Does the Bible teach ancient solid-dome cosmology?

TaylorTG · Oct 3, 2014

When the inspired authors were speaking of the 'Heavens' they were simply referring to the top of the dome, where God's supposed throne is, not the Heaven that we Christians know of.

When the inspired authors were speaking of the 'Hosts of Heaven', they were referring to the Stars whom the pagans worshiped.

The word 'Heavens' is indeed recorded in the Old Testament, but the Israelites didn't mean 'Heavens' in the sense where they viewed it to be part of the afterlife. See Cycel's post in post #32

One of the main reasons why the Jews, and especially the pharisees were opposed to Christ was because he taught many things that weren't in tune with standard Jewish thought process; Heaven and Hell was one of these things.

I haven't read the Torah.

Yes, the solid dome cosmology is indeed missing from the book of Genesis, but the Israelites viewed the Earth in that way.

Heck, I don't need to quote a bible verse which says that the Earth is not a dome, and that Heaven is not directly above the Earth. It's basic truths man.

Calminian · Oct 3, 2014

TaylorTG said:

Yes, this is the assertion you keep making. Do you have any support for this view? Or is it just blind faith?

TaylorTG said:

Again, evidence. When I look at the new testament, is see the same heaven as spoken of in the old testament, namely, the sky. When Jesus left to go to the heavens, did He dematerialize and go to a different dimension? No, He went into the sky. Heaven hasn't change. It was the vast sky then, it was the vast sky in the new testament and it is the vast sky now. We know more about it, but it is still the heavens.

TaylorTG said:

Thank you, Taylor. You're being very honest. I hope Cycel will do the same and admit that solid dome cosmology is missing from the book of Genesis.

You quoted Seely and Lamoureux who both disagree with you and make arguments from the term raqiya' that Genesis teaches solid dome theology. I'm glad you're on my side on this one.

birdie · Oct 3, 2014

Genesis 1:8 says that God called the firmament Heaven. Isaiah 66:1 says heaven is my throne. The Lamb is in the midst of the throne (Rev 5:6). The Bible is not talking about a physical universe of sky and space. That is why the firmament divides the light from the darkness. The word of God, Jesus and his true believers are composing heaven. They rightly divide the true and the untrue. People who see Genesis as a physical universe guide don't make any sense, because the Bible is written as a parable and as a cohesive unit by the Holy Spirit. Consider the word earth. Genesis says that God called the dry land earth. If he meant planet earth he would have spoken of the oceans too, I think. The land in the Bible is really a parable word for the kingdom that God promises to the true beleivers. Stop reading the Bible as a surface text. It is written as a parable (Psalm 78:2, Mark 4).

Cycel · Oct 3, 2014

Calminian said:

Baby steps. First I need to discus the watery abyss. This is part of the process. My understanding of Hebrew cosmology as a snow globe comes directly from scripture itself. This is what scripture says, but I can't demonstrate this unless we discuss it step by step. Looking forward to your answering my questions about the watery abyss:

“There is no mention of God creating the waters. The next act is the gathering of the waters into one place. It really looks as though they pre-existed the creation of the world. The author of the text simply skips right over the creation of water. This does become important later on, but in the mean time I’d be interested in understanding how any of you view the waters. For example, how do you explain a large body of water that pre-exists the Sun. It is apparently hanging in space and does not freeze solid. How do you understand this?”

Can we talk about it?

Cycel · Oct 3, 2014

TaylorTG said:

Basic truth to us, but our truth about cosmology is not the one the Hebrew's imagined. As they understood it the Earth sits under the solid dome of the sky. It is strongly implied in Genesis and asserted as fact elsewhere in scripture.

I will get to that but I want to go step by step so nothing is missed. However, it sounds to me you do recognize that this is how the Hebrews/ancient Jews understood the world. You are not denying it as others do.

Calminian · Oct 4, 2014

Cycel said:

Well, the straightforward reading that I see is that the waters were the unformed earth or land. God created the land and it was formless (v.2). This sounds like the writer is telling us that the land was originally not solid when God brought it into existence on day 1. It was unformed and unfilled, and then its solid foundations were laid on day 3—let the dry land appear.

This actually messes up the idea that God doesn't mention creation of the waters, as God does mention He created the unformed land on day 1. To be precise, on day 1 He created the unexpanded cosmos, and unformed and unfilled land (I prefer erets to be translated land, as that's how I think the ancients understood it).

Peter also gives us great insight into this as he says the land was actually made from water.

2Pet. 3:5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.

So it appears to me that while there is no verse saying God created the waters, there is a verse saying God created the unformed land, which Peter also seems to agree was the waters.

So I don't think I can go with you on this point, and this is going to be a stumbling block for you as you don't believe in miracles. Christ created wine from water, and from what I'm reading also created our planet (the land and sea) by these initial waters. It is my firm belief that Genesis is describing a miraculous creation.

Cycel said:

Well actually I was blown away that NASA is reporting large reservoirs of water just hanging around out there in space near the edges of our universe.

Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water

“The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.” Bradford leads one of the teams that made the discovery. His team’s research is partially funded by NASA and appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This is NASA, mind you, not a bunch of creationists. But it's no surprise the creationists are finding it amazingly compatible with how they are interpreting the waters of Genesis.

From ICR: Water Near Edge of Universe Bolsters Creation Cosmology

Here's another secular source talking about these waters in space.

Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that’s at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world’s oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.

source

It's actually scientists that are now speculating that water may be the building blocks of our universe.

robbomango · Oct 4, 2014

KJV
Job 26:7 He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Isn't this one of the oldest books in the bible? Sounds like they thought the earth hung out there like the moon on nothing to me.

God said he laid the foundations, that doesn't mean they thought he was pouring concrete. We use this type of terminology all the time to describe the vast cosmos. 500 years from now people could look back on a reference to "The Fabric of Space Time" and conclude we believed the universe was made out of cotton. Images of the earth and solar system resting on a grid to demonstrate gravity could infer we believed the earth was sitting on a giant tennis racket. This exercise can get rather silly....

On a side note the image of the skydome is quite strange, where did the sun go during the night? If it was a flat disk it would never dip below the horizon am I wrong? They must've believed it was a curved disk but even then the Sun magically sets in the west and rises in the East in the morning, where did it go or am I missing something? Bizarre to think they believed this.

Not sure I want answers to any of those questions, lol.

God Bless...

Calminian · Oct 4, 2014

robbomango said:

Yes, Job seems to be written sometime after Babel and before Abraham. There are implications Job's lifespan was a bit longer than Abraham's and we see indications of the post-flood ice age in the book. We also see descriptions of a dinosaur, which indicates these events took place soon after the flood before the dinosaurs were wiped out.

But be careful about drawing God's insights from Job, as God is only speaking in the last few chapters, and rebukes much of what is said earlier. Many of the sentiments expressed in Job are the opinions of Job and his "friends." None of what they express is endorsed by God, and they are all rebuked at the end, even Job.

Keep in mind also, the term for earth here is 'erets and generally I think the ancients understood this as land. Now in this particular passage Job is speaking, and while God was overall pleased with Job throughout this trial, Job makes many mistakes and needs to be corrected.

At best we can gather from Job what the peoples of that time and that region believed about the cosmos, but that has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches.

EmethAlethia · Oct 4, 2014

Some things, first, we could not calculate what the environment would have been like if the biblical account was correct until around 1955. While you will be hard pressed to find many willing to objectively consider the biblical account, for those with the knowledge, if you examine the weather stated in the bible, earth being watered as from a mist, no rain, no rainbows ... these are all things that are accurate if what is stated is true.

Some interesting facts that are often missed include that it was if the windows in the heavens were opened and the waters "poured" forth. The same wording is used of pouring things from a pitcher. The vapor theorists kind of forget that this is the case.

If there was a layer of real water, a number of things would be true. Things like pterodactyls would have been able to fly do to the increased atmospheric pressure for example. There are a number of other things that would be explained if this were the case as well. Things like the woolly mammoths frozen with viable seeds still in their gullet in northern Siberia and other severe northern climates. These seeds can be still grown today. The problem, they will not grow any further north than Florida today. Any place further north and they die out for good. We could not predict the greenhouse effect until the last century as well, and the calculations with a mere 10 feet of water would have resulted in global temperature stability in the range that would have supported things like the woolly mammoths seeds being grown almost to the poles.

If, for example, the water canopy were accurate, and meteorites in a major storm pierced the canopy in multiple places, pulling massive amounts of water into the earths gravitational forces, it would create a siphoning effect that, from the perspective on the earth, would be like the windows in the heavens being opened and the waters pouring forth through these holes. The impact of this water, and the meteorites on the earth would have been great, causing tremendous damage. Even resulting in breaking up the "fountains of the deep" as well.

Examination of the angle of impact of things like meteor crater in Arizona, and where it entered the area we consider to be in orbit today, might explain some of the grand canyon as well.

Cycel · Oct 5, 2014

Calminian said:

This is not helpful to you. It is not liquid water that was found, but water vapour, and though there is a large amount its density is 300 trillion times less than the Earth's atmosphere and is spread out in a thin cloud spanning hundreds of light years. This information is from the same scientific article your ICR people were quoting. They should have picked up on this, but it's not surprising they missed the bigger point as its not the message they wanted to propagate.

God, in Genesis, is described as "hovering" over the waters – depending on the translation. This is reminiscent of a liquid ocean, not a really thin cloud of water vapour spanning hundreds of light years as described in the NASA article. It is just not the same thing at all.

Furthermore, the article contains additional information that undermines belief in a young Earth.
• 12 billion light-years away (This is equivalent to saying 12 billion years ago. If you accept this as well then you must reject the Young Earth Hypothesis. I hope you do.)

• the water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years in size (The article is not talking of a small area the size of the Earth, as in the creation story. The region is immense and covers an area that would include numerous star systems. You need astronomers to locate a mass of liquid water not much larger than the Earth that inexplicable doesn’t disperse and doesn’t freeze into a solid block of ice.)

• Astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early, distant universe, but had not detected it this far away before (Lots of water in gaseous clouds has already been detected in our own galaxy. What’s new with this discovery is the total amount of water vapour present and its great age.)

• the gas is at a chilly minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (Just another reminder that we are not talking about liquid water as in the creation story.)

• the astronomers say... some of the gas may end up condensing into stars (Do you accept that stars form from such clouds? Do you accept all the conclusions from the scientific article?)

Calminian said:

No. They are not saying Earth formed from water. They are not saying anything of the sort.

The scientific view is that the molecules from which Earth and all life formed are the by-products of super nova explosions. The material from which the earliest stars formed is hydrogen. The Sun, itself, is converting its hydrogen store into helium. More massive stars convert their helium into ever denser matter – oxygen, carbon, iron, etc. – and when they explode they seed their environments with a richer array of elements than previously existed. From this material new star systems then form. It is thought the Sun is likely a third generation star. The carbon that makes up most of our bodies formed as a by-product of supernova explosions. We are star dust. Of course, the author, or editors, of Genesis would have no inkling of this. It is not surprising a Bronze Age text says otherwise.

Here is an additional article highlighting recent findings of water vapour in space, but much closer to home, and note the title:

Observatory Finds Water Vapor In Cosmic Cloud That Could Drown Earth

Note, however, that once again this title is misleading. This “gas and dust cloud... contains enough water vapor to fill Earth’s oceans more than 2,000 times over.” However, it is spread out over a very large volume of space encompassing a region at least the size of the solar system.

Note also that water vapour is only one component of this cloud. It contains enough dust and gas to create a new planetary system. In fact the observed motion of the cloud indicates it is contracting and brings researchers to conclude that a new star is on the verge of forming.

“There is absolutely no sign of stars in this dark cloud today, but by looking at the water molecules, we can see evidence of motion inside the region that can be understood as collapse of the whole cloud towards the centre,” Caselli said in the release. “There is enough material to form a star at least as massive as our Sun, which means it could also be forming a planetary system, possibly one like ours.”
Cosmic Cloud Contains Water Vapor - Space News - redOrbit

Once again, none of this supports the claims made in Genesis regarding the supernatural formation of the Earth. Research paper, after paper, demonstrates the continued production of water by various natural processes on an on-going basis in the universe. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Calminian · Oct 5, 2014

Cycel said:

Why would they not want to propagate this? If Genesis says that water was separated by the cosmos, and we find water at the edges of the cosmos, why would they not see this as an occurrence compatible with the Genesis account? I find it to be uncanny, as I learned about this after I had come to the conclusion the Humphreys' exegesis of Genesis 1 was the correct one. If water vapor isn't a smoking gun of the waters above that were never spoken of again, I don't know what is.

Cycel said:

But Cycel, Genesis clearly says that the ocean was not made until day 3. If you want to be true to the text, you'll have to say the waters of day 1 were different than the waters of day 3 which God gathered and called the seas.

Cycel said:

Well of course. NASA doesn't not subscribe to the idea that the creation of the world was miraculous, so of course they're going to see deep time to explain the great distances. But this discussion was supposed to be about the Bible and what it teaches. 17 times in scripture we are told that God stretched out the heavens. I would not expect NASA to accept this, as they must reject all miraculous explanations.

Cycel said:

But the creation story only tells us what happened with the waters left below the heavens. Read the account carefully. We're not told what happened with the waters above. We're only told by a psalmist thousands of years later that they are still up there (Psa. 148:4).

It's sounds to me like you're not familiar with what most creationists today believe about the expanse on day 2. There are virtually no creationists who subscribe to an atmospheric expansion you seem to be advocating. It has too many exegetical difficulties. Most creationist subscribe to Russell Humphreys exegesis, that the expansion on day 2 was the expansion of the cosmos (not merely the atmosphere).

And BTW, this theory was held long before these vast amounts of water were discovered in space. I think the issue here is, you're clinging to some bad interpretations of scripture, as is common with those advocating solid dome interpretations.

I also need to point out that up to this point, you've not offered a single bit of textual evidence that the Bible writers believed in solid dome cosmology. You're going into great detail about how NASA doesn't believe in young earth creationism, but I already knew that. Do you have any textual evidence from the Bible that the writers held such a view. I maintain, they defined heaven as an upward open expanse. Can you find anything to contradict this?

Calminian · Oct 6, 2014

EmethAlethia said:

This sounds like more bad interpretations. It's important to read the text carefully and not make any assumptions about what it's saying. I'm amazed how little care skeptics take in deriving the intended meaning from the text.

There is only one place in scripture that talks about rain having not yet fallen on the earth, and that was day 6, in the garden of Eden account. The mist translation there is doubtful, and you'll find other translations using the term streams which came up from the earth in the very early initial creation days. But after this, rain likely feel on earth for more than a thousand years before the flood. There's nothing in the text to suggest it did not.

Some articles to help you through this:

AiG: There Was No Rain Before the Flood

AiG: Did It Rain Before the Flood?

Now if you want to take the stance that Genesis teaches no rain before the Flood that's fine, I would just ask you to prove it from the text.

EmethAlethia said:

As I was trying to explain to Cycel, the vapor canopy theory has been all be abandoned by virtually all creationists, based on textual problems alone. Day 2 seems to most to be speaking of a much greater expansion than merely the atmosphere. It's actually the stretching out of the entire heavens.

Furthermore, the windows of heaven is merely a reference to clouds. You see other similar metaphors used of clouds throughout the old testament, such as doors of heaven (Psa. 78:23) and jars of heaven (Job 38:37). This is a very common way to describe clouds in the Bible.

One of the problems I'm finding with all solid-dome advocates (those who claim Genesis teaches solid-dome cosmology) is that their theory is linked with the vapor canopy interpretation. In my dealings with this issue, I've found that once you show Genesis does not describe a vapor canopy of any kind, the argument ends pretty quickly. And again, virtually all creationists admit it can't be found in the text (AiG, ICR, CMI, etc.).

And again, I want those reading this thread to observe that not a single argument based on the text has yet been made to support this idea. Thus I still maintain that Genesis and the Bible contradict the solid-dome ideas of ANE culture. But I'm still waiting for a good textual argument.

EmethAlethia · Oct 6, 2014

I cannot argue with a need to make everything fit what we want to believe. Anyone can. Rain is never referred to as someone opening a window and "pouring" water forth.

By the way, if you state that the universe has a semblance of great age, the bible agrees with you. Everything was created with a semblance of age. Chickens came before eggs, for example. Full grown trees, and not seeds ... To state that it all appears older than it is, is to agree with scripture, not contradict it.

If you showed up at day 7 after creation, and brought all of the top scientists, you might notice some atmospheric differences, but all of the testing would concur with this. It all appears much older than 7 days old.

This said, even referring to things appearing older is a confirmation of what God said. To state that it appears light has been coming to earth for billions of years is not a contradiction of anything, it's confirmation.

These are not areas of disagreement between evolutionists and creationists, these are all areas of agreement.

Calminian · Oct 6, 2014

EmethAlethia said:

Of course it is. I gave you 2 references in the O.T. thousands of years later with the same type of symbolisms being used. Why would you assume this didn't refer to clouds?

Also, why would God set a rainbow in the clouds (Gen. 9:13) if the clouds weren't what flooded the earth? Does that make any sense to you? Of course the windows of heaven are clouds, just as the doors of heaven and jars of heaven are clouds.

EmethAlethia said:

I never spoke against any of these. I'm a young earth creationist. But this is way off topic.

Calminian · Oct 6, 2014

EmethAlethia said:

Gen. 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12 And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.

Gen. 8:2 The fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained.

That's exactly what it's referred to in Genesis.

Cycel · Oct 6, 2014

Calminian said:

Oh, they believed it all right. It's there. The creation account implies it very strongly, but elsewhere in the Old Testament it specifically states it.

Sorry it's taken so long to get to the meat of this, but just by reading the creation account you should be able to understand what I am seeing. I haven't had as much time to post as I'd hoped.

Calminian said:

It wasn't my intent to mention NASA, but you raised the matter. My point is that the NASA article doesn't lend any support to the creation account. Once you raised the matter you forced me to discuss it.

Calminian said:

I don't want to provide that until I've completely discussed all the evidence in Genesis that points to it. Then I will deliver the passages that confirm it. I hope no one steals my thunder.

Calminian said:

I am not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain further?

Kerry · Oct 6, 2014

A bunch of malarkey.

Kerry · Oct 6, 2014

The Bible teaches the Cross.

Cycel · Oct 6, 2014

Cycel said:

Calminian said:

It is not liquid water NASA has found. It is water vapor in a rather tenuous cloud stretching over “hundreds of light years.” There is no comparison with “and a mighty wind that swept over the surface of the waters.” A cloud of water vapor, the density of which is “300 trillion times less than the Earth's atmosphere,” doesn’t have a surface. It is like a fog bank that becomes more and more diffuse at the boundaries until it is no longer detectable. The bigger point is that this vapor cloud is not a solid body of water. Genesis, on the other hand, is describing a solid body of water.

This particular cloud is the most expansive one know, and the densest, but there are many smaller versions of it much closer to home, but they too are nothing like what is being described in Genesis. This astronomical finding in no way supports Genesis 1:2.

Cycel · Oct 6, 2014

Kerry said:

What's malarkey? If you respond please only quote the part of my post you are responding to.

Does the Bible teach ancient solid-dome cosmology?

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