Deep Space and the Dome of Heaven

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Jon_Garvey

Turning to Genesis, let’s say (as I believe) that verse 1 is the equivalent of a toledot summarising the whole story, rather than an initial act. The earth (“eretz”) is actually only named when the “dry (land”) appears on Day 3 - as if the sea beds are not part of “the earth”. And yet, in v2 the earth is not non-existent, but “tohu wabohu”, formless and useless. Where is it? Clearly under the water already, for it appears when the water retreats to one place. . . .

Similarly, “the heavens” are formally named “shemayim” only when the raqia is formed on Day 2 . . .

Remember that heaven is to become God’s own realm (within the imagery being presented in the Bible), and nowhere in Genesis or elsewhere is God pictured as dwelling on, in or under the sky, but above all things - he does not look up at the ocean, but down on all his works: the biblical phrase is “everything under heaven”, not “everything under the uppermost waters”.

My apologies, @Jon_Garvey, for not paying adequate attention to your recent post. I was momentarily distracted by Eddie.

But my response here is actually assisted by Eddie’s comments. Look at Genesis verses 1,2 and 8:

Gen 1:1-2 “In the beginning God created the heaven (“shamayim” / “sky”) and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Genesis 1:8: Wayyiqra ‘elohim laraqiya’ shamayim… – “And God called the firmament heaven…”

Your theory that the “heavens” is everything above BOTH waters doesn’t appear correct at all. Verse 8 specifies that God called the firmament “Sky” - - or “High Places”, if you like. Using the word Heaven in the mystical sense is a modern abuse of the term.

Since the firmament itself already has its own technical term, the “high places” appear to be a reference to the realm of the Sun, Moon and stars that are AFFIXED to the firmament… This is where God views the earth. When the Stars assist in a battle … they do so by operating the windows of the firmament, allowing the ocean above to pour down below. There is no reference, ANYWHERE, that God’s view is ABOVE the firmament.

Even the Sumerians had notions of gods operating in “the heavens” - - “the High Places” … but other than “living amongst the stars” a more common abode for gods of all kinds was UNDER the earth: the Apsu or Abzu. In Exodus we find God at the top of a flaming mountain … an amplification of the earthly abode (much like the semitic mythologies of EL in general. The bible TELLS US that Yahweh was also called EL.) The Greeks had their Mount Olympus - - again, an amplified EARTHLY abode.

The SKY didn’t become HEAVEN in the modern sense until Zoroaster … with his inventions of

1. the Eternal Conflict/Dualism of Good vs. Evil,
2. Angels, and
3. a Paradise of the Afterlife.

As far as I can tell, the first indication in Greek culture of a God’s viewpoint being OUTSIDE of Space and Time is the Greek Protogonus/Phanes!

"According to the Orphic Creation Myths the creator god. Protogonus was the first god to be born from the Cosmic Egg (World Egg), which Chaos and Aether had reproduced, . Protogonus name means “First Born”, and it was he who had created the universe. Protogonus had three additional names. Protogonus was popularly known by another name as Phanes(Revealer), the golden-winged god of light and love. " [See footnote for translation of an Orphic hymn.]

In the image above he is shown on the cosmic egg surrounded by the zodiac. A similar mythology is invoked in the “new religion” of Mithraism … where a lion-headed deity is shown standing on similar cosmic stone … or a human figure bursting out of the “cosmic egg” - where the egg is wrapped by a ribbon of the zodiac, or a snake that represents the zodiac. Phanes is a clear model being copied.

In such images, Mithras is being presented as the greatest of all gods because, unlike Jupiter/Zeus, who is simply the GREATEST of all the planets, Mithras is believed to be the deity so powerful that he can move the zodiac in a 2,200 year precession. So he must be more powerful than even Zeus, Jupiter or SATURN (the pagan deity most frequently associated with the Hebrew god, and unlike the planetary gods, he exists OUTSIDE of the cosmos so that he can have the leverage to move it.

If someone wants to get extra credit or bonus points, I have not been very successful in identifying the inspiration for the Greek god Protogonos/Phanes. Some Greek gods were inspired by Mesopotamian culture, the Egyptians, or by the Anatolians and presumably by the Persians. But I have not been convinced by anything I’ve read so far about the origins of Phanes.

George

.[Footnote: “Orphic Hymn to Protogonos Upon two-natured, great and ether-tossed Protogonos I call; Born of the egg, delighting in his golden wings, he bellows like a bull, this begetter of blessed gods and mortal men. Erikepaios, seed unforgettable, attend to my rites, Ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion, whose motion is whirring, You scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes, And, flapping your wings, you whirled about and throughout this world, You brought pure light… . .” ]

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

Regarding “heaven,” as someone steeped in Biblical scholarship, I’m so used to the fact that Biblical scholars don’t confuse different meanings of the word “heaven” that I use “heaven” freely without the popular connotations you are speaking about. And most of the people here who comment on the issues seem to be well-read and I’ve been assuming that by “heaven” they know what I’m talking about. However, just to confirm what you are saying, “heaven” in the Genesis 1 account means “what we see when we look up there – the realm of the sun and moon and stars, the part of the world from which rain and lightning come, etc.” It doesn’t mean some place you go when you die where everyone is white and semi-transparent and sings on harps and God sits on a throne etc. Heaven (shamayim) is a physical part of the world, like “earth.”

@Eddie… yes, very reassuring.

And yet, this is not how Jon is interpreting the word, right?

From Jon’s post:

"Similarly, “the heavens” are formally named “shemayim” only when the raqia is formed on Day 2, . . . Remember that heaven is to become God’s own realm (within the imagery being presented in the Bible), and nowhere in Genesis or elsewhere is God pictured as dwelling on, in or under the sky, but above all things - he does not look up at the ocean, but down on all his works: the biblical phrase is “everything under heaven”, not “everything under the uppermost waters”.

As you can see, even the very knowledgeable Jon has succumbed to the siren call of HEAVEN…

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@BradKramer

I welcome discussion about this topic. What do you think about the concept of the “cosmic ocean”?

@BradKramer,

As you can see from the images I posted above, it is easier to find images of a “cosmic egg” than of a “cosmic ocean”. The Cosmic Egg represents the World and the Sky … (the Zodiac surrounding the egg) … or the World WITH the Zodiac embracing it.

But I’ll dig a little harder and see what pops up regarding a cosmic ocean.

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

It’s best if I let Jon speak for himself on most of this. I agree with what he said about naming and functionality in Genesis 1, but I am not sure whether he is saying that “heaven” is sometimes used in the Bible to mean something other than the firmament.

Eddie,

It seems pretty clear to me … he thinks heaven is ABOVE the Firmament… and ABOVE the waters stored above the firmament…

He seems to specify a supernal realm… just like you said nobody would ever do…

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

In the meantime, I stick to my position that the author of Genesis 1 wanted to convey the view that “heaven” was a part of creation, not something above all creation; verse 8 settles that beyond a doubt, in my mind. I don’t think that any other “heaven,” any “heaven” higher than “the waters above the firmament” is intended or implied.

God may well dwell in some mysterious realm “above” all creation, but the writer of Genesis 1 had every opportunity to indicate that fact, and to call God’s abode “heaven”; the writer chose not to do that, but to limit the term “heaven” to the firmament.

@Eddie

I am in 100% agreement.

I’ve been praying lately.

George

[Jon_Garvey]

@gbrooks9 @Eddie

I wasn’t so much presenting a complete theory, as a (literal) viewpoint, to counter the assumptions inherent in Brad’s original suggestion that we should compare a modern cosmological idea of infinity (“outer space”) with an ancient cosmological idea of infinity (“cosmic ocean”). Apples and oranges, in my book.

My “literal viewpoint” was sitting in a boat (for example) overlooking the face of the deep in Genesis 1.2, the apparent viewpoint of the narrator, and then seeing where a phenomenological treatment starting there takes the interpretation of the events. It makes a big difference if the topmost layer is the darkness and the ruach of God above the deep, rather than imagining the deep to have no surface, contra the text of v2.

Unfortunately going far beyond that in this forum is likely to get bogged down by assumptions engendered by the discussion above, not based on such a phenomenological approach but on beliefs about that good old raqia, etc.

However, I find a useful pair of articles by Andrew Perry of Durham Uni here and here, which seem to develop such an approach (though different from mine, I think), starting with a a useful scholarly rejoinder to the claims in P Seely’s commonly cited case for the solid firmament, showing the weaknesses of the case both in the ANE generally and Genesis in particular (the same approach as mine in this case!). Solid domes are NOT slam dunk, by any means.

There’s space for a couple of observations. In Genesis, I would argue that the stage is set, at least, for God being represented as dwelling in heaven - which is necessarily in some sense topological, since (I would argue) there were no concepts available for a clear representation of God outside our modern idea of the universe. “Heaven” is clearly “the realm up there”, rather than “a different dimension”, in Genesis.

For a start, the narrator’s view (above the deep) takes in the breath (ruach) of God, also “brooding upon the face of the waters”. “Breath/spirit of God” is one of those OT circumlocutions for God’s presence, which doesn’t commit them to locating God in one place or time (cf “angel of God”, “word of God”, “glory of God” etc) - I think that’s the Bible’s alternative to “another dimension” for flagging up anthropmorphism.

Within the genre of the passage, then, God creates from above the deep, in the persona of his ruach, moving and (especially) separating out the elements until he has made a useful sacred space for mankind, the heavens and the earth, and ceases from his work.

In various Genesis texts God goes down (eg to Babel), angels call “out of heaven”, God is called “God of heaven”, and Bethel, with its angel-staircase, is “the gate of heaven” and “the gate of God.” So in Genesis alone, I contend, the concept of God as being “in heaven” is established; just as in the cosmic temple meaning of the text “heaven” is established as God’s domain, and “earth” as man’s, holy-of-holies and temple court, separated by the semi-sacred, rarified, space of whatever is in between.

That same sense of heaven and earth as extremes is underlined by the very fact that verse 1, the “summary”, is a merism - it means “heaven and earth and everything in them”, and continues to mean that throughout the Bible.

So we then have to work out how that makes any sense if “heaven” were simply the name given to what separates two sets of waters. That’s an issue whether raqia is some solid sheet - which would actually seem to separate the upper waters from the upper air, not from the lower waters as claimed - or as I prefer to understand, the whole stretched-out space above the earth and sea, in which birds fly and heavenly bodies exist, as the text says.

Either way, it makes little sense, and doesn’t match anything in Genesis or elsewhere in the Bible, to think of the heaven (shemayim) in which God and angels dwell as being roofed by some primordial ocean pushed up in its formation. God’s dwelling is “in the highest heaven” (though it can’t contain him, accoding to Solomon), as it surely must be theologically.

As far as I can see, the problem is minimised by the simple phenomenological expedient of taking the upper waters as the clouds, known to be the source of rain in numerous Bible texts, so that there is potential connection between the space separating them from the sea (aka the sky) and the original realm above the “face of the deep”. The fact that theophanies often take place on mountains and in clouds is an illustration of that - from Moses and the elders of Israel through to Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.

It may not even be coincidental that Yahweh’s continued association with winds as his messengers is an activity directly comparable to his active breath in Gen 1.2, presumably communicating from his “highest heaven”. through the “heavens” that separate clouds from earth. Thus the Genesis account, behind its theology, is a phenomenological account of what is plainly obvious, not speculative adoption of some fictitious amalgam of ANE beliefs (as Perry shows).

By the way, I think dragging in other cosmologies without great care is risky, given that there is little consistency even between Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite, Canaanite and Egyptian cosmologies of the same general period!

Final caveat - for me to argue that in Genesis, and elsewhere, “heaven” as God’s dwelling place and as the upper created realm are the same, physical, place is not to argue either that God literally lives “in space”, nor that Israel “really” believed he literally lived above the clouds.

Solomon’s dedication of the temple makes that clear - what is in mind is symbolic representation, just as God’s shekinah represented him in the Temple. Such representation was, however, serious enough to make the Temple a truly holy place, just as Christians treat the communion bread and cup as a truly sacred thing, even without a belief in transubstantiation.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Jon_Garvey

In various Genesis texts God goes down (eg to Babel), angels call “out of heaven”, God is called “God of heaven”, and Bethel, with its angel-staircase, is “the gate of heaven” and “the gate of God.” So in Genesis alone, I contend, the concept of God as being “in heaven” is established; just as in the cosmic temple meaning of the text “heaven” is established as God’s domain, and “earth” as man’s, holy-of-holies and temple court, separated by the semi-sacred, rarified, space of whatever is in between.

This is all very interesting. But the more you focus on angels, I think the more you move yourself to see that Genesis is not the EARLIEST of writings, with all the other books being written in chronological order. What I think we find, instead, is that Genesis is one of the last of the Five Books… written to form a back story (like those who wrote the history of Romulus and Remus to give the Roman Empire a “back story”.

If you set aside the Bible for a moment, you will notice that the Zoroastrians really the first to cultivate Angels and Angelology. With this realization,one can see that it was Hebrew contact with Persian theology that inspired the notion of Angels in a form of Jewish religion … which was then passed on to Christianity.

And along with the Angels was the notion of Heaven being the permanent realm of God and the afterlife.

In a way, it is your zeal about Heaven being God’s literal or symbolic realm that makes this theory of Persian influence more believable.

George

[Jon_Garvey]

George, I’ve not made any comment at all about the date of Genesis. But even if it was affected by Persian influence, that would not make it safe to assume it borrows late Persian cosmology, especially when what possible literary links there are are to very early Mesopotamian stories like Atrahasis and Eridu Genesis. And Assyriologists like Lambert have moved away from the Victorian notion of borrowing now, even in the case where there is definite literary relationship, the Flood narrative.

But in any case, as I mentioned in my post, the angels in Genesis serve a very ambiguous role, quite different from that in, say, 2nd temple literature or the NT. For the most part they seem a circumlocution for God himself, so that the angel who calls from heaven in 22.11 actually speaks as God in the first person. Likewise for the visitors in 18, who are described as men, are clearly angelic, but one of whom actually acts as God himself.

But none of that affects my post, unless there were any evidence for Persian cosmology in Gen 1, which I don’t think there is. And it gets a bit silly dating the books of the Bible from angels, when they’re in pretty well every narrative book - more in Judges than Genesis, including in the Song of Deborah, which is usually regarded as one of the oldest and probably pre-monarchical parts of the Bible, and with plenty of references in the “former prophets” too.

[Jon_Garvey]

Hi Eddie

Yes, I see where you’re coming from on this (especially in the light of your previous writing), and agree with the key Gen 1 theme of creation as God’s handiwork. That seems to fit well with the Solomon quote, in which Solomon takes even God’s “legit” dwelling to be inadequate, and therefore what we might call “symbolic”.

The same, I guess, is true of the temple/tabernacle, which is regarded as holy because God’s shekinah dwells there, and yet is entirely relativised by God’s destruction of Shiloh for Israel’s sin, the capture of the ark by the Philistines under Saul, and the destruction of both Temples expressed as his judgement. We’re constantly reminded to look for God only in God, not in what he has made - and the heavens at whatever level are seen as that.

At the same time, we’re intended to be pointed to God by what has been created (expressed in Genesis 1, I guess, by the fact it is “good” or “very good”). “The heavens declare the glory of God”, but only because he made them just as he made the dust of the ground. Certainly it’s right to see Genesis in the context of torah, as the basis on which other subsequent texts and prophecies are understood - rather than as “Hebrew science”.

For myself, that’s one reason I can’t see it as a late text, since there are so many subtle echoes of it through the Hebrew Bible, and I can’t get on with those ideas that somebody wrote the whole lot, including Job, Psalms, attributed oracles etc in 100BC (or whenever), just to look as if it were a national literature.

[Jo_Helen_Cox]

Most of this discussion over complicates Genesis 1. The last couple statements are the most relevant.

If Gen 1 is just Hebrew cosmology and not taken as realistic, then it is just myth and we should all become atheists. However, I believe this is an inspired text and speaks to all generations in their understanding of natural science, even today’s. If God revealed the creation of the universe to a Bronze Age Hebrew, what would it look like to him? How would it be written?

Gen 1:1 is the writer’s creed: ONE God made everything. He made everything above my head. He made everything below my feet. No other gods need apply. The rest of the passage describes everything including the writer. No created thing is worthy of worship: not light or dark, not sky or ocean, not land or plant, no astro body, no sea creature or air creature or land creature. Not even humans are worthy of worship because they are simply creation.

Despite most theologians insistence, Genesis 1 is circular poetry. It sets up three spaces in days 1-3 and fills those spaces in days 4-6. That lets day 4 fill the universe with stars before the creation of earth in day 2. More importantly, poetic order lets the order of creation match standard science, without contradiction.

If a Bronze Age Hebrew was given a fast forward show of creation, what would the first moments look like? A singularity is formless as it has no height, depth, or width. There was nothing recognizable at first, not even partials to make up atoms, thus void. Yet all this nothingness contained “deep.” When God fluttered, expansion commenced and the first “something” appeared as plasma. Physicists speak of plasma as a fluid energy, thus to the writer it looked like water. One of the first partials to form were protons. The entire universe became a “ball” of light. The formation of atoms absorbed the light and the universe became dark. The atoms collapsed into increasingly dense balls of gas until they started fusion. Light came out of darkness.

The universe had two events of light. Genesis 1 matches standard science, thus it shows inspiration that no Bronze Age writer could possess. Genesis 1 says that inspiration comes from ONE GOD.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Jon_Garvey

For myself, that’s one reason I can’t see it as a late text, since there are so many subtle echoes of it through the Hebrew Bible, and I can’t get on with those ideas that somebody wrote the whole lot, including Job, Psalms, attributed oracles etc in 100BC (or whenever), just to look as if it were a national literature.

I think we’ll find that the echoes were first formed around the impact of 2 cultures colliding in the 500’s - 400’s BCE.