Eldarion Lathria

Like the Berlin wall, the wall is to keep the inhabitants IN, not to keep enemies OUT. And a good thing too, so those zombies don't wander around, get in peoples' way, stumble in front of the electrocars and construction machinery and get hurt.

More likely the writer couldn't conceive of a city without walls and gates. He never heard of Sparta, which had no walls because "her men are her walls."

Eldarion Lathria

Jack the Bodiless

Well, I guess it works if you consider that, Biblically, Heaven is "above" the solid Firmament dome that sits "above" the Earth. Translating this into modern terms, and assuming an Earth-centered reference point, the Firmament dome (or shell) has to be beyond the limits of the visible Universe, in excess of 13 billion lightyears away.

Presumably JC started off slowly to avoid superheating Earth's atmosphere with a near-lightspeed takeoff. However, this implies that he was still interacting with matter, which would limit his velocity to lightspeed even in open space.

Also, for God to remain consistently "above" Israel, he'd have to be orbiting the entire visible Universe once every 24 hours at a staggering velocity. Jesus would have to head straight out to the dome, through one of those "windows", and then undergo massive acceleration to renzedvous with God. Maybe the laws of physics will allow that in the region beyond the Firmament? If not, and JC's astrophysics isn't up to the task (how much did Judean carpenters know about relativity?), then he'll find out in 13+ billion years that it was a wasted trip.

...What then? I guess he'll just have to head back. This allows me to predict the Second Coming: in the year 27,000,000,000 AD or thereabouts.

Weltall

When I saw the thread title, I got the 'Jews in Space' song from History of the World Pt. I stuck in my head. That and a riff from MST3K.

Lunawalk

when I was an christian I just didn't think of those kind of questions. you just don't notice. In the case of the creation story I didn't notice the waters above the firmament. when I did my eyes were opened to the fact that the bible is myth and written by man.