Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Verna,

>Can the Hebrew word raqia (7549 NAS Hebrew-Aramaic Dict. for firmament)
>in Gen 1 take the meaning of  the modern scientific concept of
>dimension? Verse 16 would seem to express a possibily of this. This
>would open endless possibilities to the Genesis account.
>    "Central to this revolutionary perspective on the universe is the
>realization that higher-dimensional geometry may be the ultimate source
>of unity in the universe. This idea has fueled the hope that the
>physical laws of the universe, whose consequences fill entire library
>walls with books densely packed with tables and graphs, may one day be
>explained by a single equation. 15)" Hyperspace by Michio Kaku

The simple answer to your questions is a catagoric, 100% NO!
The firmament was thought to be a solid dome. Some rabbical 
writings tell us (if I remember correctly) it was four fingers
thick. In its verbal form the same root means to hammer out.
If you would like can hunt out some verses, I think from Job,
which suggest that the Hebrews thought the firmament was hammered
out by God when the made it.

If you started talking to an ancient Hebrew about a Kaluza-Klein
type models of the Universe and collapsed higher dimension he/she would
have no idea what you were talking about. Most moderns wouldn't
either! They didn't have calculus of any sort let alone differential
geometry and non-Euclidean spaces. Theories of the Universe using
more than 4 dimensions are very recent, trying to suggest that
the ancient Hebrews had such theories and somehow they got lost
is never going to be taken seriously. 

Bill Rea, Information Technology Dept., Canterbury  University  \_ 
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