Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Rolf,

I think you may have misunderstood me. The רקיע in Genesis 1 is given the 
name שׁמים (sky). We today, however, do not identify the 'sky' as a רקיע over 
our heads. We conceive of the sky as open air. Thus, there is a discrepancy 
between our concept of sky and the concept in Gen 1. We talk about birds in 
the sky and imply that they fly in open air, but in Gen 1.20 the birds fly 
across the surface of the רקיע. For the writer of Gen 1 the sky is a 
something that has a surface. It is not open air. What I'm trying to guard 
against is reading our concept of sky back into Gen 1. If we let Gen 1 say 
what it says, we will come to the conclusion that the writer saw the sky as 
something that had a surface and functioned as a roof over the everything, 
such that when birds flew, they flew across the surface of this roof. It's a 
very different way of seeing sky to our concept. If we demand that the sky in 
Gen 1 is open air, then we are, I fear, reading our cosmology back into the 
text, rather than letting the text say what it says.


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