stephan huller

Evad

T. Moreux, former head of Bourges Observatory, France: "this expanse, which to us constitutes heaven, is designated in the Hebrew text by a word which the [Greek] Septuagint, influenced by the cosmological ideas prevailing at the time, translated by stereoma, firmament, solid canopy. Moses transmits no such thought. The Hebrew word raqia only conveys the idea of extent or, better still, expanse."

The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia on the solid vault illustrations that appear in Bibles from the dark ages: "But this assumption is in reality based more upon the ideas prevalent in Europe during the Dark Ages than upon any actual statements in the O T."—Edited by J. Orr, 1960, Vol. I, p. 314.

gupwalla

I am fond of Richard Elliott Friedman's translation and commentary:

Friedman follows Rashi in envisioning raqia as the habitable bubble of air within the waters. So in this passage, raqia literally means the film of the habitable bubble (thin and delicate as pounded gold leaf) and figuratively means the entire sky.

(And why did the ancients believe there was "water above" as well as water below? Because the sky is blue -- so on the other side of our little bubble there must be another sea, every bit as blue as the Mediterranean.)

The idea of raqia as a physical boundary separating the waters is vital to the plot, because in a few chapters this physical barrier will be punctured during the Noachic flood. And that makes the flood not merely a really bad rainstorm, but a full-out cosmic crisis. The waters above and below are reuniting, threatening to undo everything from the second day of creation onward.

And if you're into comparative mythology, there are some interesting parallels here to the Ba'al Cycle and the fight with Yamm or his pet dragon Lotan.

spin

Other people's opinions won't help you change the meaning of the text as seen in the Hebrew vocabulary.

If you can't argue the point, you find someone who has the same opinion as you and waste our time making yourself feel a little better. When you have something to say about the language, that's when you should post.

Evad

You mean like Augustine's which you used earlier?

I have already made my case. Raqia means to spread out as in expanse. Stereoma and firmamentum isn't exactly suitable translations, though understandable considering the root word raqa meaning beaten out.

The luminaries came to be in the expanse, the birds fly in the expanse, the clouds form water in the expanse rather than fall from literal windows.

The term windows from heaven releasing water during the deluge was metaphorical, the water cycle was explained without that literal explanation, God said that the heavens would become copper not that they were copper, Elihu's statement that the sky was said to be "like a molten mirror" not a molten mirror itself, as is confirmed by the Hebrew word for sky, shachaq which means film, dust or cloud. Not solid.

One thing years of debate has taught me is that when the debate becomes an attempt to convince someone their preconceived notions are not substantiated by the facts you know it has gone too far.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything and only ask the same. You are trying to convince me of your beliefs which present the Bible as having been written by people who didn't understand science as it is understood today which is beside the point. The idea, though, that I would do anything to appease science which is thousands of years behind what the Bible actually did say is an insult. Science, to me, is a whining infant's blind attempt at assuming current knowledge is infallible. The religious made the same mistake during, the Dark ages. Full circle.

spin

You made the false claim that the notion of the solid firmament was from the dark ages. The fact that Augustine believed it solid shows your claim to be wrong. Please lift your efforts at reading.

That is incomplete. It doesn't deal with the notion of how it is an expanse or what its form is. Raqia is specific. Ignoring the evidence means you go awry.

Birds fly in the face of the Raqia, not in the Raqia. The cloud issue is a red herring, given your approach to the flood.

Read this again:

Job 37:18 tells us that god has beaten out (רקצ) the sky (שחק) strong or hard (חזק) as a mirror.

You are told that the shachaq is solid. It is beaten out as a goldsmith beats out and the parallel is about metal, ie a poured mirror. This should tell you that the writer is working the meaning of shachaq away from what you want.

What I'm asking from you is to stop falling over your own impediments to working with text. If you want to analyze a text you should know something about the language it was written in and the philology necessary. You must a read a text for what it says and not for what you want it to say. These are my preconceived ideas. Hopefully there is nothing arbitrary about them. I don't believe one should mix and match ancient text with modern cultural mores, as you do with Genesis and the need to be scientific.

aspronot

This said by someone who typed words into a personal (!) computer which were instantly accessible to a good fraction of humanity around the world. Who can hop on a jet for a holiday to almost any destination on Earth within a day. Who can be successfully vaccinated and treated for diseases that were a death sentence only a century ago, let alone 2,000 years ago. Who has steady, useful energy pumped into his home 24 hours a day, some of it created by splitting atoms (!). All of these and much, more were brought to you by modern science. Yet you make the ridiculous claim that a book on religion has science which is 1,000 years in advance of our own? What madness. :constern02:

Such a claim is absurd even on its face. Since the Bible is available almost universally, how can its "science" be in advance, if we all have ready access to its supposed knowledge? :huh:

Not only does your metaphor not make any sense, but who is claiming infallibility? I think you have science confused with the Vatican.

I believe the religious are still making the same mistake. What does that have to do with science?

Lord Emsworth

(Emphasis mine) Are you certain that is correct? If I am not mistaken, 'paniym' occurs in Gen 1:2 too, even twice. One time as the face of the deep, the other as face of the waters. Neither is solid.

However, it is not as if I spoke Hebrew. I can only fumble around with things like this:
http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible...2&t=KJV#conc/2



-----------------

And am I the only one who caught this one:

I mean, neither the Vulgate nor the Septuagint are "from the dark ages".

Horatio Parker

It appears to me that this is precisely what you're trying to do.

You are trying to make a case that the ancients had a better understanding of the cosmos than they are typically given credit for.

How is this not appeasing science?

If science is not the issue, what difference does it make?

spin

The word for "deep" is "tehom" the Hebrew cognate of Akkadian Tiamat, the watery chaos monster. Gen 1:2 sublimates the Mesopotamian battle before creation, the same battle hidden behind Isaiah 27:1, which talks of Leviathan (Lotan is the watery chaos monster in Ugarit).