in two” above and below the firmament.
Your explanation, in fact, doesn’t explain. Instead of an ocean, there might be streams, or rivers, or baths full of water. But none of these meanings get you off the hook.
So… I will remember to avoid the term “Dome” and the term “Ocean” …
But there are no “waters” high up in the sky being let down via “windows” (or “apertures” or “openings”). And even without the “waters”, there are no “windows” by themselves!
I wasn’t expecting to open that up again. Just marshaling evidence that the Big Bang is not disallowed by G1:1. If I find some time, I might revisit that. You point out a datum we had not discussed.
Totally agree!
Yes. But asking philosophically (cuz it’s a trap!), though science is not the purpose of the text, can it not make phenomenological statements that happen to agree with what we have since learned by science? Kinda like a Freudian slip by God… (hope that’s not too irreverent for some)
Richard - if I read unintended harshness into your words, let me also apologize. Glad to continue the discussion but I’m out of time. Will get back to you.
I believe a better translation for Job 26:8 would be:
"He wraps up water in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under its weight."
In your version, the use of the specific article (“the”) implies that, rather than a portion of heavenly water being stored in clouds (below the firmament), that All the heavenly waters are stored in clouds (below the firmament).
In Psa 78:23, we can actually read the association of rain clouds and the higher ultimate source of water!
“Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of Heaven.”
You wouldn’t propose that the “doors of Heaven” are below the clouds? With the context of this verse, one would be wrong to even equate the “clouds” with “doors” or “gates” of Heaven. No such interpretation of “clouds” is found.
It is because clouds exist below the firmament, we know that the clouds are a mid-way point between the waters above the firmament and the ultimate destination: the lands below.
Job also says God stores snow and hail in the sky. Instead of calling these storage areas clouds, they are called treasuries or store houses (depending on the translation). The net effect of Job’s references to the natural world is to present a fantasy-view of the natural world, rather than a reality-based view.
This text from Judges would be consistent with your verse, and my verses:
Jdg 5:4
“LORD, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water.”
There is no use of the specific article: “the”.
I don’t intend this text as a contradiction. The Job verse marvels that something as heavy as water can stay in clouds at all.
But the fact that the word cloud or clouds doesn’t appear anywhere in Genesis until
Gen 9:13-14
“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud…”
This tells us that there is no equating of “clouds” with terms being used to describe the creation of Earth.
Clouds move around in the sky, like traveling water-skins (aka King James uses the word “bottles” ); the windows and doors of Heaven are associated with the locations of stars, and so are not arbitrarily located, from time to time, like clouds are.
Clouds even disappear, which is particularly UN-firmament like if one were to attribute that term to the Hebrew notion of the firmament:
Job:9
“As the cloud H6051 is consumed and vanisheth away, …”
I reply only for the benefit of others, since the quibbles are endless and people may otherwise assume they have weight. Can you remind me just why your belief in a better translation counts for anything at all? I’ve shown that the same word used in Genesis for “waters”, mayim, is used in Job 26, and you want to talk about “the”.
Well, I’ll reply about hey, the Hebrew article. It doesn’t occur in 26.8. But then it doesn’t occur in 26.5, either, about the dead lying beneath… “water” (if I translate consistently on your criteria).
In fact the definite article here depends on context. Copying your example, I checked on Bible Hub, and ALL 22 English versions have the definite article for “waters”. That reflects the fact that this passage draws on Genesis themes, and vocabulary, including upper and lower waters (as well as on probably Canaanite mythology regarding Rahab).
Ps 78.23, as I pointed out before, is a bog-standard example of Hebrew poetic parallelism. Nevertheless, you seem not to have noticed that the context of that verse is not about water at all, but manna raining down from the doors of heaven. Why should manna come from rainclouds, you ask? Check the vocabulary - “cloud” here is shachaq, translated variously as “thin cloud”, “sky”, “heaven” or “small dust”, but never as rain cloud.
So, since you deny clouds can be doors of heaven, nor that such doors mnay be below them, you propose that the psalmist envisaged the manna in the wilderness as dropping first from doors in a solid raqia, then being further processed in thin clouds before dropping to earth. Let me assist you - this was made necessary by the doors actually letting in the heavenly waters, and the clouds were necessary to convert water into manna… somehow i don’t think the psalmist had such a thing in mind.[quote=“gbrooks9, post:255, topic:35661”]
But the fact that the word cloud or clouds doesn’t appear anywhere in Genesis until
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This of course is the major point. Somehow the writer of Genesis left out a major necessary component of providential sustenance for his creation - rain from clouds. But maybe he didn’t leave it out, but dealt with it in terms of the division of the promordial deep.[quote=“gbrooks9, post:255, topic:35661”]
Clouds move around in the sky, like traveling water-skins (aka King James uses the word “bottles” ); the windows and doors of Heaven are associated with the locations of stars, and so are not arbitrarily located, from time to time, like clouds are.
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I can’t answer for the associations in your mind, but no passage of Scripture associates windows and doors of heaven with the location of stars. And only in the Flood narrative does the Bible associate them even with rain. Rain in a few Babylonian texts is on some occasions associated with stars (but not with doors). This is fact.
Well, if anyone were to identify the clouds with “firmament” that might be the case. But the firmament was established to separate the waters, not to be the waters. And (free and gratis) that separation was in order to separate the creation functions of the waters - the lower to form the seas and springs, and the upper to provide rain, not to satisfy the cranky cosmological theory of some Jewish priest and some modern commentators.
(hope that’s not too irreverent for some)