GenesisNemesis

InfidelGuy's Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=o3XSpjfyFis

Can anyone validate this? I've heard some criticisms on the video comments, something to do with the hebrew/english translation by InfidelGuy being wrong. Can anyone correct those allegations? Thanks.

The Evil One

Can't watch the video from this computer, but most languages have only a single word for "sky" and "heaven". In French, for instance, both are "ciel"; in German both are "Himmel". In Old English they were both "heofon", from which "heaven" comes; our word "sky" comes from a word in Old Norse which meant "cloud". English is, as often the case in matters of vocabulary, an exception in having clearly differentiated words for the two concepts.

It is, however, uncontroversial that when the OT uses the word "heaven", esp. in Genesis ("created the heaven and the earth"), it is referring to the sky.

Huon

In french, there is another word "paradis", equivalent to "ciel". But "ciel" means also "sky". Planes fly in the "ciel", sky. The souls of dead people go tho the "ciel", heaven. I think that the english word "paradise", is equivalent to "heaven". Or am I mistaken on the equivalence ?

Toto

In common English usage, "paradise" refers to a wonderful place like heaven, but most English speakers would not understand it to refer to the sky.

Planes fly in the sky, not in heaven. Dead souls go to heaven, not the sky. But astonomers might look up at "the heavens."

People who live in a nice vacation resort might refer to it as paradise on earth.

I hope this helps.

ETA: I haven't watched the video. Could someone summarize the controversy?

John W. Loftus

You might want to take a look at what I posted here:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspo...-universe.html

Shadowy Man

We also look at the sky.

Chris Weimer

The original Greek, ουρανος, meant sky. It is found in both singular and plural for meaning "heaven" in the New Testament.

The Bishop

I'm pretty sure the association of "heaven" with the magical realm where souls go after death is a purely English phenomenon that doesn't even date back as far as the KJV. When they said "heaven" in those days, they meant the sky - in the sense of "beyond the sky", not that "heaven" was synonymous with "the Kingdom of God".

I understand that the original Hebrew word translated as "firmament" is raqia, which meant a bowl, like one would eat out of. In fact, the word "firmament" itself, having the stem "firm" in it, is in fact meant to imply a solid surface. The intention in 1611 was to translate as accurately as possible (for word meaning, rather than phrase meaning), but the words themselves became so, well, iconic, that the original meaning was lost and the words became synonymous with the modern conceptions - thus "firmament" just means "sky" or "heaven", and the fact that the word is supposed to directly contradict the modern understanding that it is perfectly passable and evanescent, has been lost.

Huon