Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 11.36 30/08/00 +0100, Peter Kirk wrote:
>If you read "the dome of the sky" in a modern English literary work, would
>you as a literalist understand that the author believed that the sky was a
>literal solid dome? 

Why not?

>Or would you accept that this might be a figure of
>speech, a metaphor based on similarity of shape and appearance? 
>If you could accept this in English, why not in Hebrew?

Would accept that, when people in the middle ages referred to the earth
being flat, this might have been a figure of speech, a metaphor based on
similarity of shape and appearance rather than the simple, unacceptable to
modern understanding, belief that it was indeed flat? Was Giordano Bruno
burnt for a metaphor?


Ian