@gbrooks9, Where was it shown? I have dealt with the Hebrew here but I apparently missed something that isn’t found in the lexicons that I have at my disposal. All I saw was people saying that it could mean a hard dome or a hard surface, which is quite different than saying it did mean that, and also quite different from understanding it metaphorically or phenomenologically. All these things matter.
But again I ask, why refuse to answer the questions?
Bible scholars are in general agreement that raqia referred to something solid. (That is the word translated ‘firmament’ in older versions of the English Bible, based on the Vulgate’s use of firmamentum, which was a Latinization of the Septuagint’ sστερέωμα. The Septuagint was a 200 BC translation of the Hebrew.) Etymological studies of translation are not the same thing as diachronic etymological studies in a single language. Etymological studies of translation are a foundational part of Biblical word studies for the task of exegesis.
@LT_15 Are you disputing that it is true that Bible scholars generally agree on the connotations of raqia? Or are you just claiming that Bible scholars are generally wrong, because the word does not connote something solid? And if you argue that Bible scholars are just wrong, and it doesn’t connote something solid, what scholarship or evidence is this argument based on?
@LT_15
I apologize; I have confused you, as the person who responded to my first comment, with the person I was responding to in that comment, and I didn’t go back and check. Sorry!
I do however wonder a little at the ground you have covered in your argument; you went from asking “why would you look up etymology? Only the meaning and how it’s used matter,” to wondering why I was looking in the dictionary, to claiming only the ancient Hebrew word mattered.
By an “anachronistic modern scientific understanding of the world,” I am referring to the beliefs common in the time and place where the ancient Hebrews lived. The cultures they were surrounded by believed the sky was a hard dome. (Relatively) modern scientific understanding is that it is not. If the Hebrews disagreed with the cultures around them, it would be surprising if they did not say so.
[quote=“LT_15, post:60, topic:5694”]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.
[/quote]
Genesis refers to the sky as an expanse of beaten metal. Job compares it to a hardened mirror. Your “at best, ambiguous” is hard for me to swallow, especially after the additional examples come up with by others. Individually, they may be ambiguous; collectively, the chances that the human authors coincidentally referred to it like that go way down. What do you mean by saying they depend on reading a modern understanding back on the text?
Of course there are waters above. I was just wondering if clouds had any more water than the air we breathe does, and what that does to your interpretation of waters above–>expanse–>waters below/land, if they were about equal.
ETA: Thanks, @Christy, for your contribution! I read the article you linked and it does look as though I may have given ground too easily on ‘raqia!’
Thank you for introducing some semblance of order to the discussion. I look forward to @LT_15’s response.
[quote=“Christy, post:64, topic:5694”]
Etymological studies of translation are not the same thing as diachronic etymological studies in a single language. Etymological studies of translation are a foundational part of Biblical word studies for the task of exegesis.
[/quote]Actually they are not. They are part of diachronic studies (by definition, in fact). Etymology deals with the early stages of the development of the meaning and use of a word, which is part of diachrony.
As to the definition of raqia, citing BioLogos will not be convincing to those who do not share the presuppositions that go on here, although I enjoy the few conversations I have had here.
When you talk about Bible scholars on the definition of raqia that is a rather large discussion because the “biblical scholars” are not completely in agreement. But part of the problem of biblical scholarship is that it becomes a sort of echo chamber. That is one reason why plagiarism is becoming more evident and more prevalent. Which is to say, the fact that a large number of critical scholars say that raqia always means something solid is not all that helpful or relevant. As the old saying goes, a thousand people saying something false will not make it true. It doesn’t matter how many biblical scholar say it. It only matters whether it is true.
There are a few options:
It might actually be true that they thought that. They were wrong. That is not the same as saying that the Bible said that or accommodated it. That’s a major step everyone should be reticent to take.
It might be true that they didn’t think that but since they aren’t here to defend themselves, no one will stand up for them.
It might be true that the ANE view of a solid dome was subsequent to the biblical teaching and thus the anachronism is thrusting a later view back on the writings of Genesis.
It might be true that the word raqia does indicate something solid and God used it metaphorically rather than literally. (It still strikes me as odd that, given the past conversations I have had here with people rushing to say Gen 1 is poetic and not intended to address actual events or demand actual beliefs, all those people are now silent and demanding that we treat this one word as literal. It seems to me that you can’t have it both ways).
I don’t have time or space to develop these here but it is sufficient to show that there are legitimate options.
The evidence for the meaning of raqia comes from a variety of sources. Lexicons establish a semantic domain. Any individual usage is derived from that domain. When we look at the individual uses, there are not a lot but there are enough to show that it does not always have to mean something solid. When we add to that the evidence that we all know that the expanse is not solid, there is no reason to keep arguing it is aside from some need to prove something about the Bible.
What if the word raqia doesn’t mean something solid in these few instances? What changes for you? (That’s not rhetorical. I actually wonder what changes.)
Consider a very basic part of evidence. This raqia is solid and is between the waters below and the waters above keeping the two apart. So where do the people live and the birds fly? And where is the air we breathe? There is no place for those things unless the raqia is not solid or unless it isn’t actually keep the waters apart. God called the expanse heaven, not a dome or a flat object. He places lights in the heavens and birds fly in the heavens (which is poetically repeated in the second phrase as across the face of the expanse). In other words, everything in the actual text leads us to believe this is an expanse, not a solid thing.
The only thing leading us to think it is solid is the words of biblical scholars who have nothing to gain from it aside from acceptance by critical scholars. What is lost if we see the raqia as an expanse? I would say nothing is at stake. We know the raqia is not solid. So why keep insisting it is? .
Any of these three scenarios can also be applied to Genesis 1… to explain why an unplausible scenario of creation is in the Bible.
If you can entertain any of these three options, why shouldn’t we all entertain similar scenarios regarding Creation?
[quote=“Lynn_Munter, post:65, topic:5694”]
I do however wonder a little at the ground you have covered in your argument; you went from asking “why would you look up etymology? Only the meaning and how it’s used matter,” to wondering why I was looking in the dictionary, to claiming only the ancient Hebrew word mattered.
[/quote]You brought up the etymology of a word which is helpful at times and in some ways, but not determinative and frequently irrelevant. You also talked about looking up an English word which isn’t helpful to know what the Hebrew meant. So those are related issues to the larger topic of what a word means.
[quote=“Lynn_Munter, post:65, topic:5694”]
If the Hebrews disagreed with the cultures around them, it would be surprising if they did not say so.
[/quote]Why would it be surprising? And what if the Bible passages we are talking about that show that the expanse was not solid is them saying so? Or perhaps they did say so but it isn’t preserved for us. Or perhaps they didn’t know what others believed? Or perhaps it wasn’t even a category of thought for them? In other words, there are all kinds of reasons why your proposition might not be valid. And there is no independent and conclusive evidence that the Hebrews believed in this solid vault or dome. The evidence is that people living now say they did thousands of years ago. They might have. But it may well be that the Bible corrects that rather that accommodates it.
[quote=“Lynn_Munter, post:65, topic:5694”]
Genesis refers to the sky as an expanse of beaten metal. Job compares it to a hardened mirror. Your “at best, ambiguous” is hard for me to swallow, especially after the additional examples come up with by others. Individually, they may be ambiguous; collectively, the chances that the human authors coincidentally referred to it like that go way down. What do you mean by saying they depend on reading a modern understanding back on the text?
[/quote]Where does Genesis refer to the sky as an expanse of beaten metal? And Job compares it to a hardened mirror. He doesn’t say it is. Those have very good explanations that do not require the expanse being solid. And where are the additional examples? The evidence of the OT does not indicate that this is a solid vault or dome. Look at all the usages and imagine them both as a solid dome and as something else and I think you will see that something else usually makes better sense.
Regarding Dr. Enns article, it is not a good one on this topic. Enns is writing from a presupposition that doesn’t actually look at the evidence. It only works if you ignore a lot of evidence. I think we need a higher standard, even here on an informal discussion forum. When we see what God says about the expanse in Genesis 1 that sheds quite a different light than what Enns seems to allow. Job is clearly poetic or metaphorical so this ongoing insistence that that is something teaching a literal hard barrier is mindboggling.
Nevertheless, I appreciate the discussion.
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:68, topic:5694”]
Any of these three scenarios can also be applied to Genesis 1… to explain why an unplausible scenario of creation is in the Bible.
If you can entertain any of these three options, why shouldn’t we all entertain similar scenarios regarding Creation?
[/quote]I think you are confusing categories here because these are different types of discussions. But I don’t find Genesis 1 implausible apart from certain presuppositions which I don’t hold. But I think we could entertain similar scenarios. I am not sure how that is relevant to this discussion. But I will let that lie for now.
Were you able to find time to answer the questions I asked you? I would be most interested.
@LT_15 @Mervin_Bitikofer @Christy @gbrooks9 @GJDS @Lynn_Munter
My original comment concerning the reference to Job was meant as a discussion starter and I believe it has accomplished its purpose very well.
It appears that we have one major source of consensus:
The Bible is not meant to be read as if it were a science textbook. (not really surprising)
The Bible, while written within a certain cultural context that involves a variety of beliefs regarding the natural world, was not written to teach beliefs or conceptions regarding natural phenomena to people. Therefore, this whole discussion does not undermine the authority of the Scriptures in any way.
Another major consensus is:
The Bible is full of poetry. (also not really surprising)
Whether this poetry draws upon ancient conceptualizations of the natural world which were actually believed to be true (such as the sky being a solid dome), that is a point of contention in this thread.
We have considerable divergence on the actual beliefs of the biblical authors here. I believe @Lynn_Munter made a very valid point here:
While a few of those references might be explained away through some gymnastics… It’s very easy to find new ones. For example… Some of you will probably be at my throat here for involving the Book of Revelation, but I think this is a really interesting one, Revelation 6:13-14:
13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, like unripe figs dropping from a tree shaken by a great wind. 14 The sky receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place.
Again, Apostle John doesn’t seem to have any problems whatsoever with describing the sky as something that can recede like a scroll being rolled up! Even the stars are described as if they simply fall down from the sky to the earth! I think this is beautiful apocalyptic imagery, something that is most naturally understood from the perspective that the heavens are a flat solid dome on which the heavenly bodies are placed. No, this is not about ridiculing the Scriptures. This is about understanding the intention of John’s imagery.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion, everyone 
.
Blessings,
Casper
I have answered the questions already. I have no interest in discussing points I’ve already discussed. @Christy does a fine job summing up the findings on “firmament”. Between Job and Genesis, we have a pretty clear idea of how the term “firmament” was being used. It’s the same sense of the word that Medieval Jewish writings use the term… presenting heaven as multiple levels with rigid partitions acting as floors for each level.
The 3 scenarios that you offer are perfectly good explanations for how implausible 6 day creation stories could find their way in Genesis.
And you produced them all on your own.
You are deliberately ignoring the obvious interpretation to ask this question.
Most people pre-Renaissance, if not nearly all people, believed the sky was solid, including many quite sincere and dedicated followers of the Bible (and the Torah). If the interpretations you are proposing were apparent, why were all those people wrong for the majority of the Bible’s history?
You ask for additional examples and say Enns’ article isn’t good. Rather than fish out every reference upthread which you can examine for yourself, here is an article I found which contains many different references to a cosmology very different from our current understanding, and yet which is an internally consistent worldview. The latter parts of the article diverge from our discussion here, but I feel linking still outweighs trying to quote the relevant information.
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre13.htm
As far as why people keep quoting Jobs, poetic and metaphorical imagery is quite cabable of telling us things about how the authors of it see the world! “Teaching” is perhaps a step farther than any of us would take it, but if we are interested in how Job viewed the world, or the cosmological imagery of his language and culture, it is certainly relevant!
Ok, and inasmuch as it can be translated as a space or expanse, it is because it is described as a bowl, or dish, or arch, or vault, which all connote contained spaces. The space is there but so is the container of it, or something which defines its shape.
I am also interested in how you picture the ‘waters above’ as above the sun, moon, and stars ‘in the heavens.’
The ‘face of the heavens’ is also an interesting phrase, since its opposite, the face of the earth or face of the ground, clearly refers to a solid surface. Face of the waters could theoretically mean in the midst of the waters, I suppose, but I’ve always pictured it as meaning the surface of the water.
Again, you’re drawing conclusions based on ignoring the obvious. Everything does not lead to the conclusion you wish to draw, and declining to swallow your interpretation is not mindboggling.
Sorry for going on so long, apparently I am enjoying the discussion too!
Unless they all refer to the same thing which is not a solid dome. That point seems to be completely without consideration, which is strange, given the fact that we all know there is not a solid dome, and we all know that language describing the heavens is poetic all throughout Scripture. Yet here, some insist on literalistic interpretation. Strange …
I think your John example is a good one that supports my point (not yours). Clearly, the language is poetic or symbolic, just like the language of the sky being a hardened dome or a bronze mirror. You even call it beautiful imagery and then apparently deny that the the idea of a solid dome can be the same. Again, strange.
Thanks. I am going to try to wind this down. I appreciate your responses…
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:72, topic:5694”]
I have answered the questions already.
[/quote]I never saw the answers, even though I went back and looked. I don’t think Christy did a fine job at all of summing that up. She missed several key points and cited a weak article. That’s not convincing to anyone who is a bit familiar with the issues. I appreciate Christy and her kind interaction with me when I have been here. I just think that was off the mark.
You on the other hand seem rarely to interact substantively with the points made in our discussions. This has been another instance of that. That’s disappointing, though uncommon here. I appreciate that many are willing to interact kindly.
Or perhaps it’s not as obvious as you say it is, particularly when you consider the evidence as a whole. What if the obvious point is that Genesis did not refer to the sky that way, but uses a term that was misunderstood or a term that was used poetically or metaphorically as Job (from the same time period) clearly did? You say it is obvious, but perhaps that is so only because you decided that is what it must mean and are unwilling to consider the evidence brought by the whole of the topic in Scripture (lexical, literary, comparison, etc.).
Thanks for the article. I browsed through it rather quickly, but I think it partakes of the same sort of errors–of asserting a point and then reading everything in light of that assertion. It is, as we say in preaching sometimes, a point in search of a text.
You say that poetry is quite capable of telling us authors see the world. But that misses the point that the best poetry is not about how the world is but about representations of ideas. In other words, it can’t be used to construct cosmologies. The imagery cannot be made to walk on all fours in that way. It is not designed to bear that weight.
You want to conceive of the raqia as a bowl, but that’s not really the image. The raqia is what separates them, and yet it is expansive with space in it and with objects in it. That means it isn’t a hard object as you conceive. But notice how you skip right over that claiming it is hard object even though it has all these thigns in it. The bowl imagery simply won’t do for that, IMO. I don’t really picture the waters above the earth as you do because I have no need to see this hard surface. It is an expanse. In that expanse is water (as it is today at times), celestial objects (as it is today), fowl (as it is today). I continue to find it mindboggling that this is controversial.
I am not ignoring the obvious. I think I am point out the obvious, that God calls the raqia :“heaven” and puts all this stuff in it. And you just wave that away with the wave of a hand. For me, it needs more consideration than that.
Thanks again
I think I understand your outlook, but I want to suggest to you perhaps, another dimension to poetic expressions. I tried to illustrate this point using a line from my poetry, but I think Christy got a little too analytical. The use of “sapphire” and “velvet” as metaphoric terms, was literally inspired by something I saw in a display cabinet, which included a sapphire placed on dark velvet - which somehow evoked an out-of-space shot of the earth taken from some satellite or telescope, that I had also seen.
My point is that poetry seeks to express feelings and associated ideas/thoughts that best fit these feelings. It is quite possible to draw from a number of matters, be they experiences, images, and outlooks, that happen to be part of the poetic writing experience. People often make more of some poetry, mainly because the lines may evoke other personal feeling and subjective aspects of themselves.
The gymnastics may come after (or if) someone decides to deduce some philosophical or ideological matter from a poem. Even then, a poet probably does not take such things seriously, and at times may learn what moves the reader to the deductions he may make from a poem. Often the poet is surprised by some responses to his poetry.
@LT_15, I find it very difficult to correspond with someone who seems so willfully opposed to following a point of logic. I just don’t have the time for it. Here are your verses… torture them as much as you like.
Gen 1:6 "Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
Gen 1:7 Thus 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."
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven.
Gen 1:20 "Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.”
Eze 1:22 “The likeness of the firmament above the heads of the living creatures[fn] was like the color of an awesome crystal, stretched out over their heads.”
Psalm 148:4: Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, And you waters above the heavens!
Job 37:18 "With Him, have you spread out [here, “spread out” is the word for firmament used as a verb!]
the skies, strong as a cast metal mirror?
When I consider the evidence as a whole, I see references to the foundations of the earth, pillars of the earth, ends of the earth, pillars of heaven, etc. and so on. I don’t see anything calling the earth a sphere or describing the heavens any differently from other cultures which believed the sky was a hard dome.
You asked for more examples of biblical references to cosmology. The article had a lot of them, in addition to the ones from this comment section. Even if you dismiss them individually, the picture they paint together is compelling.
I didn’t say poetry told us how the world is. I could just as easily have said ‘how the authors think about the world;’ i.e. the ideas they have about it. You are acting like I missed the very point I was actually making.
I am glad you added the qualifier IMO, because to me it seems fairly obvious that a bowl has space in it and can have objects in it, or things could even be embedded in its surface.
It seems we have extremely different ideas of ‘obvious.’
You should try being on my side of it. You have contribute nothing and refused to answer the questions that I think would help me understand your position. I am perfectly willing to follow the logic, which is why I asked the questions to begin with. You, however, are unwilling to engage in any meaningful exchange. I much rather have a discussion with people who will at least make an attempt to substantiate their point. You won’t even try.
I am not sure the point of the list of verses. That’s not in dispute. The meaning of the words and the point of the passages is what is in dispute here. There is nothing in any of those verses that requires a hard dome or a solid barrier apart from starting with that presupposition before you get to the verses. You know that.
You strike me as someone who can’t answer the questions and therefore keeps avoiding them by reflecting it back to me. I would rather you just answer the questions.
I refuse to be drawn into a eternal “no you didn’t” discussion with someone who assesses the evidence with dogma instead of with a reasonable interpretation of the agreed facts.
As do I. But why are you interpreting those to mean something we know that they don’t mean when there is a poetic interpretation that makes perfect sense? That’s what I still don’t get. It is as if you are completely ignoring the genre and the literary characteristics in a quest to prove something about the Bible.
“There is no indication, however, that the author conceived of it as a solid mass, a “firmament” (AV) that supported a body of waters above it” (K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1:1-11:26). This idea that the author or readers conceived of it as a solid mass does not come from the text. Period. It’s not there. Every proof that the Hebrews believed that (possible) or that God intended that (highly unlikely) comes from people thousands of years after the fact commenting on what those people back then believed. It does not come from the Hebrew and certainly not from the Scripture.
A bowl does have a space, but the point is that that is not really the image that Scripture uses. And furthermore, we know that is not the case, so why are some insisting it is the case? When we look at what we know from the world around us, and we look at Scripture, we see no necessary conflict unless you start with a conflict. I don’t start with the conflict so I am able just to see the text what for what it says. I think that is the major difference. I think you and others start with the idea that there is a conflict and therefore it makes it much easier to find the conflict.
“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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