![]() One must travel several centuries after Genesis to the Greeks to find belief in a solid dome over the earth, and even this turns out to be one of several concentric solid spheres. The other approach is to understand the language as poetic and based on appearances, much as even modern scientists may refer to Mother Nature and sunrise.Ĭlaims that the ancient Semitic world believed in such a dome separating the earthly and heavenly domains have been debunked by cuneiform scholars W.G. One is to conclude that that the Biblical narrator and audience were hopelessly prescientific slobs who really believed that the sky was a solid dome. This has led to two different ways to understand the language used here. The use of the Greek stereōma and the Latin firmamentum to translate raqi‘a has led to the persistent claim that what God creates above the earth on the second day of creation is a solid dome. Whether or not this is meant to be the universal heavenly canopy created in Genesis 1 is not entirely clear. In the context of his vision of what almost appear to be spaceships, Ezekiel sees a raqi‘a (without the definite article “the” when it is first mentioned), with a throne above it, someone seated on it, and a voice that comes from there (Ezek 1:22-26, 10:1). ![]() Ezekiel’s use of raqi‘a may or may not refer to the same heavenly part of creation.
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