What is biblical cosmology?

It is now generally known, as it had long been laid down by the most competent Hebraists before modern science existed, that "expanse" is the real force of the original word, instead of "firmament" which came to us through the Latin Vulgate, as it seems due to the Greek Septuagint. Possibly these Jewish translators in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus may have succumbed here as elsewhere to Gentile ideas or at least phrases. And a great Rabbinical scholar, a Christian teacher, has given his opinion that the Greek version employs the word (στερέωμα) in the sense of an ethereal or fine subtle orb, and in no way of a solid permanent vault as rationalists love to assume, basing it on etymology and figurative usage. The aim is obvious, the wish father to the thought. Excluding God from the written word as from creation, deifying nature and exalting fallen man (more especially of the nineteenth century), they gladly depreciate the text by citing "windows" and "doors," "pillars" and "foundations" as if meant literally. Now the usage of the word even in the chapter itself (vers. 15, 17, 20, 28) sufficiently proves that the word conveys the idea of the open transparent sky, whatever may have been the misunderstanding of the reader at any given time.

Hence it may be noted that the Authorised and Revised English Versions give "the air" as the equivalent of "the heavens" in ver. 28 as elsewhere. It is really the expanse, including the atmospheric heavens in the lower part of which birds fly. A solid vault is out of the question. The true derivation seems rather from a word expressing elevation, like the source of our own "heaven"; but even if drawn from the idea of beating or hammering out, who knows not that words may and do acquire a force etherealised according to the object designated, wholly above their material origin? The scriptures really present the heavens as spread out, and the earth hung upon nothing, nowhere giving countenance to the grossness of the stars fastened like brass nails on a metallic vault. Sceptical ill-will likes that it should seem so; but it is unworthy slander. Even Dathe who was free enough gives "spatium extensum," as did learned Jews generally long before and since.

"The waters above" consist of that enormous supply of vapour which fills the clouds and falls as rain, hail, or snow. "The waters below" covered the earth as yet, but were shortly to form seas, when the dry land appeared next day. It is ignorance therefore to say, in the face of a crowd of scriptures, that the waters above imply a permanent solid vault like a shower bath. The Hebrews could see the movements of many heavenly bodies instead of regarding all as fixtures. But even had they been as dull as rationalism is invidious, our concern is with the divine record, the accuracy of which irritates hostile minds who would hail the least flaw with satisfaction. Scripture abides; science changes and corrects itself from age to age. As to figures, "bottles" are used no less than "pillars," and a "tent" or "curtain" as well as "windows" and "doors." They are all strikingly expressive. Only the stupid or malicious could take any of them in the letter, to dishonour the scriptures.

This publication is scarcely the suited place, nor does the writer pretend, to draw out adequately the wondrous and beneficent functions of the separated waters or seas and of the dry land, any more than of the light and of the atmospheric heavens, on which a little has been said. But a few words here may confirm, what was remarked as to the first and the second days, that the record speaks with immediate propriety of God's constituting the earth for the human race. By no means does it intimate particulars of the long periods before man when those successive changes are observable, which laid down vast stores for his future use and fitted the earth's progressively built-up crust, the rich field of geological research. One can admire the wisdom which did not encumber the Bible with the details of natural science. Rocks crystalline and stratified are before men's eyes, who can reason on the fossils they embalm. Scripture alone avoids the universal heathen idea of a primitive chaos, and the philosophic error of an eternal universe or even eternal matter. Scripture, on the contrary, has carefully enunciated God's creation at an undefined moment, "in the beginning," not merely of crude materials, but of the heavens and the earth, without a word about their denizens. It also makes known the fact that the earth was subjected to revolution so complete that before the Adamic state of things divine power was needed to cause light to act in a diurnal way, as well as to order the atmosphere, and from a previous and universal overspread of waters the appearance of dry land, on which God began the plants or vegetable kingdom for man.

I shall be told at once that it is not by the Bible. But I must ask, Why not by the Bible? Shall I be met with the stereotyped objection that it is full of contradictions, and is altogether wrong as to the plan of the universe; that it makes it geocentric, and has spoken of the earth as a plain. It has done nothing of the kind. It is so carefully written, that its statements never jar upon the mind of the most advanced scientist, not do they cause the most illiterate to move in the direction of astronomical discovery. But may I ask, what impression does the universe convey to the mind of the ordinary mortal, as he looks abroad into the starry night from his cottage door? Will he not conceive of the earth as a flat plain, and the dome of heaven as a hemisphere, resting upon the rim of the earth? Could He who is infinite in wisdom have made the visible things no other way? The truth is that the heavens and the earth are so ordered that moral impressions are conveyed to the mind. Everything away from earth is upward and above man, and man is made to look upward to God who has His dwelling-place in the heavens. The Bible has a way of its own, by which it leaves these impressions undisturbed. If it gave other impressions, and taught the Newtonian theory, we might with some show of reason conclude that the God of creation is not the God of the Bible. I am not attempting to prove by this, that the Bible owes its origin to the Creator, I am only showing, that if the Bible leaves undisturbed the impression that creation itself gives to the naked eye of the ordinary observer, that is no proof against the divine origin of the Scriptures.

Earth now comes out of the waste to be fruit-bearing. The notion that there were no heavens till the present sky was formed, the atmospheric heavens, is an utter mistake. We left the heavens as distinct from the earth behind us in verse 1, to speak only of the earth and what referred to it. This was the heathen idea, as may be seen in Ovid. The Mosaic account is much more just and true, when none else was. It distinguishes the empyrean heavens from the atmospheric heavens. In heathenism, man spoke; in scripture, God. The word used for what was now formed is not what is spoken of in the great act of creation; it is expanse. But this has the name of heaven, and that only is said, and this is true now. The rakiang is called heaven, and it is quite right it should be. Do I not rightly say, I shall go up to heaven? I do not excommunicate a man for believing there are antipodes; but I should think a man who should tell me, "I must not say go up to heaven, because my friend in New Zealand or Australia would then go down," a very unprofitable and foolish person. Moral ideas are associated with physically unscientific ones; and I am afraid we shall speak and sing of the sun's rising and setting, and the moon's waxing and waning, though the advanced science of rationalists in the happy age that is coming may have convinced incipient philosophers at National Schools that it is all a mistake, that suns do not set or rise, nor moons wax or wane. We are set in a system where these phenomena are meant to act on us, a wondrous world of images which are more true than science, because mind is more real than matter. And in moral things (and the scripture is throughout a moral book) God speaks to us according to this, not according to the (after all) petty discoveries of science. I call it petty, because it is only occupied with material things. All knowledge is the proof of ignorance: for what a man has learnt he did not know before; yet, if he has rightly learnt it, it was before, and he did not know it.

It is stated that the Bible cannot be inspired, as the language is inconsistent with modern science. It cannot be too often stated that the Bible is not a scientific treatise, and since that is so, an inspired instructor will only speak in the common language of men. An inspired man would say the sun rises, like any other. It is the grossest and flattest stupidity to question this — to think that the Holy Ghost, speaking to immortal souls, would stop to explain astronomy, or to avoid current expressions: the whole effect of what He said would be destroyed. Apart from that, do men stare at you as ignorant if you speak of the rising of the sun, unless you are addressing an astronomical society?

And still further, the word “heaven” is in the dual. Now, in 2 Corinthians 12:2, we read of the third heaven, evidently the immediate presence of God. Heaven (Gen. 1:1) in the dual would set forth (1) the atmospheric heaven, the atmosphere that belts the earth where clouds are formed, and (2) the stellar heavens, those vast spaces in which the myriads of stars are set. Genesis 1:1 speaks of the creation of these, but not of the third heaven. How marvellously exact.

A positive description of such a scene is found in what the Apostle tells us in 2 Corinthians 12, of how he was caught up to the third heaven. The first heaven refers to the atmospheric heavens the home of clouds and winds; the second heaven is the stellar region, where there are hundreds of millions of stars; the third heaven is the dwelling place of God.

(2) Bildad had dwelt upon the glories of God as displayed in the heavens; Job declares His domain in the depths. It is not "dead things," but rather the "shades," the "things under the earth" (Phil. 2:10). This may refer to the evil spirits, to infernal things; and, according to the manner of the Old Testament, to Sheol and its inhabitants. (See Ezek. 32:18, etc.) "Dragons and all deeps" tremble at His presence. It is folly to think of the abode of the lost as independent of God. Whether it be "the spirits [now] in prison" (1 Peter 3:19), or the bottomless pit, or the lake of fire, God, not Satan, reigns. His will at last must be obeyed. "If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, Thou art there" (Ps. 139:8).

(3) Looking upward, Job still traces the footsteps of the Creator's power and wisdom. "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place." The bell-like canopy of the northern skies, where the pole-star is suspended over emptiness, has no pillars to support it. In these few words, and those following, Job seems to have anticipated the great facts of astronomy regarding the earth and the heavens. He "hangeth the earth upon nothing"; how immeasurably above the cosmogonies of the heathen philosophers are these few grand words! In them we have as in germ the discoveries of a Newton and a Keppler. It is a great mistake to think Scripture does not teach scientific truth. It teaches all needed truth, even if not in scientific language, yet with scientific accuracy.

There are plain and manifest signs that God did indeed inspire Moses in his record of creation. Take the uninspired accounts of creation, that the earth was flat and triangular, seven stories high, supported on the backs of elephants, in turn supported on the back of a tortoise with no visible support under it; that the heavens were a solid vault over the earth, studded with stars; that the mountains were created to act as chains and anchors to keep the earth from moving. Such are samples of the puerile, fantastic, crude accounts of creation in ancient times, which no one today would give credence to for a moment.

The Hebrew word translated “firmament” would be better given as “expanse,” as it is marked in the reference column in some editions of our Bibles. The word, “firmament” comes from the Vulgate translation of the Bible in Latin by Jerome, and is unfortunate. The idea came to him from the ancients. Greek and Roman philosophies described heaven as forming a solid vault over the earth. Aristotle’s (B.C. 384-322) description was “a sphere studded with stars.” The little girl, who imagined the stars were gimlet holes let into the floor of heaven through which the glory of heaven shone, was not far removed from the learned philosopher in her ideas.

The meaning of the passage is plain. Up to now the chaotic earth was enswathed in water and enwrapt in darkness. Then God took in hand to reconstruct the earth. He decreed that there should not only be water on the earth, but by evaporation there should be water in the skies in the form of clouds. There was to be water below the expanse, that is on the earth; and water above the expanse, that is as seen in the clouds in the sky.

Genesis 1, that incomparable description of original creation, and the reconstruction of the earth following on a supervening chaotic state, describes the heavens by the word, firmament. This as it stands would support the idea of the Greek and Roman philosophies for the word comes from Latin firmament, which has for its original meaning firm. But when the Hebrew word, translated firmament in our authorized version is examined, we find it would be correctly translated by the word, expanse. There could not be a better word to describe the illimitable space we know as the heavens. It was the great Lord Salisbury, no mean scientist, who described the word, ether, as a convenient term for hiding our ignorance. Who then guided the hand of Moses when he wrote the opening verses in Genesis 1? Surely it was Divine guidance, and nothing less.

The Egyptians taught that the earth was formed by the motion of air and the upward course of flame. But where did the air come from, and who or what gave to the flame its upward tendency? How was it that Moses at one stroke went back to the real origin of creation in the simple and yet sublime words of scripture, “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth” (Gen. 1:1)?

Moses of course was not present when the original creation occurred. How then could he describe what he had never seen, that is the at of creation: How puerile and unsatisfying is the Egyptian philosophy, how satisfying in its simple majesty is the account of creation in Genesis 1.