From Newsgroup: talk.origins

On 5/5/2026 9:33 PM, RonO wrote:

Apparently, there are still conservative flat earth Biblical
creationists (both Jewish and Christian) that believe that the firmament
was created on the second day of the 6 days of creation.-a This is in
spite of the fact that the firmament does not exist.-a Less conservative Orthodox Jews seem to have adopted the firmament as being something like
a cloud layer rather than the solid dome that is claimed in the Bible.

I found this account by someone that claims to have been raised as an Orthodox Jew.-a He writes as if he is no longer a Biblical literalist, at least, not as literal as the flat earthers.-a In this article he
describes the cosmology of the ancient Hebrew that wrote the Bible, and notes that the existence of a firmament was nearly universal across the world in multiple different cultures.

The Reason to Believe creation model wants to pretend that the firmament
was not created on the second day or period of time.-a The Jewish account just has the authors of the Bible describing the creation of what they believed existed.-a He also notes how historical rabbis continued to
promote the existence of the firmament until Copernican times.

This is a strange read.-a The author wants to take the Bible literally,
and is against the existing apologetics (reinterpretation of the Bible).
-aHe understands that the firmament doesn't exist as described in the Bible, but somehow the understanding of what the ancient rabbis and
Biblical authors believed allows him to accept what the Bible tells him
even if the firmament doesn't exist.

He has an account of how tragically lame apologetics can be by
recounting something that I had never heard before.-a There seems to be a claim that only seeds were created on the 3 day, so that the sun could
be created on the 4th day without the need for creating photosynthesis before there was a sun in the sky.-a The account that I had heard was
that god was making day and night for 3 days before he made the sun to
do that job, but some literalists must believe that daylight only
existed after the sun was created to do that job.

He doesn't like the fact that the firmament is not discussed more
openly, and thinks that the students should not have to figure things
out for themselves, but be guided to a non apologetic response to reality.

ANE is ancient near eastern literature.-a Rakia is the firmament.
QUOTE:
It has been a few decades since my high school experience, and it is no longer difficult to find information about what the Bible means in its
ANE context that will quickly contradict whatever apologetics one may
hear in yeshiva. Perhaps the community of educators within the system
should consider a new strategy. After all, a lazy lunchtime Google
search will bring anyone with a passing curiosity a dozen sources with everything the yeshiva educators were hoping students would never find
out about the rakia and many other challenging topics. If this piece can
be a source for a young student such as I was, trying to figure out a
path through the contradictions, for my part, IrCOm happy to add one more. END QUOTE:

https://www.thetorah.com/article/my-encounter-with-the-firmament
This web site claims to be Modern Orthodox.

Ron Okimoto

Since the Reason to Believe old earth creationists and AIG young earth creationists do not take the firmament literally I asked Google what the apologetic explanation for the non existence of the firmament was and
got this answer.

QUOTE:
Biblical literalist apologists do not believe they are ignoring a contradiction; rather, they argue that the modern English definition of
a "solid dome" is a historical mistranslation of the original text.

To align the text with modern science while maintaining a literal
reading of Genesis, leading apologists from organizations like Answers
in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) re-examine the original Hebrew vocabulary.

1. The Linguistic Argument: "Expanse" vs. "Solid Vault"The Original
Hebrew: The word translated as "firmament" in older English Bibles (like
the King James Version) is the Hebrew word raqiya. Literalist apologists
argue raqiya means "expanse," "space," or "stretched-out thinness"
rather than a solid structure.

The Translation Error: Apologists blame ancient Greek and Latin
translators for introducing the concept of a solid dome. When the Hebrew
Bible was translated into the Greek Septuagint, scholars used the word stereoma (something hard), influenced by the Greek cosmological view of
rigid crystalline spheres. This became firmamentum in the Latin Vulgate
and "firmament" in English. Literalist apologists argue the original
Hebrew implies vast space, not a solid object.

2. Redefining the Firmament as "Outer Space" and "Atmosphere"

Because Genesis 1 says birds fly across the firmament (v. 20) and the
sun, moon, and stars are placed in the firmament (v. 14), literalist ministries split the raqiya into zones:

The Atmosphere: The lower boundary where air exists and birds fly.

Outer Space: The vast interstellar expanse where celestial bodies reside.

Under this literal framework, the firmament absolutely existsrCoit is
simply the scientific vacuum of space combined with Earth's atmosphere.

3. Explaining "The Waters Above" (Genesis 1:7)

If the firmament is outer space, apologists must explain what water it separated. They typically use two literalist theories:

The Boundary of the Universe: Modern literalists like Russell Humphreys suggest that "the waters above" were pushed out to the literal edge of
the physical universe during creation, forming a distant icy boundary.

The Vapor Canopy Model: Historically, popular literalist theologians
(like Henry Morris) argued that the "waters above" formed a massive
water vapor layer in the upper atmosphere. They claimed this canopy
created a global greenhouse effect before collapsing to cause the rain
for NoahrCOs flood. (Note: Many creationist groups have moved away from
this model due to thermal physics issues, preferring the
universe-boundary model).

In summary, literalist apologists bypass the problem of a non-existent
solid dome by insisting that the Bible never claimed the sky was solid
in the first place, using linguistic arguments to equate the "firmament"
with modern astronomical space.
END QUOTE:

This is totally inconsistent with what the Orthdox author of the
firmament article understood to be the case. He acknowledged that the
authors of Genesis 1 were simply describing the creation of the universe
that they believed existed. The authors of the Bible were obviously
wrong because the firmament does not exist. His only hope was that it
might have existed for a short period of time, but he didn't put forward
any explanation for what held the sun and moon once the firmament
disappeared, and nothing would have been needed to separate the waters.
Not only that, but the earth is not flat, and the universe is not
geocentric. The ancient cosmology was just incorrect.

The Orthodox author notes that there are two different Hebrew words for
sky or expanse, and for the firmament. Both are used correctly in the
first chapter of Genesis. The sky or expanse was created on the first
day, and the firmament was created on the second day. The historical
Rabbis consistently defined the firmament as a solid dome until
Copernican times when their geocentric cosmology failed. There was
absolutely no chance of a Greek mistranslation because the Rabbis
continued to define the firmament as a solid dome for around 1500 years
after the birth of Christ.

The authors of the Bible were just wrong about the creation. As the
Orthodox author points out the Biblical authors wrote about what they
believed existed. He describes the ancient Hebrew cosmology and has an archaic illustration with Hebrew labels from an 1898 dictionary of the
Bible.

Ron Okimoto


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