Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Hi Jesse!

I wasn't characterising your view, but Karl's. My apologies if I wasn't clear 
on that front. Nonetheless, your view does not seem dissimilar from his, and 
by your own admission you were siding with his view. I'm trying to understand 
the logic that says 'could be' is more plausible than 'probably is'. It's the 
difference between possibility (anything is possible!) and plausibility (not 
everything is likely).

In terms of cosmology, I'm not reading a Middle Ages flat earth back into the 
Bible. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm reading forwards, not backwards—from 
antiquity into the Middle Ages. But as you say, the issue of חוג is a 
linguistic one. I'm yet to see any evidence that we should be interpreting 
this word as 'sphere'. I'm happy to change my mind on this, but please show 
the evidence. I know that some later cosmologies seem to have viewed the 
stars and planets as being embedded in spheres and orbs that rotated around 
the earth (the 'rolling spheres' of the beautiful hymn, 'Crown Him With Many 
Crowns'), but is there somewhere we can see this in biblical texts? Going by 
semantics and literary contexts, I've yet to see evidence that it's there. 
Appeal to possible future linguistic finds is not hard evidence, so I can't 
base my conclusion on that. Possible future linguistic finds might just as 
easily show that 'sphere' is an impossible translation. Who knows? It's 
meaningless to appeal to presently non-existent evidence which may not even 
show up anyway. Once again, I'm happy to be shown I'm wrong on this—I don't 
have a particular vested interest in the meaning of חוג. So I'm certainly 
open to your possibility. However, at present, I just can't see the evidence 
for 'sphere' in the texts and, therefore, have to conclude that it is 
implausible given the evidence.

The appeal to the pillars as metaphorical also needs some evidence to 
overcome the seeming hurdles before it. Given that texts like Gen 1 see the 
sky as a panel of some kind 'up there' that holds water behind it—a panel 
which has windows in it that open, similar to the springs in the surface of 
the earth (cf. the biblical flood account), such that a catastrophic deluge 
bringing about an act of uncreation can occur—it seems eminently plausible to 
suggest that something holds that panel in place. The question is, "What?" 
Going by the biblical texts, it seems that pillars holding up the sky is most 
likely not purely metaphorical, but rather part of the cosmological 
architecture in the ancient mindset. We today read these 'pillars' as 
metaphorical (we have to!), but I don't see the evidence that the biblical 
writers saw them this way. In other words, the literary context suggests 
something other than what you've proposed. I will admit that your proposal is 
possible, but it doesn't in my estimation seem plausible.

Happy to be corrected. But some evidence please.


GEORGE ATHAS
Dean of Research,
Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
Sydney, Australia