Peter Enns has favored us with a new diagram of how the ancients viewed the world.
i) Evidently, the ancients thought God’s dwelling (picture of a temple) was made of Styrofoam. That way it could float on top of the waters above the firmament. Or maybe it's supported by pontoons.
ii) Of course, every time it rained, the divine dwelling would sink a little lower. Since a flat floor can’t rest on a round dome, it would eventually tip over to one side or the other. Hopefully God knows how to swim when his dwelling place is submerged.
ii) Evidently, the ancients thought the earth rested on Styrofoam pylons. We seen them supporting the earth, but nothing is supporting them. Just water underneath. Same thing with the "foundations" of the firmament.
iii) Evidently, ancient mariners had experience banging into the solid firmament on the horizon.
iv) The heavens are a pocket of air within the half-dome of the firmament. Unfortunately, the diagram fails to explain what prevents the empty space from filling up with water from below. There’s no barrier to keep the water above the firmament from equalizing.
If the half dome were solid, the same principle that keeps an inverted glass full of air would apply to the firmament to keep the water from filling up the world. Otherwise, I agree with your objections.
ReplyDeleteLike an upside down saucer held under water, it would have to be absolutely level.
ReplyDeleteIt's a "theological" version of the Truman Show. If you go far enough out into the "sea" you hit a giant sky blue wall like the one over behind Universal Studios. If you look closely at the horizon, you may see waves lapping up against it like in Jaws 4.
ReplyDeleteYes. The pylons holding up the dome have to be carefully kept at similar heights.
ReplyDeleteSo the ancients thought we lived in a big fish tank and God was floating around up top?
ReplyDeleteThis really helps me understand the Bible so much better!
TURRETINFAN SAID:
ReplyDelete"Yes. The pylons holding up the dome have to be carefully kept at similar heights."
Which would be quite a balancing act when they aren't grounded in anything. A bit of oceanic turbulence and the whole world capsizes!
Where did Enns post this?
ReplyDeleteTurretinFan said:
ReplyDeleteIf the half dome were solid, the same principle that keeps an inverted glass full of air would apply to the firmament to keep the water from filling up the world. Otherwise, I agree with your objections.
1. BTW, although there are several factors at play, I believe the main "principle" which keeps an inverted glass full of air while it's submerged in a larger body of water like a fish tank or pool is buoyancy. An object or substance which weighs less than the amount of water it pushes aside or displaces will float, while an object or substance which weighs more than the amount of water it pushes aside or displaces will sink.
There's also something called buoyant force. This is the force pushing upward on the object or substance floating on water. If an object or substance is floating, then the buoyant force is greater than its weight.
So when an inverted glass full of air is submerged under a larger body of water like a fish tank or pool or something else, then there is a strong buoyant force pushing the air upward in the glass since, of course, air is far less dense and weighs less than water.
At this point I should note some people might not be aware "air" actually has weight. That's understandable since "air" is invisible to the naked eye and so doesn't seem like it even exists in the first place let alone can be weighed. But air has both volume as well as mass. As such it can be weighed.
I should also note terms like density, weight, and mass aren't synonymous with one another. But for our purposes we can think of weight and mass as more or less synonymous.
Anyway, it's the same principle which keeps a boat afloat on water even though the boat might be a battleship made out of solid steel.
(This is based on what I know about basic physics. Of course, physicists can improve upon what I've said or correct me if I'm mistaken.)
2. In fact, an ancient named Archimedes was the individual whom history remembers as having discovered the principle of buoyancy. That's why buoyancy is also called Archimedes' principle.
Not to mention the ancients were aware of other aspects of the world such as that the Earth wasn't flat, the circumference of the Earth, that the Earth was tilted on its axis, etc.
Stuff like this might or might not be relevant to Enns' alleged ANE cosmography, depending in part on what the ANE peoples knew or didn't know.
In any case, I think all the stuff Steve points out would've been accessible to a reflective ANE person.
S. A. Smith said:
ReplyDeleteWhere did Enns post this?
I'm not sure if the following is the original source, but here is one place where Enns' illustration appears.
Steve said:
ReplyDeleteWhich would be quite a balancing act when they aren't grounded in anything. A bit of oceanic turbulence and the whole world capsizes!
In fact, since the heavens are a pocket of air within the firmament, if one of the firmament's "foundations" so much as tipped or sunk deeper, then it's possible the waters below the firmament could've instantly flooded into the heavens, just like if we were to slightly tip a glass full of air submerged in a fish tank or pool to one side or another, then the water from the fish tank or pool would instantly rush into and fill the glass!
Maybe that's how Enns imagines the ANE people imagined Noah's flood occurred? :-)
Or maybe what Enns is really suggesting is the Heavens-Earth-Seas are a combined unit meant to represent a primitive submarine. (Although there needs to be a barrier between the Seas and the waters below the firmament but perhaps Enns forgot to include it.) Pump water into this Heavens-Earth-Seas submarine unit and it sinks. But pump air into it and it rises. Indeed, maybe the Underworld is really a tank filled with the compressed air of departed spirits which can be pumped into the Heavens-Earth-Seas submarine unit to cause it to rise.
ReplyDeleteIf this is more or less what Enns is trying to get across, then perhaps Enns is further suggesting the ANE peoples were well ahead of their time in terms of science, technology, engineering, and the like. Not unlike Leonardo da Vinci with his sketches of helicopters, hang glider, hydraulic pumps, etc.
And to think! All this time I had thought Enns was trying to indicate how plain and unremarkable the ANE peoples were in their scientific thinking for their time when in reality he had been doing quite the opposite this entire time.
I wonder what the ANE rubes of Enn's imagination believed was keeping the sun, moon, and stars from going into the drink?
ReplyDelete