Bible Cosmology (2)

A few modern authors have touched on the understanding that the ancient Bible writers present to us. For instance, J.I. Packer, in Beyond the Battle for the Bible, says “biblical references to nature and history, so far from being “scientific” in the modern technical sense, are simply declarations, naïve, phenomenal, and non-technical, about God in relation to the world of our direct experience;…expressed in such concepts of nature as contemporary culture provided (e.g., the three-decker universe, active consciousness diffused throughout the body, etc.)…God accommodated himself to the historical and cultural situation of the human speaker and hearers…”

Dickin, in On a Faraway Day, gives a drawing (attached) of the world these old writers envisioned. At first sight, it seems amusing; then, going a hundred Bible references beyond even Dickin, we realize that this is the cosmos as the writers understood it. They usually meant their descriptions literally, not in any way figuratively. In contrast, Unger’s Bible Dictionary (p.366) talks about foundations of the heavens, windows or doors in heaven, etc., then goes on to say, “But these expressions are manifestly figurative in nature.” How so? This comment is surely wrong. Another scholarly volume, the New Bible Commentary Revised says, regarding Gen.1:6-8, “The waters above are the clouds (Cf. Prov.8:28) or, poetically, the rain reservoirs in God’s ‘lofty abode’. (Ps.104:13)” [emphasis added]. We think not— the ancient writer really did mean literal rain reservoirs.

The conclusion that Wayne Grudem reaches in Bible Doctrine [p.132] is probably our best guide: “Descriptions in the Bible of the sun rising and setting (Eccl. 1:5, et al.) merely portray events as they appear from the perspective of the human observer, and from that perspective, they give an accurate description. The lesson of Galileo…should remind us that careful observation of the natural world can cause us to go back to Scripture and re-examine whether Scripture actually teaches what we think it teaches. Sometimes, on closer examination of the text, we may find that our previous interpretations were incorrect.”

When I look at the multitude of scripture references to the cosmos— mostly Old Testament, but many from the New Testament as well, I’m amused to remember my own attitude to each one. I’ve always called myself a believer in a literal interpretation of the Bible but, somehow, I managed to fluff over each of these scriptures. At that time I understood that the writers were obviously using figurative language when they spoke of the floodgates of heaven, the pillars of the heavens, the storehouses of the snow, the earth’s foundation, walls up to the sky, the vaulted heavens, the four quarters of the earth, the circle of the earth.

Suddenly it hit me that maybe the ancient writers meant all these statements literally. Then I started to find current authors who had recognized the same facts. So here is the picture that started to emerge. It has huge repercussions in other areas of science and Bible study, such as modern geography, geology, cartography, astronomy, etc.