Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 1:23 pm
The Genesis creation account is the central topic of my 2022 book, Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts: Cosmic Monotheism and Terrestrial Polytheism in the Primordial History. I talk about the raqia or dome of the firmament in several passages
I can’t agree with Gmirkin’s assertion that there was a “special” use of the word “raqia” in Genesis 1.
All the instances of
רָקִיעַ (
raqia) that appear in the OT suggest exactly what the word expresses: a solid beaten-out sheet or plate of some sort, derived from
רָקַע to stamp/beat out.
Gmirkin is quite right when he says that Genesis 1 is “parsimonious and relatively austere” but I cannot agree with him when he adds that:
Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 1:23 pm“Since Genesis 1 made no story connection between the fashioning of the sky as a raqia and God as architect or builder of the cosmos, in Genesis 1 the word raqia is best understood as a simple reference to the dome of the sky.”
The author of this chapter doesn’t use an anthropomorphic verb for the creation of the
רָקִיעַ, but he doesn’t use
any poetic verbs for any of God’s other creative acts either. Unlike Psalms and Job, he only uses two verbs -
בָּרָא and
עָשָׂה – which is about as basic as one can get. But that is a matter of the severe, paired-back style, and due to an essential difference in meaning. *
It is a little difficult for us to get a handle on the concept of the “raqia” because the English translation “firmament” is not a word in normal usage. Actually, I think that perhaps the best English translation of
רָקִיעַ would be “ceiling” – because: (a) that would make it clear that it was up above, (b) it would convey that it was solid and (c) “ceiling” is, happily, derived from the Latin
caelum, sky, so would fit the bill perfectly. When God creates the
רָקִיעַ, he is creating a solid “ceiling plate" that lifts up and retains the the upper waters. After its introduction in Gen 1:8 the word appears (in construct state) along with with Heaven -
רְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם, the Ceiling of Heaven - which is precisely what it is: the solid ceiling of the sky.
Gmirkin goes on to say:
Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 1:23 pm“But no such meaning attaches to the term raqia here. Rather, raqia here appears as a simple legacy from the older, pre-scientific language usage, an old term for the sky familiar to the intended audience of Genesis 1, but used there without its mythical linguistic baggage. Rather, raqia is best understood as a simple reference to the dome of the sky.”
If Gmirkin is proposing that in Genesis 1 the word
raqia is used differently to the way it is used elsewhere, he would surely have to have evidence for such an earlier usage. However, there are no instances in the OT when
רָקִיעַ is used in this supposed older “pre-scientific” way. It is frankly unlikely that there ever was such an earlier usage because when words develop, the meaning tends to drift
away from their earliest meaning, not the other way round. Since the root meaning of
רָקִיעַ conveys its beaten-out solidity, not it’s ethereal “dome-ness”, I can't see that there is any justification for believing that there ever was a “pre-scientific” meaning that was unconnected to its root, let alone that such a usage is employed in Genesis 1.
Finally, Gmirkin says that
στερέωμα is a “word that Plato's
Timaeus uses for the dome of the sky (one of many parallels with Genesis 1)” but I’m afraid I cannot find a single example of Plato using the word
στερέωμα in
Timaeus. Gmirkin supplies the references “Timaeus 31b, 43c,” but here we find only
στερεοῦ/στερεὸν/στερεῷ, which in each case conveys “solidity” in various contexts. Gmirkin also adds “cf. 33b” where neither
στερέωμα or
στερεὸν appear (it’s about the construction of the cosmos as a sphere). Not that this is overly important: the LXX is after all only a translation of the Hebrew. Even so, the fact that the translators chose to coin the neologism
στερέωμα – derived from
στερεὸν, firm, solid, rigid – surely shows that they too understood the
רָקִיעַ to be something
στερεὸν, solid - a plate of some sort, rather than anything less substantial.
This shows that the writer(s) who employed the term
raqia did indeed understand it as a solid dome arching over the earth, an understanding that they shared with many cultures of the ancient Near East. There is no discernible connection with Plato’s cosmological model of seven layers of spherical heavens surrounding the spherical earth.
* I actually believe that the verses in which God makes/creates – are part of a supplementary stratum within this chapter; the initial pattern of the creation was even simpler: “God said ….” followed by “And it was so”. The fact that the additional “making” passages appear in addition to the expression "and it was so" reveals that they are supplementary. These and a few other amplifications can all be removed without the main elements and order of creation being destroyed, leaving a repetitive account with little appeal as literature, but which has an incantatory quality that may hint at its origins).