![]() Saint Basil argued for a fluid firmament. "We may understand this name as given to indicate not it is motionless but that it is solid." he wrote. Christian viewsĪugustine wrote that too much learning had been expended on the nature of the firmament. So slight is this elevation that birds may rise to it and fly along its expanse. To this vault are fastened the lights, the stars. Over this is arched the solid vault of heaven. The Hebrews regarded the earth as a plain or a hill figured like a hemisphere, swimming on water. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the firmament as follows: Stars were small objects that were attached tenuosly to its surface. On top there were also warehouses of snow and hail. It had many windows, some of which opened and closed for the sun and moon to travel through or to let water, which was held above, fall through as rain. The firmament was a great tent-like ceiling made of solid crystalline-like material, which, according to the pseudepedigraphic 2nd or 3rd century book of 3 Baruch, might be pierced by tower and gimlet. The modern bible, and non-canonical related texts, present a cosmology that is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge. So the evening and the morning were the second day. Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus 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. The word is used in the Genesis creation narrative: The New Revised Standard Version uses "dome", as in the Celestial dome. This translation is used by the New International Version and by the English Standard Version. Ĭonservatives and fundamentalists tend to favor translations that allow scripture to be harmonized with scientific knowledge, for example "expanse". Raqa adopted the meaning "to make firm or solid" in Syriac, a major dialect of Aramaic (the vernacular of Jesus) and close cognate of Hebrew. The original word raqia is derived from the root raqa ( רקע), meaning "to beat or spread out", e.g., the process of making a dish by hammering thin a lump of metal. The notion of solidity is advanced explicitly in several biblical passages. The connotation of firmness conveyed by the Vulgate's firmamentum is consistent with that of stereoma, the Greek word used in the Septuagint, an earlier translation. The word "firmament" is used to translate raqia, or raqiya` ( רקיע), a word used in Biblical Hebrew. The word is a Latinization of the Greek stereoma, which appears in the Septuagint (c. ![]() This in turn is derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with "firm". The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate (4th century). It later appeared in the King James Bible. The word "firmament" is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250. ![]()
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