Taking the survival of
various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first
chapter of Genesis, they insisted on the clear declarations of
Scripture that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid
vault, "a firmament," and to this they added the passages from
Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are
stretched out "like a curtain," and again "like a tent to dwell
in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground
floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs
out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the
night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and
in this is a cistern, shaped, as one of the authorities says,
"like a bathing-tank," and containing "the waters which are above
the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the
Almighty and his angels through the "windows of heaven." As to the
movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in
Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this
was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth
could not be a sphere.
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