Kosh

So I'm watching a UFO program on the history channel, and they just claimed that in the court of King James, "Heaven" literally meant the physical sky, not the abode of God. Therefore, Elijah must have really been taken up into space by aliens.

Auuuuuuggggggggggh!

Not that it matters for sh*t. Any of our Hebrew scholars here care to comment what the original Hebrew word in Elijah acutally meant?

Thanks.

Dilandau

tell me the exact chapter and verse number and i will see what i can find out.

Kosh

Ezekiel 8:3
And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where [was] the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.

Mageth

Here's a link to the Hebrew text and translation of the verse:

Ezekiel 8:3

From there, you can go here for a lexicon entry on shamayim (translated "and the heaven").

It seems it could mean either the sky or God's abode.

Dilandau

The lexicas do not satisfy a whole transaltion. The ending syllabla -ayim represents a foreign grammatic form: the dual. Like a PAIR of shoes or such. The proper translated word would neither be heaven, nor heavens, but f.e. heavend. A new word creation ending on d to express the duality.

Interpretation:

Simple:

The firmament with the stars AND the imaginary heaven of god. So the inside and the outside. You have to look for hermetic occultism or similar to find more on these.

Game:

"Inside and outside"
"As above, so below".
"Upper egypt and lower egypt".

attributed to

I
H
V
H

Mageth

So instead of meaning either the sky or God's abode, it means both the sky and God's abode? That makes sense, I guess.

Dilandau

Yes, that's the closest match for all.

Toto

The ancients believed that the sky was the physical abode of god[s].

Dilandau

There is the image of the seat of jealousy:

http://otaku.onlinehome.de/inchairdi...s_adjusted.jpg

Mageth

True, but my understanding is that, in the Bible, the same term (?) is sometimes used to refer specifically to the sky, and at other times used to refer specifically to "God's abode", but in this case seems to be used to refer to both, if Dilandau is correct.