Re: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug

Dave wrote,
<<Ptolemy fl. 2nd cent. CE. I did not use AD because it begins /anno/which
can't be a century.>>

Well, that helps quite a bit. Since Ptolemy is that late, we have the clear
testimony of the Septuagint before that. It translates the Hebrew raqia'with
the Greek word stereoma, clearly solid.

Also we have the Jew Philo from the first century. In his book On the
Creation of the World, He says (I:36)

"The Creator proceeded to make the Heaven which with strict truth he
entitled firmament (stereoma), as being corporeal: for the body is naturally
solid, seeing that it has threefold dimension. What else indeed do we
conceive a a solid object and a body to be, but that which extends in each
direction? Fitly then, in contradistinction to the incorporeal and purely
intelligible, did he call this body-like heaven perceived by our senses,
"the solid firmament."

Note the word, solid, is used three times to describe the firmament,
stereoma, which is solid, is used twice, and he puts the icing on the cake
by contrasting the firmament with something incorporeal.

Paul
 
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Jun 17 23:13:06 2006