He has a a good reason to. He cites a range of sources which identify the sky as a dome. However he also says this.
True, there are occasional variations on the solid dome conception, such as several worlds piled up on top of each other, each with its own firmament; but I know of no evidence that any scientifically naive people anywhere on earth believed that the firmament was just empty space or atmosphere
Richard
I tried to show above that nothing of salvific importance is directly tied up in the details of the creation story, but that depends greatly on genre considerations. If it could also be shown (as well as the hard raqia) that Genesis was, in fact, attempting to teach scientific cosmology as divine truth, then clearly the whole doctrine of inspiration would be on the table, and hence its reliability on matters theological would also be compromised.
Not every matter of interpretation of the Bible, however, is of salvific importance, but may be of importance in making the best use of the text. If one takes Daniel, for example, I’m quite sure the sheep will not be sorted from the goats by whether they take a preterist or a historical position on apocalyptic visions, but in my view it makes a big difference between the book’s being a key to Kingdom theology or an obscure set of speculations for navel-gazers to match against their newspapers.
And so the broad interpretive framework I set out for Genesis 1 - non-theoretical phenomenology tied into a tight literary and theological theme - I feel to become invisible almost as soon as one starts taking about dependence on ANE myths.
On the other hand, ANE sources can be useful for giving broad hints as to the way nature was experienced in the world of those days. That in itself, is in my view valuable, because how they thought about their world greatly affected how they thought about God, and both are different from our times. We can potentially learn a lot from their worldview.
That would be the metal goddess Nut, I guess, as kindly illustrated by Jon Burke!
This is one of the things I dislike about Seely, even though, being peer reviewed, he cannot be gainsaid by anyone posting here. Apart from making his personal lack of knowledge an argument (as if realistically he had studied the whole world’s primitive cosmologies), he’s using the English translation, “firmament”, of a word occurring uniquely in the Hebrew account, and then saying how every other pre-scientific people employs it.
But they don’t employ it, and neither do the Babylonian sources. One has to map the Hebrew concept to whatever other culturally related concepts there are out there, to see what “raqia” actually might mean in its context. Seely has reflexly mapped it to the triple Babylonian stone heavens, which serve an entirely different function to the raqia, and proceeds without any reasoning or examples to equate it to completely unrelated (and unspecified) cosmologies across the world. And you accuse me of weasel words (as well as the famous “argument from Calvinism” refutation)!
However, in your post to me you have kindly provided an example that directly contradicts Seely’s claim that no cosmologies anywhere have air or space supporting the firmament, and therefore that the raqia must be solid because it is what holds up the sky (as opposed to the biblical function, which is to separate two sets of waters).
Your picture shows the air God Shu holding up the sky goddess Nut. I even note with amusement that the source of your illustration is a web page entited "Discover the legends and myths and religious beliefs surrounding Shu, the Egyptian god of wind, the atmosphere and known as the supporter of the sky."
The web-page’s use of “atmosphere” is of course forgiveably anachronistic (the material nature of air being a Greek discovery). But people may be interested to know that this theogony originated in Heliopolis and is Old Kingdom theology (a millennium and a major Egyptian theological revolution before the earliest date for Genesis). In that ancient theology Shu and the moisture God Tefnut produced two children, Nut, the sky, and Geb, the earth, who indulged in incest and so were forcibly separated by their father to form the upper and lower extremes of the cosmos. Somewhere in there we’ve lost the celestial ocean above and below, and solid materials don’t figure at all, because it’s a theogony, not a scientific cosmology.
For my money Egyptian “cosmologies” are a self-contradictory labyrynth that won’t get any of us very far on views on the material world - though there are some fascinating theological parallels in the New Kingdom period that are a lot more significant.
Here is the promised Egyptian material in connection with the Hebrew view of the Firmament … and even some bonus items… It is an old book, but I have not found anyone impugning its scholarship on Egyptian material - - and I find it difficult to imagine too much room for error. The implications of the Egyptian references are marvelously consistent with the Old Testament imagery!
The attachment is a .jpg, which looks pretty legible on my laptop in a 3 pages down 1 page wide format. Once it’s in the posting, if it looks difficult to read, I’ll come up with some other format in the next day or so.
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George
I grant you that your European/Western text isn’t quite Victorian, being from 1916, but since the contention has been about outdated over-materialistic views of ANE cosmology, it scarcely concludes the question.
Here’s what modern writer Wim van den Dungen, discussing a major Egyptian text on Egyptian theology from the New Kingdom, says:
Early 20th century egyptology was modernist, positivist, antiquarian, Hellenocentric (if not Europacentric) and reluctant to accept the fact Ancient Egyptians were also able to speculate, think and be truly spiritual and philosophical. Hellenocentrism, Europacentrism and a refusal (and/or inability) to understand figural and analogical thought by its own standards, compromized the understanding of ancient religious, philosophical & spiritual texts. This mentality is not extinct, although the old crocodiles are nearly all gone to meet the Balance.
On the matter of the metal goddess Nut, with the solar ship sailing over her but under the celestial waters (as opposed to through her body as a number of the texts say), I was led by one popular writer, who said that because biA, translated firmament, is derived from a root meaning either metal or miracle, it must be made of metal, to check the Egyptian lexicon. Here are some possibilities:
biA - heaven, firmament
biA - metal ? bronze, ?iron
biA - a mineral not metal
biAi - wonder, miracle
biAt - gritstone
biAt - beer vessel
biAt - quarry
biAyt - firmament
biAyt - miracle, marvels
biAw - mining region, a mine
biAw - wonders, marvels
biAy - consisting of bronze
Now, unless one has some clue from the original literature (as one does with Akkadian “šamȗ”, heaven, said by one Babylonian text to derive from water, not from bronze or stone), then deriving meaning from etymology is fraught with hazard. It’s the same gig as tracing raqia back to a meaning of metal from a verb meaning to beat out/spread out/stretch out. Which meaning of “biA”, if any of them, is “firmament” derived from, and what nuance is being picked up? Is it metal, non-metal mineral, miraculous, a quarry, a beer-vessel or something else?
Meanwhile, just to show I too can find dubious reconstructions, here’s a pretty western interpretation of Hermopolitan cosmology, by an Egyptologist who actually died the year your book was published, 1916. The challenge is to spot the goddess Nut, the god Shu, the metal firmament, cosmic ocean upper or lower, and the Bark of Re sailing on top of it. Or any of them, really.
Hi Jon,
I have an overall view God that God uses believers to accomplish his goals. So, He used the love for Him and the hard-work driven by faith that biblical authors, translators and transcribers used to get us the bible. Thus, I, as a practice, defer to translators in these type of matters and assume that God used them to, “get it right”. In my apologetic studies I’ve learned that translators and transcribers were serious people who fully understood the seriousness of their respective tasks. Could they they have been influenced by the Greeks, possibly. But in a way where they were far off God’s intended meaning? I’m not sure so sure.
Also, firmamentum came from Jerome, who translated the OT into Latin from Hebrew while in Alexandria at around 400 AD, so I’m not sure how much Greek influence he was under.
Can I just say — I admire the panache with which @Christy has renamed this thread after splitting it!
Thank for the illustration!
In this illustration, the Barque/Bark/Barge is imagined sailing along an endless looping river high up in the mountain range… circling the entire (presumably flat) Earth. The barge is shown with a nearly round white sail, in the upper left hand side. And of course, the objects hanging from strings are planets and stars.
I’m not sure any Egyptian artist ever presented an image like this … but it is certainly food for thought! In this version, the “heavenly ocean” is a “heavenly river”, and the river is being shown lower than the “roof” (the firmament?) of the world. I’m not sure this image was ever considered correct.
I’m not really sure what your post is trying to say. So I thought I would get clarification from this site below. I found it to be quite impressive!!!
Below is a lengthy section on Egyptian literature and a brief note below that on the Greeks.
At the link, there is also a long treatment on the Hebrew view. I haven’t had a chance to read that section yet, but I did notice a lot of references to rabbis.
At the very least, the Egyptian references the site uses seem modern enough!
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Egyptian Literature
The ancient Egyptians had a strong sense of symmetry and balance. A sky above meant that there must be a sky below. Each god had his goddess. Heaven was an ocean that paralleled the earthly ocean. The sun sailed in a ship across the heavenly ocean. They believed that there was a nocturnal ocean beneath the world on which the sun would sail at night. Boats have been dug up around the Great Pyramid so the king would have a boat to sail on the heavenly ocean.
The Pyramid Texts are the oldest Egyptian writings. They are very short, and are mainly concerned with the destiny of the dead in order that they might dwell in the sky like the gods. They could journey with the sun-god in his ship, or live in the fields of the Blessed, the Field of Food-Offerings, or the Field of Iaru. There are many utterances that have been written on the Pyramids. Here are some excerpts from the texts about their view on heaven (Faulkner 1969).
Set the rope aright, cross the Milky Way(?), smite the ball in the meadow if Apis! Oho! Your fields are in fear, you izd-star, before the Pillar of the Stars, for they have seen the Pillar of Kenzet, the Bull of the sky, and the Ox-herd is overwhelmed before him. Ho! Fear and tremble, you violent ones who are on the storm-cloud of the sky! He split open the earth by means of what he knew on the day when he wished to come thence (Utterance 254).
The king takes possession of the sky, he cleaves its iron (Utterance 257).
Stand up, remove yourself, O you who do not know the Thicket of Reeds, that I may sit in your place and row over the sky in your bark, O Re, that I may push off from the land in your bark, O Re. When you ascend from the horizon, my sceptre will be in my hand as one who rows your bark, O Re. You mount up to the sky, you are far from the earth, far from wife and kilt (Utterance 267).
If you wish to live, O Horus in charge of your staff of justice, then you shall not slam shut its door leaves before you have taken the king’s double to the sky (Utterance 440).
From these utterances one learns that there is a heavenly ocean with gates that keep the waters in, and the sun travels by boat across this ocean. There is a parallel underworld ocean and sky.
In utterance 257 the word for “iron” is better translated “bronze,” (Faulkner 1991, 80) which indicates that heaven was made of hard metal. Mercer (1952, 2:142) takes this as a figurative sense meaning “hardness” or “firmness.”
There are a number of drawings on Egyptian walls that explain their view of the world. In the Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos there is a drawing of the universe on the ceiling in the sarcophagus chamber (Keel 1978, 32, 389). Shu, the god of the air, holds up Nut covered with stars. The sun is born again each morning from Nut’s birth canal, and is swallowed by her mouth at dusk which leads to the underworld. The underworld is both in heaven and under the earth. Those whose souls were lighter than the feather of righteousness could continue on to heaven while the others would be punished in pits of fire. The sun is drawn as a winged disk, and right beside it is written:
The majesty of this god [the sun god] enters the world of the dead through her mouth. The world of the dead is opened when he enters into it. The stars follow him into her and come out again after him, and they hasten to their place (Keel 1978, 32).
In a much later drawing from Ptolemy IX there are two heavens (Ibid., 34, 389). The lower heaven contained the moon while the upper one contained the sun. The Tuat is surrounded by the earth. Sometimes the earth is identified with the underworld. The Egyptian word for earth, t, and the Hebrew xra can designate the upper surface of the earth as well as the interior underworld (Keel, 35; Psalms 7:5, 44:25, 63:9).
A papyrus from the New Kingdom pictures the sky as a heavenly ocean on which the sun sails in its special boat. In the boat is Maat with a feather on her head sitting before the falcon-headed sun god. Maat symbolizes world order (Ibid., 36, 389).
There is a text that states that there are two heavens. There is the heaven that is above, and the heaven that is in the underworld on which the sun’s boats float. The text says:
(Thus) thou shalt be in thy shrine, thou shalt journey in the evening-barque, thou shalt rest in the morning-barque, thou shalt cross thy two heavens in peace, thou shalt be powerful, thou shalt live (ANET, 7).
Greek Literature
In ancient Greek literature heaven was described in similar terms as in the OT. Homer describes heaven several different ways. In Iliad heaven is described as calkeos (brass), and polucalkos (solid brass; LCL, 17:425, 5:504). The Odyssey also describes heaven as sidhreos, meaning “iron” (LCL, 1:2,3). According to Liddell and Scott (1857, 1068), the Greek heaven was like “a concave hemisphere resting on the verge of earth, with an opening in it, through which the peak of Olympus stretched upward into pure ether. It was upborne by the pillars of Atlas” (Odyssey 1:54).
http://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/books/genesis/genesis1_firmament.htm
George, if you think that picture is ridiculous you’ll see how I feel about the usual “ANE cosmologies”. I can see from my own scattered reading where some of the ideas in this one arise, and they may be more correct in some ways. I’ve read sources, for example, that say the Bark of Re sails beneath Nut, or (more commonly) through her body, rather than above. That would make sense since in that cosmology she forms the upper limit of the cosmos. And the bark also sails on the Milky Way, which is (like the stars) suspended below the sky, or part of Nut’s starry body as Jon’s pretty tomb painting shows.
It remains to be seen whether any Egyptian envisaged the bark of Re sailing on actual water at all, and this is where I think all these attempts to make ancient physical cosmologies fail - it’s not just the Bible where I think the texts and graphics are abused by modern materialism. The Egyptian conceptions were enormously complex (and changing) theological schemes expressed in metaphorical and even directly contradictory ways. More than one author points out that in all the various schemes across Egypt and the millennia, Egyptians were less concerned with the physical structure of the cosmos, but in its unfolding in cyclical time. You can’t map that to any kind of “ancient science.”
One small example of how we ignore the theological: those pictures of Nut arching over the earth, interpreted as meaning a solid sky, were usually painted inside coffins, with the purpose of entreating the goddess, sometimes with associated written prayers, to do to the deceased what she does for the earth:
`O my mother Nut, spread yourself over me, so that I may be placed among the imperishable stars and may never die.’ Versions of this text were commonly written on coffin and sarcophagus lids and, beginning in the New Kingdom; figures of Nut in various protective attitudes were also depicted.
Anyone looking for a physical cosmology in that is barking up a tree.
Richard, first of all, I am amazed at how much attention this thread has generated; secondly, I can see that many posts raise points that can be of scholarly interest; but finally, I personally conclude that your two quotes above put concording into proper perspective: Of what use is concordance personally in how I should guide my life? I give thanks to fact I was born into a Christian home so the early impressions on my psyche was based on monotheism, rather than the polytheistic universe of the Greeks, Romans or Hindus. So what the people of the ANE got right, in terms of cosmology, is of academic interest to me. But if I dwell too much on how each group justified their existence and their relationship with their creator, I risk not being open to what God has to say to me directly, Yes, I do believe He speaks directly to me–not in words, of course, but in the sum of very subtle experiences. It is somewhat like being in a crowded room with several conversations going on simultaneously. If the most important information is soft-spoken, you may miss it entirely.
The writers of OT Scripture experienced God ‘speaking’ to them in their time, and I am grateful that I can learn from their experiences. But if I get too involved in deciphering what he was trying to communicate to them so very long ago, I may miss what he wants to communicate directly to me now.
Does this make any sense? Or is it just kooky?
Al Leo
I don’t want you to think I’m trying to offend you. I’m actually trying to figure out how not to offend you. But how to do it?
You have been a moving target during this whole protracted discussion.
Where’s the dome? - there’s no dome.
Where’s the vault? - there’s no vault.
Where’s the ocean? - there’s only waters.
Since there is only waters, we can forget the entire topic.
Egypt? They don’t have views like that.
Well, they have views “like” what we read about in the O.T.,
but it is it really what we think it is… and so forth.
Jon, with or without Egypt, the Old Testament has an amazingly well integrated system of presumptions and viewpoints, with one conclusion leading almost perfectly to the next conclusion. The only problem with the O.T. view of the Firmament is that it is not based on reality. < [Edited to include a reference to the Firmament.]
This should not be surprising. Why would you think that people living 4000 years ago would know anything about reliable cosmology?
Well, I don’t want to offend you either, George. But I say it’s based on profound reality - just not on western scientific priorities.
When you chop out all the parts of the discussion that provide the context for the final sentence, it might mislead the reader. So I’ve gone back to edit my sentence to be less dependent on the other sentences around:
The only problem with the O.T. view of the Firmament is that it is not based on reality. < [Edited to include a reference to the Firmament.]
So, @Jon_Garvey, tell me again why we are supposed to accept not just inaccurate Biblical writings, but blindly inaccurate writings?
Hi Al,
Long time no comment-to. 
No, your comments are right on. One, I believe God talks to me and to all of us, even non-believers. For those of them who ever searched for meaning, something in their soul must have been telling them that there is something more to life than what they’re currently experiencing. Probably was God, right? And we’re in good company as well - when Abraham Lincoln was asked why he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he responded, “because God told me to”.
I agree with you also that, in one sense anyway, this present discussion has gone on pretty long. But in another sense, it’s really talking about how we think the bible should be viewed. I’ve come to feel strongly against any kind of strong biblical inerrancy, because, for one, the term and concept IMO is not biblical, and two, it directs skeptics directly to Genesis 1-11 to look for, “errors”, putting the text under a burden it was never meant to bear. So there are greater forces at play here rather than just trying to win an online argument. Hope that helps.
Hi Jon,
So, I’m taking from this that the view that God used a broadly accepted view of the physical world at that time, that may consist of elements that don’t vibe with modern science, to couch his theological narrative would be too close to, “Genesis was, in fact, attempting to teach scientific cosmology as divine truth”. Therefore, the insistence that nothing in G1 could be actually be, “wrong” or, “inaccurate”. Well, for the record, I don’t think anyone can demonstrate that G1 is teaching any cosmology. If God is using creations and separations to form his cosmic temple, then why do those acts have to not contradict any knowledge of the physical world when, as you also believe, the purpose of the text is theological? I know you might respond that there isn’t a demonstrable ANE cosmology for the Hebrews to borrow, so the next question is, why isn’t it safe to say that God inspired the G1 author to have water above the sky and sun after daylight to set up the separations to show that He is forming the world as his temple, and not have it be about the world?
Hi Richard
Anything’s possible, I suppose. But it seems to me that the basic aim of the text is to say something along the lines of “This is our world, guys, which God made by his own will and power to carry on as he created it. And look - it’s nothing more or less than a temple for his worship, like the tabernacle in the camp/temple in Jerusalem.”
In other words, there is a correspondence between the symbolism (or better, identification) and the encountered world.
Origins, being outside common experience, are of less factual importance for such a purpose: one can imagine (assuming for a moment the divine author’s viewpoint rather than Moses or P) a choice between an accurate scientific account, or an architectural account; or if we see the separations as a key theological factor, a theological account.
At all these levels we need to remember that ancient folks were better at holding symbols and material things in constructive balance than we are. That is probably the main reason we read naivety rather than intellectual sophistication into their writings, including those of the pagan Egyptians and Babylonians.
For example you mentioned in a previous post the question of God dwelling in heaven, which of course fits both the idea of temple imagery in Genesis and some of the surrounding ANE concepts. But Solomon’s words in 2 Kings makes it clear that the Israelite theologians could see God as so truly represented in the Jerusalem temple in the shekinah that it was death to encroach on the Holy of holies, and yet still say that they knew he couldn’t actally dwell there as even the highest heavens couldn’t contain him.
And we have the same thing in Christian theology - in a special way, the believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, yet we don’t expect to find him by dissection, and we still have the eschatological hope of seeing God face to face … “somewhere”. The reality is somehow representational, and vice versa. The ancients were at least as aware of this as we are, and it seems they prioritised it over the merely material in their texts.
To Summarize Once again … in our new Thread Location:
The Ten Talking Points Regarding the Biblical Firmament
Your comments about Hebrew views regarding the location of God seem more appropriately fit to the Roman “invention” of Mithraism (post Roman but pre-Christianity) – where the location of the deity that moved the whole Zodiac every 2,200 years, had to be out beyond the Zodiac.
And thus the lion-headed deity, holding the key to the Heavens, and standing on a large-ish basket-ball sized Zodiac (within which rested the Earth and its sky), representing the great power of Aeon or Time itself, was represented in other illustrations as having a throne out beyond the Zodiac.
To think that the Zodiac was beyond the Earth some millions and millions of miles never really crossed anyone’s mind.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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