27-2-2013
Where the Hebrews Naïve about Creation?:The Myth of the Solid Dome Heaven
Randall W. Younker, PhD SDA Theological Seminary Andrews University
The Hebrews were Naïve about Nature • In a recent book, Brian Bull and Fritz Guy propose that the ancient Hebrews had a pre- scientific view of creation and that this naivety is illustrated in Genesis 1—the Creation account
The sky or firmament was a solid half dome? • One of the naïve ideas of the Hebrews are said to have had, was the idea that the sky—the firmament (Hebrew raqia) was an upside down metal bowl— a vault or dome—and if you went far or high enough, you would bump into it!
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Schaiparelli
Owen Charles Whitehouse— Dictionary of the Bible (1908 p 503) James Hastings, ed.
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A Naïve Understanding?
• Of course, if the ancient Hebrews had a naïve pre- scientific understanding of creation, then we are not obligated to believe the creation account in an historic literal fashion
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No Recent six day creation
• And we are not obligated to belief in a recent, literal six day creation (nor a world wide flood, etc)
• Picture by Ebgi
Where Does the idea of Hebrew Naivety come from?
• Herman Gunkel claimed that “The description of the solid vault of heavens is very widespread among primitive peoples.” (1895; citing E.B. Tylor) • Gunkel argued that most of ancient Israel’s ideas, including their understanding of creation and the flood, made their way into Scripture were derived from Babylon during the Exile
Die Kosmologie Der Babylonier Peter Jensen (1890/1974)
• Peter Jensen’s Die Kosmologie Der Babylonier (1890) was one of the first works to suggest that the Babylonians believed that the heavens consisted of a vaulted dome
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Wilfred George Lambert
Lambert (1975: 61-62) on Jensen
Jensen’s transliteration of samāmu (“heaven”)
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Jensen (1909) arbitrarily translated samāmu as Himmelswölbung (“vault of heaven”)
No Vault in Mesopotamian Cosmology
• Wayne Horowitz has attempted to reconstruct a Mesopotamian cosmology for various texts, but whether this really reflects their views is unknown • A key discovery is that the heavens were flat, not vaulted
Why is raqia called firmament?
• Jerome, who is said not to have been good in Hebrew, translated Greek stereoma to Latin firmamentum—this went into English as firmament • Why is stereoma in the LXX?
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Empedocles of Acragas 495-435 BC
• At the time the LXX was written, the common Greek understanding was that the earth was a sphere surrounded by hard celestial spheres—not to be confused with a dome on a flat earth! • They thought the world was round!!!!
Later scholars believed the spheres were NOT solid (comets and orbits of some bodies)
Christians believed the world round!
• Illustration of the spherical earth in a medieval manuscript. The figure shows two men walking around the spherical earth, one going to the East and the other to the West, and meeting on the opposite side.[1] • 14th century copy of a 12th century original
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Raqia is an expanse—not solid!
• John Gill (1697-1771), English theologian, Baptist and Calvinist; Biblical linguist • Interpreted raqia as expanse, following a number of exegetes of the 16th and 17th centuries—between these God ordered a "firmament to be", or an "expanse" (eyqr "expansio", Montanus. Tigurine version; "extensio", Munster, Fagius, Vatablus, Aben Ezra; "expansum", Junius, Tremellius, Piscator, Drusius, Schmidt, sterewma Sept. "firmamentum", V. L.); something stretched out and spread like a curtain, tent, or canopy: and to this all those passages of Scripture refer, which speak of the stretching out of the heavens, as this firmament or expanse is afterwards called (in An exposition of the Old Testament, 1757)
Where did flat earth and dome heaven come from?
1888 Flammarion woodcut
Antoine Augustin Calmet 1672-1757 • Published a Dissertation on the World View of the Jews in 1744 ; this material was extracted from his earlier “On the World System of the Ancient Hebrews” in Dissertations qui peuvent servir de prolégomènes à l'Ecriture Sainte (Paris, 1720: 450 ff) • Describes world view of the Jews—a flat earth capped by a tent-like heavenly vault— he used this material in his introduction to Galileo’s work • This was an early example of accommodation
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Voltaire 1694-1778
• French philosopher, published Dictionnaire philosophique portatif in 1764—he is one of the earliest philosophers to suggest that the ancients believed in a dome or vaulted sky that rested upon a flat earth in his entry under Le Ciel des anciens—under “Heaven” in English editions (1764: 76) • Probably got the idea from Calmet
Jean Antoine Letronne
• In 1834, Jean Antoine Letronne, a French archaeologist (Egyptologist) of strong anti-religious ideas, misrepresented the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers.
William Whewell
• In 1837, the English philosopher of science William Whewell identified, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, two minimally significant characters named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes, as evidence of a medieval belief in a Flat Earth; the latter argued that the sky was a vault— thus the two ideas went together • Other historians quickly followed him, even though it was hard to find other examples.
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William Whewell
• Whewell expanded his ideas of the Jewish view of the cosmos in a chapter “A Theory of the Solar System” in a book with a forward by Edward Hitchcock—The Plurality of Worlds (1854) • Whewell continues with his belief that the ancients believed in a flat earth (18)
Washington Irving and Columbus
• There was a meeting at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's version of it, to quote a distinguished modern historian of Columbus, was "pure moonshine.
Andrew Dickson White 1832-1918
• President of Cornell University, compared Genesis with Babylonian account: “In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a solid, concave firmament.” Later he characterizes the dome views of Hilary, Ambrose, and Jerome as “a sacred science based upon the letter of Scripture and on theology.”
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John William Colenso
• “If it would be wrong for a Christian Missionary of our day, to enforce the dogmas of the Church in former ages, which we now know to be absurd, and to mislead a class of native catéchiste, by teaching them that the Earth is flat, and the sky a solid firmament, above which the stores of rain are treasured, — when God has taught us otherwise, — it must be equally wrong and sinful, to teach them that the Scripture stories of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, are infallible records of historical fact, if God, by the discoveries of Science in our day, has taught us to know that these narratives — whatever they may be — are certainly not to be regarded as history”(1865: 289).
Lewis Bayles Paton (1864-1932)
• A Professor at Hartford Theological Seminary; Director of the American School in Jerusalem in 1903, located in the Grand New Hotel inside Jaffa Gate • Argued that the Biblical cosmology was “pre-Copernican” (1915: 12); he had accepted the negative assessment of medieval scholarship regarding cosmology
Harry Emerson Fosdick 1878-1969
• “In the Scriptures the flat earth is founded on an underlying sea; it is stationary; the heavens are like an upturned bowl or canopy above it; the circumference of this vault rests on pillars; the son, moon, and stars move within this firmament of special purpose to illumine man; there is a sea above the sky, “the waters which were above the heavens,” and through the “windows of heaven” the rain comes down; within the earth is Sheol, where dwell the shadowy dead; this whole cosmic system is suspended over vacancy; and it was all made in six days with a morning and an evening, a short and measurable time before. This is the worldview of the Bible.”
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Popular with neo-Evangelicals
• Seely, an evangelical, has defended the 19th century conclusions that the ancient Hebrews believed the heaven was a solid vault
The Hebrews were Naïve about Nature • In a recent book, Brian Bull and Fritz Guy propose that the ancient Hebrews had a pre- scientific view of creation and that this naivety is illustrated in Genesis 1—the Creation account
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Jeffrey Burton Russell
• The reason for promoting both the specific lie about the sphericity of the earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society, is to defend Darwinism. The answer is really only slightly more complicated than that bald statement. The flat-earth lie was ammunition against the creationists. The argument was simple and powerful, if not elegant: "Look how stupid these Christians are. They are always getting in the way of science and progress. These people who deny evolution today are exactly the same sort of people as those idiots who for at least a thousand years denied that the earth was round. How stupid can you get?"
Robert C. Newman
• Published a book in 2000 in which he deals with the linguistic and exegetical issues and argues that raqia never referred to a vault or dome in Hebrew
Conclusions
• The ancient Hebrew’s neighbors did NOT believe in a flat earth, vaulted heaven • Raqia does not mean something solid • For nearly 2000 years, Christian Scholars believed in a spherical earth—not flat • They were uncertain about the celestial spheres—perhaps solid, but later not solid • However, they translated raqia as expanse— not something solid
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Conclusions -2
• The idea of the flat earth and vaulted heaven was introduced into modern scholarship by Calmet who wanted to save Galileo • Idea was picked up by Historical Critics • And by Evangelicals in the 1830’s who did not know how to deal with geology and biological evolution that demanded long ages • The flat earth and solid dome were an invention of 19th century scholarship
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