Sorry, LT_15, my words were a bit edgy. I’m a little put off by having been hacked by somebody I guess.
I wasn’t implying that you are not a serious student of the same yourself, and should not have used words that invite that inference.
Regarding James’ Isaiah reference, I think his approach makes more sense than yours – “water not returning to the heavens” pretty much covers it all, whether you are referring to evaporation or the “raining upwards”. But the main point is: why are we trying to get modern science lessons from a message that is not even remotely about that topic much less about modern science? So trying to defend even incidental assumptions found in scriptures as if the modern scientific arena is the hill on which all truth must be engaged and won is (to my mind) to have already given in to Scientism.
Etymology gives me the history of things the word has meant in the past, which frequently helps explain to me the nuances of the meanings the word bears now. Of course just because it meant something in the past doesn’t mean it still means that, and sometimes connections can be very tenuous or completely coincidental. But overall you can usually learn a little more than you knew before, even if it’s just background information.
I appreciate that you say we have to look at the Hebrew word, (agreeing with my first comment) but I don’t see that you’ve actually done so. I would love to know what you find out!
But it is also worthwhile to wonder why this word has consistently been translated, both into Latin and later into English, as such a rare and specific word instead of using the common Latin word for sky/heaven “caelum” or plain English “space” or “expanse.” Usually translators try to make it as readable as possible. Why would English retain the Latin word instead of actually translating it?
I discounted it because it was not in the Merriam-Webster definition, and because it seemed clear to me that that meaning was derived from the meaning “vault:” i.e. if I mention a bank vault, I could be referring either to the physical walls surrounding the vault, or to the space within the vault. Both meanings are valid!
My whole point is that you were too hasty to dismiss an alternate viewpoint, so it is not necessary for me to convince you mine is the right one, only that it is a possibility. Your insistence that I am being overly literal and too ‘scientific’ I will leave to others to judge!
@Mervin_Bitikofer, Thanks. I totally agree with your question of why we are trying to get modern science lessons from the Bible. That is exactly my point. People are saying that Isa 55:10 (in this instance) is not giving us a true modern science lesson because rain actually does return to the heavens. It is not intended to address that and there is no reason to think otherwise. If you were to ask people today, “Does rain go up?” most would say no; it comes down. And they would look at your weirdly for even asking the question. If you clarified by asking “What about the evaporation cycle?” they would probably roll their eyes because denying the evaporation cycle was not the point of their answer. It was, like Isaiah, that rain comes down. And in Isaiah’s case, it waters the earth and provides food. It does not simply return without accomplishing what it came down for (which is what the text says). That’s why I say you are imposing a modern scientific question on the text as a pretext for saying the text is wrong. I don’t think we should use it to answer modern scientific questions. That is not in the author’s mind.
@Lynn_Munter, I have a number Hebrew language sources here (BDB, HALOT, TDOT, TWOT, NIDOTTE, etc.). If you will tell me which ones you prefer, I will give you what they say. The reality is that none of them say a lot because there isn’t a lot of data on the word. It is fairly infrequent in the OT. Most appeal to the beating out of a metal plate, or the creation of it by beating out a piece of metal as a craftsman would do. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to refer to the heavens as the expanse created by God.
The issue of it being a dome is not confusing. When we look up, it looks like a dome. Again, to me, to insist that the text meant it was a hard dome is more than the text can bear. That is a modern view being imposed on it. There is, instead, a perfectly sensible view that it is expanse, a space up there. And that’s why I appeal to your literalistic view of the text. Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that they use a word that means a hardened dome or a vault. You insist that they meant that literalistically, whereas I say that they quite likely could have understood that it was just a space up there, an expanse between heavens and earth.
As for why it has been translated a certain way for so long, many of those choices are tradition. They are kind of grandfathered in, so to speak. I don’t know if that is the case.
Going off of Merriam-Webster for an OT Hebrew word is not a particularly good method.
Lastly, I don’t think I have too hastily dismissed this point. I have considered over the years and found it wanting, both exegetically and scientifically.
The use of “mirror” seemed a little odd to me, until I remembered the frequent occurrence of a mirage where an image of a distant place can be seen appearing like a reflection due to the refraction of light through temperature Inversions, common in desert areas.
Perhaps that is why that somewhat unusual term was used, perhaps not.
Thanks for the Hebrew knowledge - your summary is perfectly adequate for this discussion! I see that the ambiguity of the word does indeed go all the way back to the beginning, which perhaps answers why translators have been so cautious with it!
I feel you’re putting words in my mouth that I neither said nor meant. I have repeatedly emphasized that I am only insisting that the text COULD have meant a hard dome. I would also advance that the authors could have borrowed the idioms of the surrounding cultures, which we know believed it was a hard dome, in which to speak poetically, just as we might say ‘the ends of the earth’ without meaning that the earth is flat and physically ends. Others here have described the possibility that God put it in terms that would not have troubled the ancients with greater disturbance of their worldview than was necessary at the time. And I have also said that your explanation of an expanse is a possibility as well.
…You are insisting that I am insisting on one literal explanation, but I would insist that that is your insistence.
I was not using M-W for Hebrew! You said to look at the current meaning of ‘firmament’ and I was trying to oblige you! Haha, I don’t know what else can be said here.
The imagery of “the dome” is not really the point here.
The Firmament is a solid divider between the blue waters of the earth and the blue waters of the sky.
Whether it is flat or a dome or even a bowl really isn’t an issue.
In fact, the image of a mirror may be the Hebrew preference for a flat firmament, rather than a dome-shaped firmament.
It is funny to read you accusing me of reading something “literalistically” … when we have a flat polished slab of metal being compared to the firmament.
@Lynn_Munter, thanks for the response. It is not my intent to put words in your mouth. I suppose the word “could have meant a hard dome.” Perhaps I misunderstand, but it seems like you and others were insisting that it did mean that. I don’t think there is any reason to argue it meant that, aside from the desire to see the passage conform to a preconceived notion. If we understand the word to refer to the space or the expanse, the passage makes perfect sense. It doesn’t make sense to say that the sky is a hard dome, and the word doesn’t require that. So we should not argue that, IMO.
I understood you were using M-W for firmament. My point was that “firmament” is the wrong word to look up. I should have been clearer on that. My apologies.
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:49, topic:5694”]
It is funny to read you accusing me of reading something “literalistically” … when we have a flat polished slab of metal being compared to the firmament.
Seems pretty figurative to me!
[/quote]This is exactly my point. It is figurative and yet people (like you apparently) are using it to argue that they thought it was a solid divider or a vault. I don’t understand how you can insist that it was a solid divider while also acknowledging it is figurative. If it is figurative, as you say, then why insist that it is a solid flat thing in the sky?
But none of that answers the questions I posed. Can you help me understand where you are coming from by answering those questions?
… I was never claiming the text was wrong. It teaches that God’s word is effective. That all of the cultural assumptions surrounding the teaching and in which it is embedded for its expressions and examples --that all those incidentals must meet some modern scientific standard before you can give its message your stamp of approval, – that all comes from folks holding YEC or similar positions.
But I’m glad we do agree that Scientism is a big culprit in this. We just disagree about who has been unwittingly hijacked by that.
If we flip back to Genesis 1:7-9, we read:
"
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament “sky” [in King James this is rendered “Heaven”]. . .
And God said, Let the waters under the “sky” be gathered together unto one place…
The stars of Heaven control the flow of waters from above the firmament …these are the
windows where the rain comes from… the connection between the blue water of the sky
and the blue water below the sky is obvious.
Gen 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Gen 8:2
The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
Mal 3:10
. . . prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
Whether the Hebrew preferred the world view of a dome or a flat firmament … that is another question.
@gbrooks9, Thanks for that. Apparently I was not clear in my question. You said that the firmament was a solid divider and when I asked for evidence, you cited Gen 1:7-9 which says nothing about a solid divider. In fact, none of the passages you cite speak of anything like a solid divider. Which brings me back to my question: What is the support for the firmament being a solid divider?
All Gen 1:7-9 says is that there is a space or an expanse (the heaven which is the first heavens) between the water above and the water below. That is hardly controversial. It is well known that such is the case. Your appeal to the “windows of heaven” seems to support my claim of your literalistic reading. You seem to think those are actual hard barriers such as a window. But those aren’t actual windows. They are obvious metaphors. We even use similar types of metaphors today to speak of a heavy downpour. I don’t think those are literal physical hard barriers at all and I know of no reason to think we should interpret them that way.
@Mervin_Bitikofer, Thanks. I must have misunderstood. You seemed to agree that the text was wrong because it says the water doesn’t go back up when, scientifically, it does. My point was that the text didn’t intend to be a scientific presentation of the water cycle, but rather a discussion of how rain helps the plants to grow. The fact that it doesn’t say more doesn’t make the text wrong. It is right in what it says. It should not be marked down for not saying what it doesn’t intend to say.
So I confess that I am still not quite following you on this. Who has claimed that something must meet a modern scientific standard before it can have a stamp of approval? I think you are misunderstanding most of the YECs claims or arguments in that respect. I think it better to view it as this: When the Bible speaks to something scientific, it is correct though it may not be precise or complete. That is not to say that everything the Bible says is scientific, or that every comment intends to say everything that could be said.
I don’t want to be too involved here. The automated web genie on this site just called me out for posting 29% of the posts here and asked if I was giving other people a chance to speak. It apparently doesn’t account for the fact that I am responding to those who directed comments at me.
I don’t think Job does that at all. That is a metaphor or a simile in which Elihu asks Job if he can spread out the heavens like God did. The point is not to say anything about the nature of the universe but to say a whole lot about the nature of man compared to God: “When you look up at the sky you see a vast expanse, hot with the desert sun as if reflecting off a bronze mirror. Can you create that? If not, then who are you to question what God does?”
You are taking a passage that is about one thing and making it about something else and abusing the literary nature of it to do it.
You are correct about Genesis though it says nothing about a liquid ocean. I am not sure where you go that from. The question is, How is that any different than what happens now where the expanse keeps the waters above from the waters below? You are imposing your views on the text when it is not warranted. All Genesis 1:7-9 does is establish that there are waters above and waters below and they are separated by space, by a raqia. That is exactly what we have, although the windows of heaven opened up here last night and gave us over an inch of rain. It literally rained on our parade this morning. (That’s not a metaphor. We were wet when it was over because the waters above came down.)
This is what I mean by you being literalistic. You insist that Job was talking about some solid metal but you fail to realize that the most natural reading of that is metaphorical. Then you talk about the windows of heaven as if they are actual windows (which in those days would have been open all the time or covered over with some sort of animal skin or shutter most likely; in any event, they would not have been water tight to hold back a lot of water).
It seems to me that you are so desperate to find something to pick on that you miss the point of the text and instead read your own conclusions on to it. But there is nothing in the text that requires your understanding. It is all quite consistent with what we know of the world around us.
@LT_15 The reason I brought it up in the first place was because you were accusing someone else of using the Job quote to “argue against” Genesis. Perhaps I should have stopped to ask what part of Genesis you thought it would be contradicting; I see nothing inconsistent at all between the two, and I think the case for giving the Hebrews an anachronistically modern scientific understanding of the world gets weaker with each additional biblical reference to a solid barrier sky, even if the references are ambiguous.
On your interpretation of ‘the waters above’ an expanse (of sky or air, presumably): I am mildly tempted to get overly science-y by figuring out the water density in the air right above the ground (the humidity) and comparing it to the water density of the actual clouds (which, if I am reading you right, you believe are the ‘waters above’), and possibly do some averaging to account for different climates.
But if I did so, I probably would deserve to be called to task for disrespecting poetic license, among other things.
Discussing this topic with you reminds me of discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses who oppose Birthday Parties.
You aren’t making much sense, and I don’t think there is any combination of words from the English language that can convince you that you aren’t making any sense.
Okay, now I am really confused. The only person here who said anything about arguing against Genesis was @johnZ. I have no idea what you are talking about. I agree that there is nothing inconsistent between Genesis and Job, though I don’t know what you mean by an anachronistic modern scientific understanding of the world. I further am not sure where you find all these references to a “solid barrier sky.” I think we have shown that those references are, at best, ambiguous and depend on reading a modern understanding back on the text. There is no textual reason to believe that a firm barrier was in the mind of God or the human author. The word doesn’t require that.
I also don’t understand your argument against the waters above.Are you suggesting that there are no “waters above”? Of course not, because you acknowledge it. So I am not sure what that is about at all, and I am not sure how poetic license has anything to do with that. I have no doubt that they did not understand the water cycle as we do but again, I am not sure how that helps anything. It seems to me that the point is clear that there are waters above and waters below. We know where rain comes from. Why would that have been different back then?
I apologize for my apparent obtuseness here but you don’t seem to be responding to anything I actually said.
I would take us back to the point of Job 37 which is essentially this: “Job, are you able to create the universe like God did? Since you are not, then why are you complaining about what God does?”
To try to read some understanding of the nature of the universe into that is simply putting more weight on the text than it can bear.
If I understand you correctly, you are insisting that they understood a hard barrier of some sort. You are imposing your view of that on the text. You haven’t shown that God or the author of Genesis or Job meant that. In other words, you have decided that Job and Genesis refer to a solid barrier of some sort and you are imposing that on the text. You are not getting that from the text. That is a pretty simple issue and it has nothing to do with birthday parties. Ironically you bring up Jehovah’s Witnesses. In my encounters with them, they never want to talk about actual issues. They just go back to their pet lines that they learn by rote. You can take them straight to the Scriptures and they will blatantly refuse to talk about it. It’s kind of like what you are doing here. I have asked you some pretty simple questions. Why not answer them? Those questions would actually help me to understand more about where you are coming from on this. As of now, if you are not insisting on some sort of solid barrier, then it is not clear what you are talking about. The problem is not the lack of English words. It’s that you are not communicating clearly here and addressing the issues.
I think my sense is pretty clear. If you don’t understand it, I will try to clarify. Here it is in a nutshell: There is nothing in the text of Scripture that requires us to believe God or the human author intended some sort of literal dome or hard barrier. How can you not make sense of that? I have explained it several times and demonstrated it from Scripture. If you think that doesn’t make sense, then I am not sure what else to say.
If you think I am not making sense, then show that and I will clarify.