Hebrew conception of the earth/universe

[St.Roymond]

@Daniel_Fisher

I keep asking for these supposed literal (physical) diagrams drawn by the ancients to show me this… so far all I’ve been given on this page is a top-down geo-political map of Babylon, and the admitted “spiritual” (non-physical) depiction of Pharoah holding up the universe.

I would be HAPPY to be corrected if I’m mistaken… but I’ve searched the internet myself and found nothing, and no one here has seemed to show me anything else.

If there are these supposed diagrams from antiquity written by the ancients showing how these ancient civilizations understood the literal, physical cosmos, I am most ready and eager to learn and to be corrected.

You’re making the same false dichotomy again: your view of “reality” says there is physical and there is spiritual and that they are not the same. Their view said that reality is both, and if something was merely spiritual or merely physical then something was drastically wrong.

@Daniel_Fisher

it seems like you are completely conceding that they understood that the bodies that went to sheol were “spiritual” or of some other kind of existence than physical… and that these spiritual bodies do not have any local, physical existence in our physical cosmos…

No. What went to Sheol was the real person; “spiritual” was just the mode appropriate to Sheol. And if that person came back from Sheol, they would resume their normal physical expression.

An illustration occurs to me: trying to divide the spiritual from the physical back then would be very much like trying to divide the nature of light as a wave from its nature as a particle, which can’t be done – but in certain experiments it clearly behaves like a wave while in others it plainly behaves as a particle (except when no one is looking in which case things get truly weird). Even in Sheol, “physical” was an attribute of the person; the difference was that in Sheol the person’s reality “behaved like” a ‘particle’ while during life it “behaved like” a ‘wave’.

@Daniel_Fisher

But you are still insisting that they perceived sheol itself as a literal, physical place, with a local existence within our cosmos, and not of the same kind of spiritual / other-worldly existence as the bodies that inhabited said sheol?

Yes – they had no other category for what was a part of the same world they lived in; Sheol was physical though people who went there were “expressed” in spirit form.

[St.Roymond]

@Bill_II

Here is a paper that argues for the three tiered cosmos based on the Hebrew used.

I’ll say first that the analysis of מִתַָּ֑֜חַת (mit-takh-aht) is spot on; with the prefix מִ it functions as a proposition and there’s no way to avoid that.

Then there’s this:

Moreover, there is no hint in the text that “daylight” was caused by sunlight. The sun, moon and stars were all seen as bearers of light, but daylight was present even when the sun was behind a cloud or eclipsed. It made its appearance before the sun rose, and remained after the sun set.” Some scriptures suggest that in the biblical worldview the day has its own light independent of the sun. Pro 4.18 refers to the first light of daylight (ʾôr) rather than the first light of the rising sun. And the rest of the verse speaks of the full light of the day (yôm) rather than the full light of the sun.
Ecc 12.2 distinguishes the light of the day (ʾôr) from that of the sun (šemeš ), the moon (yārēaḥ) and the stars (kôḵāḇîm). Isa 5.30 speaks of darkening the daylight (ʾôr) rather than darkening the sun and Amo 5.8 says God darkens the day (yôm) into night (lāyəlâ). In Job 38.12 God asks Job if he has commanded the morning (bōqer) to dawn the day rather than the sun. Bōqer is the term used in the refrain “and there was evening (ʿereḇ ) and there was morning (bōqer)” in Gen 1. So, within this cosmological context Gen 1.3–5 makes perfect sense.

I was hesitating to point this put because it just seems so bizarre to us moderns who are raised with heliocentric astronomy since before we can read, yet it’s true. The point of “Light – be!” in Genesis 1 isn’t to get a day/night cycle started, though it does point to that, it’s to take on the standard ancient near eastern understanding of light as something with its own eternal existence by declaring, no, light was commanded into being by YHWH-Elohim. That didn’t change the idea that light had an existence apart from any source, weird as that sounds.

The analysis of רָקִ֖יעַ (ra-qi-ah) “raqia” is superb, with six more points than I would have made – as I keep saying, it means something solid.

Awesome contribution!

[Terry_Sampson]

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

radiant light from the great deep (earths core)

The “great deep”, תְה֑וֹם (te-home) t’hom – is not “earth’s core”, it is the waters that filled the primeval universe; it is a Hebraicized form of “Tiamat”, the chaos-monster. It is both above and below the heavens, pushed up from the earth-disk by the solid dome firmament and kept below the earth because the earth was raised by pillars that kept it from being inundated.

If you want to connect it to science, do what some ancient scholars did before the invention of the telescope (to put it in perspective): they concluded that the universe started out as the smallest thing possible and expanded rapidly beyond comprehension, filled with fluid that was too dense for light to propagate, and when it thinned enough by spreading out as the universe grew then God commanded light to shine. [note that these scholars just described the opening period of the Big Bang.

@graft2vine

at the surface of the deep (earths surface) as the earth cooled

No – the t’hom, the great deep, was endless and had no surface apart from the action of the Spirit of God meditating over it; it was water all through (or fluid, if you want to go with those ancient scholars).

@graft2vine

the earth cooled, 4.5 billion years ago.

No cooling; the earth-disk came cool and dry when YHWH_Elohim pushed the waters off to the side and upwards.

@graft2vine

he waters above the heavens arrived to Earth

No – the waters “above the heavens”, i.e. what the Genesis writer calls “waters above the expanse” were there before the earth-disk was since they were part of the t’hom, the great deep.

@graft2vine

The sun and stars were created before Day 1 and the moon on Day 1

That call the writer a liar – it is directly contrary to the text.

You can make up all the science fiction you want, but don’t pretend it has anything to do with Genesis since you are ignoring the original worldview, ignoring the meanings of words, and ignoring plain statements of the text. What you are doing is not theology because it is not exegesis, it is made-up “ooh – shiny!” thinking that arises from not understanding what you’re talking about yet trying to fit it to something to which it has no relation.

@Daniel_Fisher

I’m still patiently waiting for someone to actually show me one of these supposedly real diagrams actually drawn by those people back then… until then I maintain all my aforementioned skepticism.

I showed you two and referenced two others. I’ll try again:

Those are both ancient Egyptian drawings, both from the eleventh or tenth century B.C.

Watch this from about 11:00 to around 20:00; he covers Egyptian and Israelite views–

Origins Today: Genesis through Ancient Eyes with John Walton

[St.Roymond]

= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =

@Daniel_Fisher

All while there is every indication that they regularly thought and wrote of these things in metaphorical and poetic terms?

But there isn’t any – that’s what you’re not seeing because you’re still interpreting everything through a modern worldview.

@Daniel_Fisher

The book of Job (often recognized as one of the earliest writings of the OT), in the same chapter that references the “foundation of the earth” (that gets included and illustrated in those erudite diagrams attached above), also references the morning stars singing, the sea being shut out from the land by doors and bars to keep it from going further up onto the land (I’m sure they saw those literal physical doors and bars every time they went to the beach),

Job is going astray from the topic – besides which however old the story may have been it was almost certainly edited during or after the Exile.

@Daniel_Fisher

So the ancient Israelites then must have believed not only in a literal, physical sheol, but that sheol had a literal, phyiscal mouth, a literal physical stomach, and a literal appetite, literally gets excited to meet new arrivals, that it had literal ropes to bind people and drag them down, that Sheol could enter into literal legally-binding agreements and covenants, it had literal gates and literal bars, and that Sheol is a literal, physical uterus?

It’s possible to speak metaphorically about what you think of as literal.

You keep shoving aside two things: one, that the three-tiered universe was based on what they observed and direct logical conclusions from that; two, that they didn’t think of reality as we do.

[Daniel_Fisher]

I think weve reached an impasse in this discussion… let me give some final thoughts and explain why I remain entirely unmoved and unconvinced, and then I’ll (tentatively) give you the last word…

@St.Roymond

I showed you two and referenced two others. I’ll try again:

Again, the two (Egyptian) ones that you showed me are reflecting their spiritual, or otherwise figurative and non-material cosmology. You’ve acknowledged as much and Dr. Walton confirmed this in the video you submitted as well…

“That’s not a picture of the material cosmos… it’s really not intended to be a material picture, they didnt believe that if they walked too far they would step on her toes or something…” (emphasis mine).

But then you (and Dr. Walton apparently) turn right around, after acknowledging that the Egyptian descriptions do not reflect what they believed about the physical/material cosmos, and insist that Hebrew descriptions do reflect what the Hebrews believed about the material cosmos. After giving the Egyptian description of the cosmos plenty of latitude to be metaphorical, symbolic, spiritualized, poetic, or otherwise non-material… you (and Dr. Walton) then insist that Hebrew descriptions of the world must be understood absolutely literally as to how they viewed the physical/material cosmos… and insist that it be understood in the most woodenly literal manner.

You (and Dr. Walton) seem to happily grant that the Egyptian descriptions do not reflect their understanding of the material cosmos (you couldn’t travel too far and step on her toes)… but then turn right around and insist that the Hebrew descriptions do reflect what they thought of the material cosmos… e.g., that there were literal, physical, material foundations holding up the sky, just like in those erudite diagrams… One couldn’t travel too far and step on the toes of the Egyptian godess, but apparently one could travel far enough to physically bump into the literal, material pillars of heaven?

The inconsistency is glaring to me… it is for this kind of uncritical and formulaic thinking in general that I’ve never been impressed with Dr. Walton.

(Not to mention, he claimed that there are 300 (!) dwarf planets in our solar system “exactly the same as Pluto”?!? According to NASA there are five (and even those are hardly identical to Pluto). (Pluto & Dwarf Planets - NASA Science) I get that astronomy is not his field but really…)

My impression of Dr. Walton before, and which was affirmed by this video, is that he is the kind of scholar that reads and uncritically absorbs some nice theory from his studies (in this case, that the Hebrews believed the material cosmos to be in such and such manner), then becomes so enamored with said theory and how it fits a narrative that he sees everything through that lens… and as such he will see it and force it onto the text regardless of whether it really aligns with the actual data, and can’t notice the glaring inconsistencies in said theories (Egyptian cosmology doesn’t reflect how they viewed the material world, but somehow the Hebrew cosmology magically does).

(It may be uncharitable of me, but i see the same pattern in his Pluto illustration… it appears that he uncritically absorbed a significant misunderstanding and got the idea of there being 300 confirmed dwarf planets in our solar system “exactly the same” (his words) as Pluto somehow… (the astronomer he was listening to presumably was referencing some kinds of bodies in that area but would hardly have claimed they were “exactly the same as Pluto”) Then, without bothering to fact-check or otherwise clarify this claim with easily available facts or experts, he incorporates the error into his erudite lecture as it fits a nice narrative, unaware of how poorly it aligns with reality.)

So i have nothing further to add at this point unless you can give me a clear and justifiable reason why you (and Dr. Walton) are perfectly willing to allow Egyptian descriptions of the cosmos to be understood as symbolic, spiritual, metaphorical, or otherwise non-material/non-physical, but adamantly demand that the same courtesy not be extended to Hebrew descriptions of their cosmology, insisting rather that they must be understood only in the most literal and strictly material manner.

@St.Roymond

Job is going astray from the topic – besides which however old the story may have been it was almost certainly edited during or after the Exile.

Again, I don’t see any further profitable discussion here… i pointed out a passage that is so overflowing with the most glaring, obvious, and overt metaphorical and poetic language (right alongside one description that is habitually taken woodenly literal), to demonstrate just how deeply Hebrew cosmological language is steeped in metaphor… Your best rebuttal is to suggest that said passage was likely edited after the exile??

This is like when i am in discussion with someone, and they claim, “Jesus never said X…” Then after i point out 42 times across all four gospels where Jesus said X, my correspondent’s response is simply, “well, the evangelists almost certainly edited what Jesus said…” if Jesus statements about X are so pervasive and ubiquitous, the claim of later redaction is hardly a convincing response. similarly, given how ubiquitous is the metaphorical language about supposedly literal, material aspects of Hebrew cosmology, later redaction doesnt strike me as a very convincing appeal.

respectfully, then, I see this not a rebuttal engaging with the facts presented, but rather as an evasion and refusal to engage with said facts. If you genuinely believe that the implications of the glaringly obvious metaphorical language are nullified by appealing to the possibility of post-exilic redaction, you are welcome to do so, but then I’m afraid I have nothing further to discuss…if any further observations that support my perspective that i raise from any early Old Testament book will simply be hand-waved by claim of likely post-exilic redaction, then i fear there is little more to discuss.

Since i truly think we’re at an impasse I’ll leave it there for now and let you have a last word, Genuinely appreciate your thoughts and respectful discussion though!

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

We recently returned from Egypt, and here is one of the representions of Nut as the sky, with the activity of mankind underneath and the sun and moon I presume at opposite ends. It is amazing that the original colors are still vivid in many of the temples, as they used minerals as the pigments.

[St.Roymond]

@Daniel_Fisher

Again, the two (Egyptian) ones that you showed me are reflecting their spiritual, or otherwise figurative and non-material cosmology.

It’s not figurative; and again, your equation of “spiritual” with “figurative” is something they would reject – spiritual and physical were just manifestations of reality, so if you want to say that “spiritual” = “figurative”, to be consistent with their worldview you have to say that "physical = “figurative”.

@Daniel_Fisher

You (and Dr. Walton) seem to happily grant that the Egyptian descriptions do not reflect their understanding of the material cosmos (you couldn’t travel too far and step on her toes)

No – they definitely showed their understanding of the physical universe; the images aren’t meant to portray what human eyes would see but to show the reality.

@Daniel_Fisher

why you (and Dr. Walton) are perfectly willing to allow Egyptian descriptions of the cosmos to be understood as symbolic, spiritual, metaphorical, or otherwise non-material/non-physical

I have done no such thing. You are still missing the connection: they would not have understood your division between “physical” and all the others. The picture with the gods as parts of the universe is their picture of reality, much as we might picture atoms with attendant electrons as reality. Indeed the activities of the gods were regarded as more real than what they could touch and see.

In your modern worldview you regard physicality as the seat of reality. As long as you insist on that you will never understand the ancient worldview! I’ll try another analogy: think of a marble statue that has been painted – the physical world is just the paint, the statue is the reality. I noted before that the view approaches that of Plato; I presumed you would get the reference to his allegory of the cave. Think also of the Hindu view of physical existence as illusion; the Egyptians didn’t go that far but they were closer to that than to modern materialism.

[St.Roymond]

@jpm

It is amazing that the original colors are still vivid in many of the temples, as they used minerals as the pigments.

It also has to do with the type of stone they used; the pigments were actually absorbed by the surface layer, and thus couldn’t flake off. And if I remember my archaeology course right, the same pigments when used where sunlight reached could fade, though I think the blue was more enduring than anything else.

Is that the temple of Hathor?

BTW, looking at that I’m wondering if the two bare spots were deliberately defaced. I downloaded the image but I can’t get good enough resolution to tell if there are any chisel marks; though they had good enough stone workers to crack the surface so it would spall off.
Oh – I also rotated it 180° so all the figures are right-side-up; made it easier to examine!

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

True, as some of the walls insides the tombs looked very fresh. That pick was a ceiling, so I think the missing plaster is natural, though on lowerlevels it is interesting how much defacing there has been.

[St.Roymond]

@jpm

That pick was a ceiling, so I think the missing plaster is natural, though on lowerlevels it is interesting how much defacing there has been

The lower levels damage is probably vandalism. My thought was that someone later didn’t like what was in those two spots and so ‘blanked’ them. On the other hand, I can’t think of what might be at those points!

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

The defacing on the lower levels is primarily from the later Christian era when many of the temples were used as churches. many of the faces are obliterated (perhaps as a no graven images type reaction) but many more are intact. It is pretty obvious that the lower levels reached easily from the ground are most affected. There are also deep grooves worn in some areas where pilgrims rubbed rocks into the temple walls to “take away a piece of the temple.” It is uncertain as to whether that was done by later Christians, or pagan worshippers after the temples lapsed into disrepair.

[graft2vine (Ethan)]

@St.Roymond

It is both above and below the heavens, pushed up from the earth-disk by the solid dome firmament and kept below the earth because the earth was raised by pillars that kept it from being inundated.

This may be how the ancient Hebrews interpret it, but it need not be how we interpret it today. Again, written for them but also for us. I can see how the great deep can represent the earths core and hopefully others can as well.

@St.Roymond

they concluded that the universe started out as the smallest thing possible and expanded rapidly beyond comprehension,

Please provide a reference for this. It sounds interesting but does not line up with reality as the universe is not filled with fluid. I think having it mean the deep parts of the earths core, mantle aligns more with both the Bible and science.

@St.Roymond

the great deep, was endless and had no surface apart from the action of the Spirit of God meditating over it;

But that does not make sense. If the Spirit of God is meditating over the surface of the deep, then the deep has a surface.

@St.Roymond

No cooling; the earth-disk came cool and dry when YHWH_Elohim pushed the waters off to the side and upwards.

The text does not say He pushed them off to the side. He brought the waters together into one place and then yes, Id say upward… a volcanic eruption of lava, steam, water.

@St.Roymond

That call the writer a liar – it is directly contrary to the text.

They were created “in the beginning”.

@St.Roymond

don’t pretend it has anything to do with Genesis since you are ignoring the original worldview,

No, I’m not ignoring the original world view I’m giving it dual meaning. One of the videos you posted even suggested that to the Hebrews, creating had to do with giving something order and purpose. So the celestial bodies could have been created first, but were not complete in their purpose of providing time, seasons until there are eyes that can see them.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@graft2vine

This may be how the ancient Hebrews interpret it, but it need not be how we interpret it today.

@graft2vine

I’m not ignoring the original world view I’m giving it dual meaning.

So the Earth is a flat sphere?

[graft2vine (Ethan)]

@rsewell

So the Earth is a flat sphere?

Or a sphere placed on a flat grid. In civil engineering we cant design something on a surface that is not flat, so we place it on a grid in a local coordinate zone. So to the Hebrews, they see God was creating on a flat surface the local region of Mesopotamia, but to us He was also creating the entire earth sphere.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

The Hebrews did not just interpret it; they wrote it - in the language defined by their cultural and epistemic understanding. Is it justified to reinterpret Genesis just because Copernicus and NASA came along?

[graft2vine (Ethan)]

Its justified to reinterpret it because God wrote it, and He knows the end from the beginning.

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

I can see how the great deep can represent the earths core and hopefully others can as well.

It’s not a matter of interpretation, it’s what the words mean. If you can change the meaning of one word so drastically, then you can change anything else to make things fit a modern view.
The real issue is that when you change the meaning of a word, especially an important one, you lose what the author was saying. If you make the great deep be the earth’s core, you just threw out their entire cosmology and strip the scriptures using that cosmology of their meaning. You can’t even transfer the significance of the great deep to the earth’s core because that throws away the fact that the great deep wasn’t just down below, it was all around; it wasn’t just the waters below, it was the waters above. Make it mean the earth’s core and the account no longer means anything relevant; let it be what it is and the message is that God has tamed chaos all around.

@graft2vine

Please provide a reference for this. It sounds interesting but does not line up with reality as the universe is not filled with fluid.

Read more closely:

@St.Roymond

[note that these scholars just described the opening period of the Big Bang.

The early universe was filled with fluid, and until it thinned light could not in fact shine. Cosmologists call it “quark-gluon plasma” and regard that as nature’s perfect fluid – it even gets called a “liquid” in physics papers.

@graft2vine

I think having it mean the deep parts of the earths core, mantle aligns more with both the Bible and science.

Forcing a meaning onto something isn’t interpreting, it’s changing the meaning. The great deep as the earth’s core doesn’t fit with the Bible at all and has nothing to do with science – in terms of what the word actually means, the earth’s core is neither great nor deep and if they had known about it they would have considered it a precinct of the underworld.

@graft2vine

@St.Roymond

the great deep, was endless and had no surface apart from the action of the Spirit of God meditating over it;

But that does not make sense. If the Spirit of God is meditating over the surface of the deep, then the deep has a surface.

It makes absolute sense in that worldview. From your materialist perspective, think about a lenticular gap forming as the Spirit moved. But the word פְּנֵ֣י (pnay) when used of things that have no surfaces indicates a personal encounter, with a sense of knowing or learning; it can also refer to a condition. This fits with the nature of the great deep in ancient near eastern thought; it wasn’t just water that went on and on and on, it had personality – chaos, unmaking, evil, a realm (and source) of darkness – and so this is a meeting of two personalities, the Spirit of Elohim on the one hand and the “spirit” of chaos on the other.
Then “Light – be!” takes on a serious meaning: with the Spirit “facing down” this vast dark realm, Elohim orders its first nemesis into existence. In most ancient near eastern mythology, light was something that just existed – and which easily succumbed to darkness – but here light is a creature of YHWH-Elohim. In the ‘royal chronicle’ genre this isn’t just adding photons to existence, it was the first blow in a battle of a mighty king against his foe; this King YHWH-Elohim wields it to portion out a new domain where light rules, and He calls (to) the darkness “Night” and (to) the light “Day”. In ancient near eastern terms those weren’t just periods of dark followed by night, they were combatants – a concept that comes into play a bit later.

Changing the great deep into a geological location throws that away; it degrades the great deep to something of little importance.

@graft2vine

@St.Roymond

No cooling; the earth-disk came cool and dry when YHWH_Elohim pushed the waters off to the side and upwards.

The text does not say He pushed them off to the side. He brought the waters together into one place

The root here covers “bind”, “twist”, “collect”, “gather”, “remove”, thus has a sense of using force (though interestingly it can apparently mean “condense” according to Gesenius). “Gathered” tends to be the English word most often used, but “collected” and “removed” are also found. Since dry land thus appeared, and the ancient cosmology has the land in the middle of waters, then the waters were moved by force off the land.

@graft2vine

and then yes, Id say upward… a volcanic eruption of lava, steam, water.

So you add a clause out of nowhere, and force irrelevant modern science into it.

@graft2vine

@St.Roymond

That call the writer a liar – it is directly contrary to the text.

They were created “in the beginning”.

It doesn’t say that – in fact it puts them elsewhere, on day 4. I stand by my assertion – that calls the writer a liar.

@graft2vine

No, I’m not ignoring the original world view I’m giving it dual meaning.

You’re shredding it and throwing out the meaning.

The Genesis Creation accounts have nothing to do with science.

@graft2vine

So the celestial bodies could have been created first

Only if you make the writer a liar: he clearly states that “God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens . . . '” on day four. If they were already there, God wouldn’t be recorded as saying “Let them be” (or, better, “Be!”).

Learn what the words actually mean before you go chopping up ancient literature that has nothing to do with science in order to make it talk science.

[St.Roymond]

@rsewell

@graft2vine

I’m not ignoring the original world view I’m giving it dual meaning.

So the Earth is a flat sphere?

With a solid dome . . . where?

@graft2vine

to us He was also creating the entire earth sphere

But you can’t take what it means to us and force it back into the text. That destroys the original meaning. It’s no different than what the young-earthers do, you’re just mangling the text in a different direction.

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

Its justified to reinterpret it because God wrote it

Because “God wrote it” means no one is justified to reinterpret it, the task is to figure out what it meant to the original audience, because that’s what it means. You can toss in your commentary on the side, but it misses the whole point of the text (and a lot of smaller points.

Besides which, where do you get the idea that God wrote it? That’s the Quran’s claim, not the Bible’s.