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THE FIRMAMENT AND THE WATER ABOVE

STANDARD Hebrew lexica and a number of modern biblical scholars have defined the raqia^c (fyqr, “firmament”) of Gen 1:6-8 as a solid dome over the earth.¹ Conservative scholars from Calvin on down to the present, however, have defined it as an atmospheric expanse.² Some conservatives have taken special pains to reject the concept of a solid dome on the basis that the Bible also refers to the heavens as a tent or curtain and that refer-ences to windows and pillars of heaven are obviously poetic.³

The word raqia^c, they say, simply means “expanse.” They say the understanding of raqia^c as a solid firmament rests on the Vulgate’s translation, firmamentum; and that translation rests in turn on the LXX’s translation stere<wma, which simply reflected the Greek view of the heavens at the time the trans-lators did their work.⁴

The raqia^c defined as an atmospheric expanse is the historical view according to modern conservatives; and the modern view of the raqia^c as a solid dome is simply the result of forcing biblical poetic language into agreement with a concept found in the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish.⁵

The historical evidence, however, which we will set forth in concrete detail, shows that the raqia^c was originally conceived of as being solid and not a merely atmospheric expanse. The grammatical evidence from the OT, which we shall examine later, reflects and confirms this conception of solidity.

The basic historical fact that defines the meaning of raqia^c in Genesis 1 is simply this: all peoples in the ancient world thought of the sky as solid. This concept did not begin with the Greeks.

…..

In North America, in Indian belief, the earth is a circular disc usually surrounded on all sides by water and the sky is a solid concave hemisphere coming down at the horizon to the level of the earth. In Cherokee and other Indian myths the sky is continually lifting up and coming down again to the earth like the upper blade of a pair of scissors. The sun which lives outside the hemisphere slips between the
earth and the sky-line in the morning when there is a momentary slit, and it returns from the Western side in the evening in the same fashion.

This idea of the sky lifting up and down, opening and closing a space “between the rim of the sky and the earth” is widespread among North American Indians, some of them believing that this bellows-like movement of the sky caused wind. A number of Siberian tribes believe the opening of the sky allows migratory birds to fly out of this world in the winter and live “on the other side of the celestial vault” until spring. But birds which do not hurry “are caught and crushed between the rocks of the sky and the
earth” when the sky closes down.

See also:

Cherokee Indians Belief in Flat Earth

75 bible verses codes prophecies prove a geocentric flat earth

more