And yet how few translators share your sense of creativity!
One translator wants to compare the firmament to how hot the molten metal for a mirror is. His is definitely a minority opinion.
So what other aspect of greatness or mightiness might we infer from a bronze mirror? It’s size?
Hardly. Ancient mirrors were small… smaller than one’s whole face.
Brilliant? … as in a brilliant reflection? Hardly. A bowl of water throws a much more clear reflection.
The only thing parallel between a “divider” of massive amounts of water and a bronze mirror is the hardness of a metal mirror.
You (or I) misunderstood this - I simply assumed that the point on the scroll had been settled, not demanding a further argument.
Now I am trying to see what we are arguing about (if indeed we are doing that?). Yes, you say stretched out like a flat surface, and I am making the point that it describes an activity, that to the writer may be analogous to stretching out a scroll. I am inclined to read more in this part of Revelation, but that is another matter. So what is our point of disagreement or departure?
My example was meant to illustrate the experience in writing poetry - and when we write poetry that we hope others would read and appreciate, we expect our readers to perhaps see things (in this case of beauty and care of the creator) that I as a writer may have, but also hoping readers may also be conscious of things I had not thought of when I wrote that verse. Yes we use similes and metaphors, but the point of the poem is to convey feelings and insights that may be shared with others. This approach places aesthetics way, way, above terms, definitions, and factually correct statements. That is why I mention poetic license - I know sapphire is not a planet (to be humorous) and so do you, but we may compare its beauty to that of our planet, and also high value…
So … if I can make a comment, our differences may stem from (a) my insistence the passages discussed deal more with acts, activities, and such matters that are important to the writer, and these are illustrated using physically meaningful (at least to the writer) terms such as ‘scroll’ and ‘firmament’, while (b) you seem to emphasise the physical aspects in the writing, and insist it illustrates some cosmologically significant outlook in ancient times.
Perhaps both (a) and (b) are relevant, but I would put (a) way ahead of (b). Perhaps you think otherwise.
Casper - not I was not seeking to be offensive, but to say that any deductions we make about how others in the past might have interpreted (as opposed to seen) things are suspect.
Accordingly I think “rigid dome” is a strongly deductive conclusion, rather than a phenomenological description of what appears. Think what reasoning goes into the modern unpacking of ANE reasoning: “Because they believed in an endless ocean above the sky, they must have thought something solid kept it out - and it probably resembled a dome. And so they must also have believed, like Spike Milligan, that the rain came through holes in the sky equipped with “floodgates of heaven”. And they must have believed the solid sky had to be supported on pillars…” etc
So the simpler phenomenological suggestion that the heavens are what separate lower waters (seas) from upper waters (clouds - which everyone knows are wet), but extend upwards therafter to the stars and beyond, is bypassed. Likewise, “windows of heaven”, instead of being interpreted in terms of the “lattice or network” the word actually means, pretty reasonably describing the nebulosity of clouds, goes even beyond triple-glazing to “floodgates” - as if any Israelite looked out of his floodgate to see what the day was like.
It’s immensely mind-expanding to realise a true view of the world can be given completely apart from a material scientific description, whether that “science” be modern or ancient - and the biblical account is like that because scientific descriptions were simply not part of their worldview.
I’m glad you raised your last point, George, because it makes mine nicely. Genesis specifically says that the partition was called “the heavens”: that was its name. It was the only Hebrew word for “sky” apart from the occasional translation of “thin cloud” as sky in the versions.
Later biblical writers referred to “mid-heaven” as the realm of the birds, and “the highest heavens” (perhaps to be identified with Paul’s “third heaven”) as the holy dwelling of God himself, even above the stars.
The “firmament” extends, then, from the ground up, and is a spatial division. That is, when they thought about it that way - after all, though you have said the sky actually extends to the earth, we’ll often speak of the sky as the blue stuff “up there”, rather than say we walk through the sky to work. The Hebrews no doubt did as well.
Remember that there was already a space above the primordial ocean in Genesis - over whose surface the Spirit of God hovered. There was no need to describe the creation od a space that intuitively always existed above the ocean.
So the job of day 2 was to split the waters of that ocean in two with an expanse - an expanse upwards as well as across. The upper waters (the clouds) stayed up in a wondrous manner known only to God (but specifically wondered at in Job without concluding clouds are solid or have a solid support). Note that the Genesis text doesn’t say the raqia is to hold up the upper waters, but to separate them from the lower waters.
Yes, it does have to be a layer of something. But it can’t be a “flat layer” (You left out the word “flat” for some reason) because there are things in it that shine, that fly, that praise God, etc.
The Job verse which uses the word “firmament” as a verb is most interesting; one might equate “firmament” and “firmament-ing” with “partition” and “partiion-ing”!!!
Yes, but what is Elihu’s point?
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:105, topic:5694”]
In the future, @LT_15, I would avoid the phrase “you haven’t answered my questions” - - and then not specify which questions someone hasn’t answered. If I hadn’t been so completely turned off by the repetitiveness of your accusation, with no help as to what you think hadn’t been answered, you probably would have got more conversation out of me sooner.
[/quote]I have actually given the questions multiple times (Post #26, #100). You even quoted them post #47. In fact, this post in which you complained I hadn’t given the questions was a response to my post which had the questions (#100 … go look at it). That tells me that you aren’t actually reading what is being said. You are interacting with any thought at all because you don’t even know what is in the post. Why is that?
[quote=“Casper_Hesp, post:106, topic:5694”]
Isn’t this clearly a definition of sky in the cosmological worldview of the biblical author?
[/quote]Why isn’t it a definition of the raqia? The raqia is called “heaven” and then he proceeds to talk more about what is found in the heaven which is the raqia. How does that not help us understand what the raqia is and what it is like?
Well that’s a bit naughty. He showed it was not covered by a domed ceiling, but rather covered with multiple flat ceilings. So instead of one solid raqia, they actually had several. This really hammers home the point that ANE cultures believed the sky was solid.
Lambert argued that the raqia of Genesis 1 was solid, and corresponded to the “skin” ceiling of Enuma Elish.
‘All water known to man either comes down from the sky or up from the ground. Hence, the sky must be water. The first chapter of Genesis provides the closest parallel to the division of cosmic waters. On the second day of the week of creation, God put a ‘firmament’ between the upper and lower waters, which corresponds to the ‘skin’ in Enūma Eliš IV 139.’, W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 171.
Lambert was a member of my community, so I’m very familiar with what he wrote on Genesis, in addition to his massive scholarly contributions.
Oh dear. I know Andrew Perry personally (he’s also a member of my community). His entire article is very typical of his approach; lots of hand waving and dodging around the issue. Do you know his final conclusion is that we just don’t know what the raqia is or what the Hebrews thought of it? It’s hardly surprising that unlike Lambert he has not submitted his work on the raqia to professional scholarly peer review.
I am not sure what you mean by “inspiration” or what all you think is involved in it. I do believe there is orality as well as textuality involved in the precursor to the written text, but the written text is inspired by the God who cannot lie. That has to shape our view of the text.
But this question seems to me to be unanswered: Why is everyone operating from the assumption that raqia means something that is clearly wrong? What if God’s description of the raqia in Genesis 1:6-8 as something that contains things is the correction to the worldview? What is God’s description of the raqia in Psalm 19 which declares his glory is the correction of that worldview?
In other words, it is entirely possible (actually quite probable) that the very argument you are making is the answer to the argument you are presenting. Remember, there is no incontrovertible reason to demand that raqia only mean a hard or solid layer. The semantic domain is broader than that. When we take that semantic domain to the text, we see that God may in fact use an idea that ancients believed and then correct it by pointing out his creation that fills that raqia. At the very least we see that God defines the raqia as the heavens, and then fills it with things. It may well be that the connection is the spreading–as a metal worker spreads metal by beating it out, so God spread the heavens. The similarity is in the spreading, not the nature of what has been spread.
Read for instance, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament for a brief scholarly discussion.
@Jon_Garvey… yes, but if you look at all the other references to “the sky” or “the heavens” it becomes clear that the Firmament is not the sky itself… but the upper limit of the Sky.
If the Bible had expanded more on the one use of “firmament” = “sky” - - you would have a case. But it doesn’t.
So however else we disagree, we agree on a few things:
(1) The idea of a single “ANE cosmology” is refuted by Lambert.
(2) The Babylonian cosmology looks nothing like the usual “ANE cosmology” representations, as in Peter Enns, or even John Walton, for example.
(3 Lambert parallels the biblical raqia with just one of the Babylonian flat layers (not a vault) - at least as described in the atypical Enuma Elish - and chooses a skin ceiling, not a hard metal shell (seems to reflect the biblical “stretching out the heavens like a tent” as much as any other text). How justified Lambert’s parallel is, I personally doubt - the skin is that of Tiamat, split in two like a flat fish as a covering for heaven, rather than an expanse created by God to “separate the waters from the waters”. And nothing in the biblical text suggests the raqia is skin, but then we agree that nothing in Enuma Elish suggests it’s a solid dome. A flat tent keeping out a vast cosmic ocean is hardly intuitive phenomenology, and certainly not a solid metal vault.
(4) The matter is controversial enough that even Christadelphians can’t agree amongst themselves.
That’s 4 points we agree on.
By the way, in an earlier post you mentioned ancient visual representations of the solid raqia as evidence of the ANE worldview. I wonder if you’d be so good as to provide links to some, as I’ve never been able to find a single one.
Try a word study on the name of the firmament, “Shemayim”. Like that of the equivalent name for dry land, “Eretz” it expands upon it quite extensively.
These are very minor semantic quibbles - it’s perfectly proper to describe something ‘shining in the sun’ and ‘shiny’ means ‘reflective’ - which don’t really help your case that poetic imagery allows non-obvious interpretations to supersede more obvious imagery.
It’s more common for a rare word to have a narrower definition, but I am open to hearing more about what texts require another definition.
I thought we had clearly established that ‘in the raqia’ presents no more problem than it would to say something is in a bowl, in a dome, or in a vault.
If this is the strongest point you can make for your case, or if you haven’t time to get into it further, perhaps there is nothing to be gained by further discussion. I have genuinely enjoyed the chance to examine these issues with you, and I wish you all the best!
I’d have to disagree strongly with the arguments you offer here. Chazaq is clearly a feature of the firmament as understood by the Hebrews, and you seem to agree, but you refuse hardness or firmness as a reasonable translation for reasons that I have trouble identifying.
I don’t know where you get the assessment that it is “never hard”, since “hard” seems to be an extremely compelling translation for Ex 3:-8-9 (“harder than flint” seems almost as clear as you can get!) and most lexicons and translations seem to view this translation as fairly uncontroversial. Not only that, but it strikes me as quite obvious that the chazaq that the firmament and the mirror are supposed to have in common is not their mightiness (never seen a mighty mirror) or some sort of metaphorical toughness, let alone their loudness or their heat. In fact, there is only one obvious way in which the mirror can answer to this description. On the whole, I think it is stretching it and avoiding the obvious to try to find some other shared feature that can keep the raqia from being identified as something firm or hard.
I recognize that you profess to not be concerned either way, and that you are open to the conclusion that the firmament is hard, but I don’t think you have made the case that there is no evidence for this conclusion. I would also note that the conclusion harmonizes quite well with other passages, including the apparently solid nature of the firmament discussed in Ezekiel 1, the admittedly poetic description of the pillars of the earth (to hold up what?), and the bursting open of the floodgates of the sky. For this last, you have tried to make a case that this does not refer to openings in the sky, but the parallelism with the openings in the earth through which the water emerges, the general usage of this word to refer to a chimney, a sluice with an opening for water, a window, or a lattice (multiple openings) and the simple fact that it refers to the “opening” of the sky makes any such effort extremely implausible. The idea that the waters above do not seriously parallel the waters below and that the passage in Gen 1 only in fact refers to “water vapor” seems anachronistic and intrinsically unlikely. On the whole, I’m not sure what else is needed to reach the conclusion that the firmament is solid, though I think that more could be said. What am I missing here? What is the counter-evidence that can increase the probability of an alternate conclusion?
I might have overreacted a bit there, excuse me for that. Often I add personal qualifiers to my words when I want to emphasize that I’m not speaking with any kind of scholarly authority on a particular topic. It saddens me when it appears people use that caution “against” me. But this was not your intent here.
As for the distinction between how the ancients “saw” and how they “interpreted” things, I think the border is very fuzzy at best, or even non-existent. This is so even within a culture, but when translating it to another culture that becomes even worse. Something that might have been obviously seen by them can require extra interpretation by us (and vice versa). An additional point would be that the blue expanse of the heavens is very easy to “see”. Besides the fact that you can’t touch it, the phenomenology is equivalent to that of a sea (mostly its exquisitly blue color but also its extent).
Our worldview goggles are a huge influence when we try to assess whether something is “intuitive” or “deductive”. That’s why I would like to highlight the following two quotes from what you wrote:
I think these sentences from your writing show where the largest amount of cultural baggage is imported in your line of reasoning. Why do you get to decide what counts as intuitive or deductive? Isn’t that a typical case of begging the question if we’re trying to understand what was intuitive to people living in ANE cultures?
As an aside, a solid dome is phenomenologically equivalent to a tent, as long as it keeps those heavenly waters up in the air ;).
Christy wrote:. Here is a scholarly essay by Paul Seely published in Westminster Theological Journal.
Your reply was: Seely was not a good effort. Too many assumptions without support and a failure to seriously consider alternate explanations
I would like to know if you read the whole article and if you did why do you think the Westminster Theological Journal would publish it. Westminster strongly supports Biblical inerrancy why would they publish an article that could challenge that position if it was “not a good effort”.
Later you wrote: Regarding Seely, I don’t have time or space to be more specific.
I think you should take the time. If you could produce a better effort than Paul Seely to to refute his article, I am sure Westminster would love to publish it.
Thank you George, that last comment of yours really helped to clear some final things up. I think I can agree with you. The downside is that we have nothing left to quibble about now .
This is misleading. Who’s talking about “a single ANE cosmology”? Lambert confirms, with a host of other scholars, that ANE cosmologies shared a number of features, one of which was the widespread concept of a solid firmament.
No, that isn’t true at all.
This is even more misleading. Lambert’s argument is that the Hebrew raqia is solid, just like the Babylonian firmaments, and like the solid firmaments of other ANE cultures. A skin is a solid object, just like a mirror is a solid object and a tent is a solid object.
No. That’s like saying “Whether the KJV is the only inspired Bible is so controversial that even Christians can’t agree amongst themselves”. That’s particularly bad sleight of hand.
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