The concept of the flat earth covered by a solid dome according to the creation story of Genesis....the stars above them were fixed in a solid dome and that the sky literally touched the earth at the horizon. So, the sky must be a solid physical part of the universe just as much as the earth itself. …..
The flat earth and firmament is the assumed cosmology in the rest of Scripture.
The firmament as a solid object is confirmed in Job: ‘Can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?’ (Job 37:18), and in Ezekial: ‘Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a firmament, sparkling like crystal, and awesome.’ (Ezekial 1:22). It was regarded as a beautiful feat of engineering (as in fact it is, in a way), and they told God they appreciated it: ‘The heavens are thy handiwork.’ (Psalms 102).
The Jewish people continued to believe the sky was solid until many hundreds of years later is evident in many things they wrote. For example, the book of Enoch – one of the many books rejected from the bible by some Jews and Christians, but quoted in the New Testament – talks about windows in the firmament which opened and closed for the sun and moon to rise through, and others which opened to allow some of the water above to fall as rain. (This may not be surprising considering the book of Ecclesiastes’ opinion that ‘The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.’ The sun, of course, doesn’t move anywhere, least of all through windows in a solid dome, but they could never have known that.) Other biblical books use the literal word ‘windows’ to describe rain, too. Genesis 7:11 says Noah’s Flood started that way: ‘The windows of heaven were opened.’
Astounding the kind of things you can read INTO the text!
