![]() ![]() The ancient Hebrews, like all the ancient peoples of the Near East, believed the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it. The caption underneath the engraving (not shown here) translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet." Main article: Hebrew astronomy § Biblical cosmology The Flammarion engraving (1888) depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. Saint Basil rejected the notion that the firmament is made of solid ice, although Bede in Hexaemeron ignores the problem of the motion of celestial bodies (stars) in a solid firmament and declares that the siderum caelum (heaven of the celestial bodies) was made firm ( firmatum) in the midst of the waters so should be interpreted as having the firmness of crystalline stone ( cristallini Iapidis). At issue was the reconciliation of Scripture with Aristotle's cosmology. This matter of the position of the "waters" above the firmament was considered by Augustine in De Genesi ad litteram (perhaps his least studied work): "only God knows how and why are there, but we cannot deny the authority of Holy Scripture which is greater than our understanding".Įarly Christian writers wrote at length about the material nature of the firmament, the problem arising from the barrier said to be created when it divided the waters above and below it. Ībout this Ambrose wrote: "Wise men of the world say that water cannot be over the heavens" the firmament is called such, according to Ambrose, because it held back the waters above it. One medieval writer who rejected such notions was Pietro d'Abano who argued that theologians "assuming a crystalline, or aqueous sphere, and an empyrean, or firey sphere" were relying on revelation more than Scripture. : 237Ĭhristian theologians of note writing between the 5th and mid-12th century were generally in agreement that the waters, sometimes called the "crystalline orb", were located above the firmament and beneath the fiery heaven that was also called empyrean (from Greek ἔμπυρος). Some of these theories identified caelum as the higher, immaterial and spiritual heaven, whereas firmamentum was of corporeal existence. Perhaps beginning with Origen, the different identifiers used for heavens in the Book of Genesis, caelum and firmamentum, sparked some commentary on the significance of the order of creation ( caelum identified as the heaven of the first day, and firmamentum as the heaven of the second day). Models of the Firmament The plurality of heaven a spreading out or stretching forth." TWOT. "The basic concept in raqa is stamping, as with the foot, and what results, i.e. Rāqīaʿ derives from the root rqʿ ( רָקַע), meaning "stamp, spread out, stretch." These words all translate the Biblical Hebrew word rāqīaʿ ( רָקִ֫יעַ), used for example in Genesis 1.6, where it is contrasted with shamayim ( שָׁמַיִם), translated as " heaven(s)" in Genesis 1.1. raqa, makes an important correction regarding this translation: "In pre-Christian Egypt, confusion was introduced into biblical cosmology when the LXX, perhaps under the influence of Alexandrian theories of a 'stone vault' of heaven, rendered raqia by stereoma suggesting some firm, solid substance." ![]() The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, s.v. This in turn is a calque of the Greek στερέωμᾰ ( steréōma), also meaning a solid or firm structure (Greek στερεός = rigid), which appears in the Septuagint, the Greek translation made by Jewish scholars around 200 BC The same word is found in French and German Bible translations, all from Latin firmamentum (a firm object), used in the Vulgate (4th century). ![]() It later appeared in the King James Bible. In English, the word "firmament" is recorded as early as 1250, in the Middle English Story of Genesis and Exodus. Today it is known as a synonym for sky or heaven. The concept was adopted into the subsequent Classical/Medieval model of heavenly spheres, but was dropped with advances in astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries. In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during the Genesis creation narrative to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear. The sun, planets and angels and the firmament. The firmament, Sheol and tehom are depicted. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.For the video game, see Firmament (video game). Genesis 1:6-7 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. ![]()
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