To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Gen 1:6-8.
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 18:06:20 +0200
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?