From the Archives: The Firmament of Genesis 1 is Solid but That’s Not the Point | The BioLogos Forum

Faith & Science Conversation
22

Hah. In this perspective, I do not understand you. Much less accept that these people could only accept things they could already understand, rather than learn things they did not yet know. That they accepted something does not mean they understood it. I do not think you can equate acceptance with understanding. Certainly their acceptance of light existing before the objects that presented the light, then they either did not understand it, or they accepted that light could exist outside of the sun and moon (such as fire on earth, volcanoes, candles, lightning, etc.) which is not different than we understand it today. We tend to place too much difference in understanding in our way of interpreting certain parts of scripture. You cannot convince me that they could understand God creating all fish and birds in one day, anymore in pre-Noah days, than in the middle ages, or than in our present day. It is not an understandable thing. period. It can only be accepted or rejected.

Just as you do not understand Revelation, but still accept it. The necessity for understanding of the audience is helpful but not determinative for the details or general context of the story. It simply cannot be a defining factor.

23

johnZ, yes, the waters are ‘primordial’ in that they (along with darkness) pre-exist all other features in the account. This is like we find in the ‘Enuma elish’ and other ANE cosmogonies.

And yes, the ‘raqia’ of the sky is solid. Evidence for this comes from (a) the etymology of the word, (b) other references in scripture (eg in Ezekiel 1, Revelation 4, and various apocalyptic references to the sky being rolled-up like a scroll), © the context in which it is clear the “waters above” are actually above the raqia and thus could only (in conventional understanding) have been held back by something solid, and finally (d) the supporting evidence from comparable ANE cultures which all feature an evidently-solid sky as well - why should the Hebrews have been any different?

Here is how we know the raqia cannot be the atmosphere: (a) the ‘waters above’ are said to be above the raqia, not in it, and so cannot merely be atmospheric water vapor; (b) the birds fly across the raquia, again not in it, and so raqia cannot be the atmosphere; and © the heavenly bodies are placed into the raqia, not above it, and so again raqia cannot be atmosphere. Meanwhile, a solid sky is exactly what we would expect to find in Genesis 1 if it is reflecting ANE cosmology.

And yes, there is groundwater in the upper levels of the earth’s crust, but that cannot be the ‘waters below’ because those waters are said to have been separated from the land, not contained/absorbed within it. Nor is groundwater, however robust a spring may be, something capable of erupting and flooding the earth as the ‘fountains of the deep’ do in the flood account; only a subterranean ocean under pressure could do that, which is exactly what we find in ANE cosmology.

In the final analysis, you can stretch the literal understanding of Genesis 1 to make it comport with modern cosmology - but why, when it already fits so neatly, without any such stretching, with ANE cosmology?

24

Again, the Seely papers are particularly good on this subject, and they are available online:

“The Geographical Meaning of ‘Earth’ and ‘Seas’ in Genesis 1:10” https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/seely_earthseas_wtj.htm

“The Firmament and the Water Above” https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/seely-firmament-wtj.htm

Also much of the work of Denis Lamoureux in this area is good. And of course mainstream biblical scholarship everywhere outside of the conservative evangelical tradition has long supported this as well - so much so that Seely apparently couldn’t get his papers published in a mainline (aka “liberal”) journal because their conclusions had been long accepted (though perhaps never so recently and accessibly defended and justified in such detail).

25

Well, there’s always the John Walton contention that it wasn’t understood as material creation in the first place. :slight_smile:

26

This debate could be endless. and useless.
My point is that primordial was not used in scripture. It is an attributed term.

existing at or from the beginning of time; primeval.
“the primordial oceans”
synonyms: ancient, earliest, first, prehistoric, antediluvian, primeval
“the primordial oceans”

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 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.

So you use “the sky being rolled up as a scroll” to substantiate the solid dome? So this solid dome was made of paper or papyrus or leather?

The ancients would have clearly seen the clouds, since they probably had better eyesight than we do, and they would have seen them change shape, and be higher and lower, as we can see with our poor eyes. They would have clearly known that rain comes from clouds. They would clearly have been able even to see above the clouds when they were low, or when they were on mountains, or have seen clouds in river valleys. This would have been their most natural understanding, not a dome they could not see. So if they imagined a dome, it did not come from their understanding; it would have contradicted their understanding, or been superimposed on their understanding.

No one is saying that the raquia is atmosphere. That is a “straw man”. Raquia is interpreted as expanse (not atmosphere) or vault (empty space). Thus the distinctions between in and across and into are specious. Everything seen in the sky has been placed into it and moves across it. All of the prepositions apply to each of them, whether birds, heavenly bodies, clouds (water).

Whether you expect a solid sky, or whether you expect the term to be used, is not definitive for whether scripture is reflecting a false cosmology. The point you are making I think is that scripture is ignorantly using a false concept and thus cannot be trusted. But if I call the sun a big hot ball, does that mean that I do not understand what the sun is? So the whole bit about a solid dome is really an exercise in futility in any case. And when a reasonable interpretation such as expanse is given, then to insist on an unreasonable solid dome as the actual real meaning seems to be an exercise in proving the errors which one would not be happy without.

The “waters below” are the waters below the firmanent or expanse. The dry land separated from the waters which were called seas. Technically Genesis one doesn’t even talk about ground water.

27

No one is insisting on a solid firmament because they want an unreasonable concept or an error in the Bible. It’s just what the Hebrew word means. Choosing to translate it “sky” or “expanse” makes sense in English because that is what we call the blue space above us and nobody uses the word “firmament” (an anglicism of the word used in the Latin Vulgate that meant “vast solid dome of sky”) like older English translations. There was no Hebrew word for atmosphere or vapor covering, because they didn’t know that was what the sky was. Why would they have a word for a concept that didn’t exist?

Knowing that the Hebrew word referred to a solid expanse has inspired some really fun theories from literal Creationists, like this one about the crystalline canopy.

What the author of this Creationist piece says about the meaning of the Hebrew is correct. It’s not like anti-Bible, anti-Creation people made up a definition of raquia as part of their nefarious plan to discredit Scripture.

28

The sky is not atmosphere. The sky is not vapor covering. Of course they would not know that was what the sky was, because it wasn’t. The sky is space. Space in which vapor, atmosphere, planets, stars, birds and bats could be. If it could only refer to a solid metal dome, then it could not be transparent. Nor could it be opened to let water through. So it would be a term that had to be manipulated to suit undomelike purposes. Even originally.

The point of most literal evolutionists in citing the issue of “raquia” is not to explain how raquia helped people to understand nature, but rather to point out that raquia is a term of error. It would be like saying that I would be stupid to say that the sun is a ball of fire, since obviously, if I was a modern scientist, I would know that the sun is much larger than any ball, is not filled with air, doesn’t have a distinct outer surface, etc. If I were to use such a term, I must be a primitive ignorant, who could only understand the sun in such a term. Really.

More than that I am not going to say, since I find this quite a useless and unenlightening discussion.

29

But johnZ, interpreting the raqia as an undefined expanse above the earth does not literally fit the description in Genesis 1 anymore than interpreting it as our planet’s atmosphere does. That’s because whatever the raqia is, according to Genesis 1, (a) the heavenly bodies - sun, moon and stars - are in it while (b) there are waters above it. Thus the waters are above the heavenly bodies, not below them. And that does not fit physical reality as we now know it - but curiously it does fit physical reality as we know it was conceived everywhere else in the ANE. The conclusion is then obvious.

Regarding your comment: “The point you are making I think is that scripture is ignorantly using a false concept and thus cannot be trusted…” - not at all. That may be your take on it, but its not a necessary one. To take up and use a mistaken cosmological understanding of the time as a vehicle for teaching what is essentially theology, renders the product neither ignorant nor untrustworthy because the cosmology itself is not the teaching point. In the same way if some theologian of the late 1800’s like Hodge or Warfield had made a theological point using the ether as a device in his illustration, we wouldn’t necessarily hold that against his point today. I’ll let Christy’s helpful comments on this take over here. And you can also read almost any of the evolutionary Christian authors like Denis Lamoureux for an extended defense of that.

Christy, I’m appreciating your comments and insight here. As to johnZ’s question to you about why sun/moon/stars would be presented in Genesis 1 as coming 4 days after light, I think the framework view answers that best. Light and dark, sky and waters above/below, and dry land - these subjects of Days 1 - 3 are inanimate domains…while the heavenly bodies, birds, fish, animals, etc of Days 4 - 6 are animate denizens of the corresponding domains. (Yes, the heavenly bodies are ‘animate’ from the ancient point of view rather like the birds, fish, etc are, because they move about, especially the sun, moon and planets - and because all the ancients considered them to be living in some sense, and of course most often divine.) Thus if Day 1 is to create light and dark, the denizens that occupy and rule light and dark naturally must ‘slot in’ on Day 4. Just like if Day 2 is to separate the waters with the sky, then Day 5 must be where the denizens of water and sky - the fish and birds - ‘slot in’, and so on with Days 3 and 6. So I think that, given their overarching literary structure, the author(s) really didn’t have much choice as to where to put the creation of sun, moon and stars.

1 Like
30

The parallel Framework hypothesis seems at first glance obvious. But it is neither necessary nor conclusive. And it has non-synchronous aberrations. With regard to light on day 1, we have no cause for the light, no reflection for the light, and no location for the light. So different from the domains of water and earth, it is not a domain, nor are the sun and moon placed into the light, but they are placed into the expanse or vault or dome created on the second day, not the first. The birds fly in the expanse/dome created on day 2, and fill the earth exposed on day 3. The plants created on day 3 seem not to fit the parallelism of domain/ inhabitant. They should have been created on day six as living things to inhabit land. Seas did not appear until day 3, … The birds and fish created on day five fill the land and seas created on day 3.

There is also a chiasma hypothesis, but I think it is also contrived, like the parallel framework.

31

I should quit on this raquia thing, but I want to ask you this question: do you believe that ANE and the recorders of Genesis did not want to talk about clouds, did not understand clouds, or thought that clouds were above the sun and moon, rather than nearer to ground than sun and moon?

32

Perhaps rather than ‘domain’ and ‘denizen’, I should have expressed it as ‘dominion’ and ‘ruler’. Light and dark are the dominion ruled by the heavenly bodies since they among all things produce light and thus drive away darkness; therefore Days 1 and 4 are indeed parallel. Meanwhile, sky and the waters below are the dominions ruled by the birds and fish respectively for obvious reasons. Yes, the heavenly bodies occupy the sky as well, but since they ‘fit’ as rulers of light/dark whereas birds don’t, to make the structure ‘come out even’ the author(s) must put the heavenly bodies into the Day 4 <-> Day 1 coupling, leaving birds to the Day 5 <-> Day 2 coupling. And yes, birds do spend some time on land but they hardly ‘rule’ it in the sense that they rule the sky, or in the sense that the animals rule the land. Thus each created being has to ‘slot into’ the respective days in order for the literary scheme to ‘come out even’.

As for the plants: There is literary structure here too. If the dominions of Days 1 - 3 (light, darkness, sky, water, dry land) are clearly inanimate, and the beings of Days 4 - 6 are - to the ANE mindset - clearly animate (heavenly bodies, birds, fish, animals), then plants are the ‘bridge’ between the two. For they are at the same time inanimate - no movement, no blood, no breath - and animate - they are ‘born’, grow and die. And so they bridge the inanimate with the animate. Parallel to them, perhaps, are the humans of Day 6, who ‘bridge’ between the animate and the divine - for like the rest of the animate creation we humans move, live, die, etc, but unlike the rest of the animate creation we have the image of God upon us. And so there is a progression, from inanimate dominions (Days 1 - 3) bridged (plants) to their corresponding animate rulers (Days 4 - 6) bridged (humans) to the divine ruler of all.

33

Genesis 1 is uninterested in the clouds; it never mentions them whether by name or indirectly. ANE observers could tell as plainly as we can that the clouds are beneath the heavenly bodies and even, at times, beneath the birds in their flight; thus we can infer, I think pretty easily, that the clouds cannot be the waters above the sky. How? Because sky is where the heavenly bodies are set, and sky is what the birds fly across, as we are told on Days 4 and 5. Thus sky (raqia) must be above the birds (though perhaps not by much) and must contain the heavenly bodies upon it or within it; and so the waters above the sky cannot be the clouds that are beneath the sky, heavenly bodies, and (at times) birds. Rather the ‘waters above’ must be the upper remnants of the deep ‘tehom’ - exactly as we are told on Day 2.

34

It really isn’t the point, because it’s not even an error. It was the perfect word for the time and place. God didn’t give ancient Hebrew the word raquia to mislead people or to instruct people. It was their word, their concept, and God inspired the account that used it. The real point of bringing it up is to point out the obvious fact that it doesn’t work to take the Bible literally or scientifically in everything it asserts. It’s not to say the ancient Hebrews were dumb. A solid dome was the prevailing concept until the 16th century.

The language I work in has a pervasive system of animacy agreement. There are sets of pronouns, adjectives, quantifiers, and verb conjugations for animate subjects (people and animals) and different sets for inanimate subjects. The sun, moon, stars, and certain other nature words are animate subjects, because at one point they were considered deities. When they translate Genesis, they don’t somehow change the language to make sun, moon, and stars grammatically inanimate to match scientific reality and avoid putting an “error” in the Bible. They use the words in their linguistic inventory and the linguistic inventory of the language is shaped by the culture’s worldview and context to a certain extent.

35

One person’s gymnastics is another person’s plain reading. There are a lot of hidden/difficult messages in Scripture, that is why there is so much discussion and so much written about it. There is a lot that is hard to understand, a lot that is seen only after thinking and researching. There are many things in Scripture that its original audience and even its human authors didn’t understand entirely.
1 Peter 1:10 ff Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing

36

Don’t give up yet, John. So let raqia mean beaten out, like beaten metal. On day one, God’s first act of creation was to say “let there be light.” That initiated the Big Bang. There was stuff everywhere. The dense hot plasma condensed into energy (light being one form of energy) and matter (matter absorbs light and causes darkness). The matter was first in the form of hadrons, made of quarks. Some of these became neutrons and protons. When one proton caught hold of one electron, an atom of hydrogen formed. It is the simplest element and the universe was full of it. Hydrogen is still by far the most common element in the universe. The dense plasma made of energy and particles of mass spread in all directions – beaten out – until it was very very thin. But here and there it formed into clumps and the gravitational pull of these clumps caused them to attract more gas and grow and become huge gas clouds, and as they became bigger they became denser until the combined gravity of the gas pulled the gas inward and put it under great enough pressure to form stars and other heavenly bodies. All this out of hydrogen, which is the main component of water, so much so that hydro is a prefix which indicates water.
So on the second day God spread out, beat out the dense universe so that it became thin in places with heavenly bodies made of hydogen, and later water, in it. He called the raqia sky. He separated the waters (hydrogen) above from the waters (hydrogen) below. We think of above as up and below as down, but if you remember we are on the surface of a sphere, up-above is out, and down-below is in toward the center. When we stand on the surface of the earth and look out at the sky, we see the depth of space and the heavenly bodies that God created on the second day, the waters above. The surface of the earth is ¾ water, so when we look at the earth we see the waters below. The birds fly across the “face of the raqia” which is the atmosphere, the part of the space between us and the planets that faces and is closest to us.
Genesis 1 is not a scientific treatise. There are lots of details left out. But none of it is incorrect. It works perfectly.

37

I used to find that kind of concordism convincing too, Marg. But then slowly I came to realize that it was simpler, more parsimonious, to just let the words of Genesis 1 stand as they are. Because when we do that, we do find that they literally line-up with a kind of cosmological ‘reality’. Precisely. One-to-one. But it is the reality of the culture in which Genesis was written (and if you think about it, that’s what every other text does - line-up with the cultural backdrop out of which it was produced - and so it makes perfect sense that Genesis would too). It is not the reality of today; and if today’s is more scientifically accurate, that is irrelevant to a text that is not, and was not meant to be, a science text.

And so when Genesis 1 speaks of water, for example, I find it simpler now to just understand it to literally mean water in the liquid state, of the same kind that both we and the ancients normally encounter…not a symbol for, or representation of, elemental hydrogen in its gaseous or plasmatic state (both unknown to the ancients). And when I do this, I find I don’t have to stretch my interpretation quite so much - such as by saying that the “waters above” are one thing (cosmic hydrogen gas/plasma) while the “waters below” are something entirely different (liquid water). Or by talking about the universe being stretched-out during cosmic expansion, and identifying that with the raqia in one place - while elsewhere identifying the raqia with simply Earth’s atmosphere. Or by neglecting the fact that Genesis 1 speaks of there being water above the raqia - for if the beaten-out raqia corresponds with the expanding cosmos itself, in what sense is there water “above” it? And so on.

These concordistic theories are interesting, to be sure. But only ANE cosmology truly and consistently lines-up one-to-one with Genesis 1, historically/grammatically interpreted. And I find that powerful evidence for uncovering the original and literal meaning of the text. Now, whether God might have some kind of concordistic system “packed in” there as well, to satisfy us modern folks, I guess I couldn’t say… but I doubt it, since (a) the concordistic systems really do seem rather arbitrary, (b) they do not line-up as well as the literal meaning of the text does with ANE cosmology, and © they by definition surmise ‘mystery meaning’ and thus violate the principal that a text primarily means what it originally meant to the original audience, not what we secondarily might find in the same text for us.

38

Without getting into endless discussions on one particular word or term, I want to make a point that seems to be missing in these discussion, regarding the ancient near east outlooks and cultures. Genesis 1 has been understood to show a very distinct and indisputable difference in outlook regarding creation; distinct from every other narrative and religious outlook in the ANE. Such pronounced differences are not simple accidents or trivial differences that can be put to one side - thus it does not follow that we would understand Genesis by considering ANE cosmology. Nor would the Hebrew language of that time be understood any better by studying ANE literature. The difference is shown repeatedly in the OT, to be central to the main purpose, which was to demonstrate to the world that Israel was different, peculiar and distinct in every way from Egypt, Babylon, etc.

1 Like
39

Everything you said makes sense to me except the bolded part. Don’t you think it is kind of standard when studying ancient languages and cultures to do comparisons with other documents and artifacts of the same region and time?

I agree the comparisons don’t explain what the Scriptures meant to the Israelites, but it can be used to shed light on the customs and “common knowledge” of the time that provide a useful context for understanding in what ways Israel was peculiar and different and what ways they were a people of their time and place. Understanding for example, what slavery looked like in the rest of the ANE ( and seeing it wasn’t anything like the 18th-19th century American South) gives insight into how the Torah pushed Israel to a more compassionate standard, and helps us understand how God could have “condoned slavery.” Israel was not peculiar and different in every way imaginable. As far as scientific knowledge goes, they weren’t more advanced than their neighbors.

I think “cosmology” can be a deceptive term because that connotes beliefs about origins, which clearly were distinct in Israel’s case. They did not have the same cosmology as other ANE cultures. But it does give insight into Genesis to know what differences were being highlighted. I have appreciated when authors have used the term “cosmic geography,” because then we are talking just about beliefs about how the physical world is set up based on observations and deductions. It seems to me there is ample evidence that their “cosmic geography” was not that different from the rest of the ANE world.

40

@Christy

Difficult to answer you in a short blog discussion, but we need to focus on one major point, and that is the religious content of Genesis (and naturally extend this to the Bible). I have spent a relatively small amount of time studying ancient history (my student days a long time ago, now that I think of it), and I have a lasting impression of, for example, how Egyptian rulers exaggerated their exploits, to ensure they were considered greater than their predecessors. The religious narratives I came across struck me as very, very different from Israel. The context and norms were also vastly different. I think that much of what we see in Israel after the Exodus may reflect the influence of Egypt, and not necessarily show how, for example, Abraham understood and believed.

I am trying to give a brief response on the language of Genesis 1 (and perhaps 2) - I think it speaks of God creating in a way for us to understand God ordering (commanding, the Word), in such a way that we may see our work and rest as reflecting God creating (without restricting God to human limitations). The terms must be in the language available at that time, and language inevitably reflects the understanding and outlook of the people using it. The notion of cosmology, as you point out, may be misunderstood, but the notion of God creating the heavens and earth would not be understood any other way but that of the Hebrew who had the faith of Abraham.

1 Like
41

Christy, I usually think of “cosmogony” as being the term that focuses on origins, while “cosmology” focuses more on structure, or as you said, “geography”. But cosmology does have a connotation of origins as well, so point taken. “Cosmic geography” then.

As far as Genesis 1 being theologically quite different (in fact unique in history at its time), while sharing the same cosmic geography - yes, I’m totally on board with that. One God of the entire cosmos, with everything else being created by him, and who creates by the power of his sheer word/will rather than anthropomorphic exertion - these ideas are, I believe, unique for their time. A creation that is intentional and blessed and good, and humans who are all in the image of God, male and female, king and commoner alike - I think these things also stand out in contrast to the rest of the ANE. There’s lots more to be said on these differences, which we of course see as revelatory though we take them so much for granted today.

2 Likes