Research can be fun!
Here’s the explanation of the mysterious space shuttle tragedy … at last … finally … explained!
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Below is a YouTube video - - - - -
I’ve been thinking … maybe I have it all wrong … maybe the ancients didn’t imagine the sky as a dome …
Why would they be so nutty as to think there was a dome up there ???
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A tent to dwell in, Isaiah 40:22 is actually just referring to how Humans dwell under the heavens, and perhaps that the heavens keep them safe from the elements (the waters above) just like a tent does,
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See Proverbs 8:27. where ‘Chug’ clearly means a two dimensional circle that is ‘Inscribed’ (Chaqaq).
As always, George, thanks for sharing!
@Reggie_O_Donoghue, just to clarify, are you arguing that the ancients believed the firmament to be a solid disc, or are you arguing that the firmament really IS a solid disc? Based on your tone and previous writing, I assume the first to be correct, but feel free to rectify my understanding, if it is in error.
EDIT – I just read your response on the Genesis movie, I believe that sufficiently answers my question! My apology is definitely in order.
P. S. I apologize if this question seems insulting, I’ve spent too much time at another site that is heavily populated by odd ideas.
To me Proverbs 8:27 and Isaiah 40:22 both are referring to the horizon which would appear to be a circle when viewed from a mountain top. This would make the land a flat disc.
Job 22:14 is describing God walking on the circle of the sky. Since the meaning has to be related to the path God takes that would again mean a circle to me. God moves as the sun and stars move.
So I am still not seeing any reference to the raqia as a flat disc.
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The former. Maybe the latter to an extent (in the case of the Babylonians). Though I won’t deny that some ancient people such as the Egyptians, Pre-Socratic Greeks, 1st millennium Arabs and Vedic Indians definitely viewed the sky as domed or vaulted.
BTW I’m not sure how my response to the Genesis movie answers your question.
I agree, but the Horizon is (or appears to be) a flat circular line. The point I’m trying to make is that ‘Chug’ appears to mean a flat two-dimensional circle.
Sorry, my inward mental dialogue made its way to the forum. Your comment on YECs being similar to flat-earthers confirmed to me that you did not personally believe in a solid, flat firmament.
So what is the connection with raqia?
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I am wondering what people think about the following way that the raqia might fit into natural history of the solar system
If data on exoplanets shows that the mediocrity hypothesis is incorrect, then can one entertain the opposite hypothesis: that the solar system and earth are special (opposite of Sagan and Drake’s mediocrity hypothesis) or even that God intervened in the formation of the solar system (opposite of Kant’s mediocrity hypothesis)? Actually, it is impossible to use the scientific method to prove such a hypothesis because God and the actions of God are not measurable.
Although one cannot prove through science that God intervened in the solar system, it is possible to show that there is consistency between scientific models and religious teaching. For example, Rev. Paul Sullins of the Catholic University of America states with reference to the Big Bang model, “The scientific idea that everything began at a moment of time is very consistent with the idea that there’s a personal creator God who spake the world into existence in a moment of time . . . The mythopoeic account that we read in Genesis is very consistent with the scientific account of the Big Bang.” In my estimation, the solar system is another of those cases. The scientific model of solar system formation has four stages and two unexplained events (in bold) in the following scientific sequence of solar system formation. The two unexplained events are the lack of explanation for the separation of the protosun from nebular cloud in which it formed (M67 problem), and the lack of explanation for the separation or gap between the inner and outer circumsolar disk.
Nebular cloud Protosun (separation) Disk (separation) Dry Earth and planets
I have taken the liberty to divide the following passage (Genesis 1:2-10) into the same four sections as the scientific sequence. Notice that the separations (in bold) are at the same positions in the sequences:
Nebular cloud
The earth was formless and void,
and darkness was over the surface of the deep,
and a wind was moving over the surface of the waters.
ProtoSun
Then God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. God saw that the light was good,
and God separated the light from the darkness
God called the light day and the darkness He called night, and there was evening and morning, one day.
Disk
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters,
and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so.
God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening and morning, a second day
Dry Earth
Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.
God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters, He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
Nobody would accuse modern planetary scientists of trying to align the natural history of the solar system with the Bible. The Hebrew and Greek texts of Genesis have been around for two or three thousand years, long before the development of the nebular hypothesis and modern planetary science. Comparing the above text with the scientific model of the formation of the solar system is an objective comparison except for two words in the text, “wind” in third line and “expanse” in the Disk paragraph, which have both been the subject of extensive debate among translators, a debate that continues to this day, and are translated with widely different meanings. Other than those words, it is safe to say that the Genesis 1 text and modern planetary science provide two independent sources of information on the formation of the solar system. Thus, comparing the Genesis text above to the scientific model is an objective comparison of two independent sources of information. When two independent sources tell the same version of an event, historians consider this to be strong evidence that the event took place.
Lest someone think that this alignment of the Bible with natural history is a hare-brained idea that no self-respecting theologian would consider, this approach closely follows the interpretation of Arnold Guyot (nebular cloud, light, expanse, earth). Guyot was a Princeton geographer and geologist in the last half of the 19th century. He was a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, namesake of Guyot Hall at Princeton, and namesake of the National Geographic Arnold Guyot Prize that is still awarded each year in his honor. His Genesis interpretation was endorsed by the famous Princeton theologian Charles Hodge, renowned Yale geologist James Dana, and many others. This method of interpretation is called the day-age interpretation, which considers that each of the days of Genesis was an age of time. In its various forms, this was the most common interpretation of Genesis 1 for the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The following are my own subjective interpretations in which I align the text of Genesis with the scientific solar system model. By subjective, I mean that if there are two possible meanings of a Hebrew word or phrase, I choose the one that aligns with science.
• Nebula. Gramatically, this passage includes three clauses describing the same entity. Although ruah sometimes means Spirit, another meaning is wind; thus,I took the third line in the first section from the JPS Tanach (Jewish translation, “the wind of God moved over the waters”) because I think this is the correct meaning. The rest of the text is from the NASB. As with the scientific sequence, this passage describes charateristics of the dark chaos that preceded the earth as an unformed void, darkness, deep (massive), waters, and impacted by wind. If it was a void and also water, then I think this supports the concept of a cloud that contained water rather than a body of liquid water.
• Sun. “Let” is from the jussive verb, which implies a giving of permission, such as let it form naturally. According to Ringgren (Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament), “Let it become light” is an acceptable translation if the darkness became light. I think that God separated the protosun (light) from the darkness in which it formed in order to allow the planets to form with circular orbits. Although it most often referred to a 24-hour day, the word translated as day, yom, also referred to an age or period, such as the length of Jacob’s life (the day of Jacob).
• Disk. According to Gorg (Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament), the “expanse” had the shape of a flat plate (a disk). Gorg based this conclusion on extensive studies of this word (raqia in Hebrew) and similar words in Hebrew and other Semitic languages. The midplane dust layer, from which the planets formed, was primarily water. It bisected the remaining cloud around the protosun, which is the precise meaning of “in the midst.” I interpret the separation as God making a physical gap (separated means physical separation) between the lower part (below) of the disk and the outer part of the disk. The word translated as below, can also refer to a gravitational low point, such as the part of the disk closest to the Sun. The disk is defined as the heavens, which is the solar system
• Earth. The dry earth and the rest of the terrestrial planets formed in the lower part of the disk, the part closest to the sun (“below the heavens,” or at the foot of the heavens). “One place” refers to a central location such as a planet and does not fit well with oceans distributed around the planet. The midplane dust layer in the inner disk was primarily water before it was heated up and sublimated to the gas phase so to call it “waters” is reasonable. The meaning of “dry land” is just as it sounds, dry ground.
Since it appears there are an abundance of earth size planets around stars similar to our sun I don’t see why you would need to invoke God in an act of special creation just for us.
That is a good question. It is true that there are thousands of confirmed exoplanets, but the arrangement is different from the solar system. I would like to begin my response with a humorous look at the beginning of the mediocrity hypothesis.
Kant believed that God did not intervene in nature and particularly at the scale of the solar system. His argument for the nonintervention of God was the mediocrity principle, which he based on his belief that all of the other planets in the solar system were inhabited by humans. He reasoned that if all of the planets had different angles of obliquity (different axial tilts), then God did not set the angles of obliquity of the planets at optimal angles for humans. If God had intervened, then Kant reasoned that all of the planets would have the same optimal angle of obliquity for humans… And thus we have the beginning of philosophical naturalism.
Kant aside, the exoplanet data is suprising. Most other planetary systems have hot Jupiters or super-earths orbiting near their star. Read the comments of leading planetary scientist, Kevin Walsh:
“We have no idea why our solar system doesn’t look like these others, and we would love an answer,” said planetary scientist Kevin Walsh, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. Since the time of Copernicus, scientists have slowly moved Earth out of its originally-conceived setting as the center of the Universe. Today, scientists recognize that the Sun is an average star—not too hot, not too cold, not too bright, not too dim—situated at a random spot in a typical spiral galaxy. So, when Kepler began its planet-hunting mission in 2009, scientists anticipated finding planetary systems that resembled our solar system. Instead, Kepler mostly discovered planet types that our solar system lacks. With bodies like “hot Jupiters” (Jupiter-sized planets that orbit their star in only a few days) to “super-Earths” (massive rocky planets far larger than our own), exoplanet systems have a knack for surprising observers. Of the 1,019 confirmed planets and 4,178 planetary candidates identified to date, only one system resembles our own with terrestrial planets near the star and giant planets set at a distance.”
On the theoretical side, earth should not be dry. Leading planetary scientists, R. Machida and Y. Abe, described the problem of dry earth formation:
“Models of terrestrial planet formation have been based on the assumption that the formation of planetismals occurs in a transparent (optically thin) nebula, in which H2O ice is unstable at the formation region of the terrestrial planet due to direct stellar irradiation. However, in the astronomical context, it is confirmed by both observations and numerical models that protoplanetary disks are initially opaque (i.e., optically thick) owing to floating small dust particles, and the interior of the disk is colder than the transparent disk. If planetismals are formed in opaque cold nebula, they should be mainly composed of H2O ice, even at the formation region of terrestrial planets.”
Recently, leading planetary scientists Batygin, Laughlin, and Morbidelli made the following statement about the architecture of the solar system in comparison to exoplanets in the local part of the galaxy.
“The solar system’s configuration of small inner rocky worlds and large outer giants is anomalous in comparison with most other planetary systems, which have different architectures.”
Based on the fact that our solar system is anomalous among other observed planetary systems, an increasing number of scientists are beginning to believe that we are essentially alone in the universe. For example, Howard Smith, senior astrophysicist at Harvard made the following statement.
“We are alone in the universe, at least for all practical purposes. This is the most probable conclusion to be drawn from a host of fundamental physical constraints and new astrophysical observations, and in particular the discovery (at this writing) of 4,696 exoplanet candidates (http://kepler.nasa.gov/) including some Earth-sized planets in their habitable zones (Quintana et al. 2014). The implications of these discoveries, and their modern context, are radical.”
When Smith stated that we are “for all practical purposes” alone in the universe, he did not mean that there are no other civilizations in the entire universe. Astronomers have only confirmed several thousand exoplanets in our local part of the Milky Way, which only represents a tiny fraction of the planets out there. Even if our earth is the only planet with life in our whole galaxy, there are billions of other galaxies in the universe. It would be unfair to those unknown civilizations to dismiss them as non-existant only on the grounds that we have not yet observed them; as far as we know, they may have already dismissed the possibility of our existence based on the lack of contact, and yet here we are. “For all practical purposes” means that civilizations are either nonexistent or so rare that there is almost no possibility of ever coming in contact with them.
Brad Hansen from UCLA showed in 2009 that if there is a gap in the circumsolar disk between earth and the asteroid belt, then the inner planet architecture forms as it is (small Mars).
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The heavens are called a ‘Chug’ in Job 22:14,
You can find parallels to Genesis 1’s order of creation all through the Near East.
Okay, let’s take a step back for a moment.
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I have pointed out that 3 dimensionally roundish objects can be referred to with the 2 D term round.
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Job 22 has a reference to the sky as a circle.
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So your conclusion is:
Either:
The scribe of Job thought the skies were NOT three dimensional?
Or
That he used a traditional word in its 3D sense?
If the scribe thought there were 3 levels of the skies… that’s unavoidably three dimensions, right?
I said the Babylonians believed in three levels, but not the Hebrews.
Something flat is more consistent with a circle which is inscribed, than something rounded is.
You don’t think the Hebrews believed in more than one level?
Sigh.
From the wiki article:
“In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Third Heaven is a division of Heaven in religious cosmology. In some traditions it is considered the abode of God, and in others a lower level of Paradise, commonly one of seven.”
“The early books of the Tanakh reference Heaven (Heb. Shamayim), but not a Third Heaven or a specific number of heavens. Heaven is mentioned several times in the first chapter of Genesis. It appears in the first verse as a creation of God.”
"His dividing the light from the darkness in verses 4 and 5 this has been interpreted as the separation of heaven into two sections:
day (God’s throne) and night (where our universe is contained). "
“. . . .A third concept of Heaven, also called shamayi h’shamayim (שׁמי השׁמים or “Heaven of Heavens”), is mentioned in such passages as Genesis 28:12, Deuteronomy 10:14 and 1 Kings 8:27 as a distinctly spiritual realm containing (or being traveled by) angels and God.”
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