The firmament is the vault or expanse of the sky.[1] According to Genesis, God created the firmament to separate the "waters above" (the earth) from waters below. The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, which appears in the Vulgate.
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The word "firmament" is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250.[2] It is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate.[3] This word is in turn derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with "firm".[3] The King James Bible entrenched the use of the term "firmament".
The word "firmament" is meant to correspond with the word raqia, or raqiya` ( רקיע), as used in Biblical Hebrew.
Firmamentum was used in the Vulgate, a 4th century Latin translation of the Christian bible. This term was consistent with the previous (circa 200 BC) Septuagint translation of the Old Testament which used the Greek stereoma, meaning solid structure, and with the notion of solidity advanced explicitly by other biblical passages.[4]
The original word raqia is derived from the root raqa ( רקע), meaning "to beat or spread out", e.g., the process of making a dish by hammering thin a lump of metal.[3][5] Raqa adopted the meaning "to make firm or solid" in Syriac, a major dialect of Aramaic (the vernacular of Jesus) and close cognate of Hebrew.[3] Language experts consider that the most accurate English translation for raqia in biblical Hebrew is "expanse" (i.e., that which was stretched out) and that "firmament" is a mistranslation (due to confusion with Syriac).[3] Among modern translations, NIV and ESV use the word "expanse", while the NRSV uses "dome".
The choice of translation is controversial because it affects how prominent the discord with modern cosmology first appears. It is argued that liberal Christians (and nonbelievers) are biased toward accepting a translation that favours critical and nonliteral interpretation (e.g., "firmament") whilst conservatives and fundamentalists seek a translation by which the scripture may harmonise with scientific knowledge (e.g., "expanse" implying empty sky).[6]
The word is used in the Genesis creation narrative:
Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.[7]
The modern bible, and non-canonical related texts, present a detailed view of cosmology that is incompatible with modern scientific knowledge.[8] The firmament was a great tent-like[9] ceiling made of solid crystalline material,[10] which might be pierced by skyscraper and gimlet.[11] It had many windows, some of which opened and closed for the sun and moon to travel through[12] or to let water, which was held above, fall through as rain.[13] On top there were also warehouses of snow and hail.[14] Stars were small objects that were attached tenuosly to its surface.[15]
The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the firmament as follows:
The Hebrews regarded the earth as a plain or a hill figured like a hemisphere, swimming on water. Over this is arched the solid vault of heaven. To this vault are fastened the lights, the stars. So slight is this elevation that birds may rise to it and fly along its expanse.[16]
Augustine wrote that too much learning had been expended on the nature of the firmament.[17] "We may understand this name as given to indicate not it is motionless but that it is solid." he wrote.[17] Saint Basil argued for a fluid firmament.[17] According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the firmament had a "solid nature" and stood above a "region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed."[18]
The Copernican Revolution of the 16th century led to reconsideration of these matters. In 1554, John Calvin proposed that "firmament" be interpreted as clouds.[19] "He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere," wrote Calvin.[19] Genesis had to conform to popular prejudice regarding cosmology, or it would not have been accepted. "As it became a theologian, [Moses] had to respect us rather than the stars," Calvin wrote. Calvin's "doctrine of accommodation" allowed Protestants to accept the findings of science without rejecting the authority of scripture.[19] According to present Catholic doctrine, the bible simply reflects the cosmological ideas that were prevalent at the time it was written.[20]
The Greeks and Stoics adopted a model of celestial spheres after the discovery of the sphericity of the Earth in the 4th to 3rd centuries BC. The Medieval Scholastics adopted a cosmology that fused the ideas of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Ptolemy.[21] This cosmology involved celestial orbs, nested concentrically inside one another, with the earth at the centre. The outermost orb contained the stars and the term firmament was then transferred to this orb. (There were seven inner orbs for the seven wanderers of the sky, and their ordering is preserved in the naming of the days of the week.)
Even Copernicus' heliocentric model included an outer sphere that held the stars (and by having the earth rotate daily on its axis it allowed the firmament to be completely stationary). Tycho Brahe's studies of the nova of 1572 and the comet of 1577 were the first major challenges to the idea that orbs existed as solid, incorruptible, material objects.[22]
In 1584, Bruno proposed a cosmology without firmament: an infinite universe in which the stars are actually suns with their own planetary systems.[23] After Galileo began using a telescope to examine the sky, it became harder to argue that the heavens were perfect, as Aristotlean philosophy required. By 1630, the concept of solid orbs was no longer dominant.[24]
The notion of the sky as a solid object (rather than just an atmospheric expanse) was widespread among both ancient civilisations and primitive cultures, including ancient Greece, Egypt, China, India, native Americans, Australian aborigines, and also early Christians.[25] It is probably a universal human trait to perceive the sky as a solid dome.[25]
As an example, the sky is imagined as a solid dome arched over the earth in both Mesopotamian and Indo-European mythologies (e.g., creation myths) and poetry; the Sumerian sky-god An (and his later Akkadian and Babylonian counterpart "Anu") ruled these firmament-like "heavens", which the wind-god had separated from the flat disc of the earth below, and there were primordial seas above the firmament (echoed in the Hebrew Bible).