No Flat Earth; No Vaulted sky

Yet that’s exactly how Jewish people viewed it. As something spread out , a physical thing created, that separated and protected the earth from water up above.

If you were to go back and ask ancient Jewish , and Mesopotamians in general, about earth and the universe this what you would get.

They would say the earth , the land, is floating on water. It’s the center of everything and the sun is this tiny light that revolves around the earth. They would say that the stars and meteors were celestial beings that moved about. The earth was fixed and did not move. They would also say that their is a firmament around the earth. Something spread out over the earth to protect it from water up above. That sometimes it opened and water fell down from it. That a god controlled it. He could open or close it.

You won’t find anything wrote by ancient Mesopotamians about the earth revolving around the sun, or not being the center is the universe and so on. They had no clue about it.

Agreed, but they also knew that rain came from clouds. The waters coming through the firmament seem to have been viewed as special and extreme, such as in floods.

True but we also don’t know what they thought about clouds. They had no scientific answer. As far as we know they believed the clouds were mist created from below the ground from the waters below things created by celestial beings let in through the dome. What we do know is that they did not have a modern scientific understanding of clouds because they also believed kingdoms were on top of them and that lightening was created by beings on or in the clouds.

“Moses however speaks in the plainest possible terms , both of waters ‘above’ and of waters ‘under’ the firmament. Wherefore I here hold my own mind and judgment in captivity and bow to the Word, although I cannot comprehend it…. Moses however proceeds with his narrative of the creation in all simplicity and plainness , as they say; making here three divisions: waters ‘above’ the firmament, waters ‘under’ the firmament, and ‘the firmament’ in the middle.” -Martin Luther (The Project Gutenberg e-Book of Commentary on Genesis, by Martin Luther)

Now change all the “around” words to “above”.

Studies have been done on the Meospotamian heavens. Those who have looked apparently disagree with the borrowing of the vault from the Mesopotamians.

Still there have been some who continue to suggest that the ancient Hebrews borrowed cosmological concepts, including the idea of a solid domed heaven, from the Mesopotamians. However, even this idea had to be scuttled when more recent work by Wilfred G. Lambert could find no evidence that the Mesopotamians believed in a hard-domed heaven; rather, he traces this idea to Peter Jensen’s mistranslation of the term “heavens” in his translation of the Enuma Elish. Lambert’s student, Wayne Horowitz, attempted to piece together a Mesopotamian cosmology from a number of ancient documents, but it is quite different from anything found in the Hebrew Bible. Horowitz’s study suggests that the Mesopotamians believed in six flat heavens, suspended one above the other by cables. When it came to interpreting the stars and the heavens, the Mesopotamians were more interested in astrology (i.e., what the gods were doing and what it meant for humanity) than they were in cosmology. There is no evidence that the Mesopotamians ever believed in a solid heavenly vault.” Randall W. Younker and Richard M. Davidson, " THE MYTH OF THE SOLID HEAVENLY DOME: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE HEBREW [:yqir); (R?Q�A�),Andrews University Seminary Studies, No. 1, 125-147, p. 127

Our problem in this area is that few actually question or even look at contrarian data.

My issue with that is that is about the only source that disagrees. Every other source says otherwise including Jewish commentaries wrote by Jewish people from Israel by people who don’t read Christian works.

Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote, in the 6th century, a very similar view of the one I mentioned. He was inspired in part by people like Theophilus and Clement.

There are also these quotes here.

It would seem to me if Satan convinced the Greeks that the earth had a circumference, and a dome, then that would be enough to get Christians away from the view Moses taught in the Torah. No one could prove otherwise. It was enough of a nudge until mathematics could take over, and then the church would be left without any explanation to stop the deception.

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