So, the English “firmament” isn’t a translation of the Latin “firmamentum,” but rather a transliteration of “firmamentum.” To give another biblical example, we Christians often use the word “Paraclete” to refer to the Holy Spirit. A transliteration takes a word in the source language (let’s imagine our source language was Latin and our word was firmamentum) and puts that word into the target language, not by translating it with an equivalent word from the target language, but by taking the sounds and letters, and by matching the sounds and letters in the new, target language. Now, transliteration is not the same as translation. So, translating a word from a source language into a target language would be something like saying “casa” if someone asked you what the Spanish word for “house” was. The fancy term for the language you’re starting with is called the “source language,” and the term for the language you’re translating into is called the “target language.” To put it (hopefully) simply, a translation tries to take one word in one language, and understand the basic meaning of that word, and then find whatever word in a new language fits exactly or most closely with the meaning in the original language, and then use that new word in that new language. First of all, the English word “firmament” is a transliteration from the Latin word “firmamentum.” How big is the difference between a translation and a transliteration? Huge. So why has that led to all this confusion today? The English word “firmament” was not originally a translation of the Hebrew word רקיע, at least not first of all. When the King James Version translators translated רקיע (raqia) into English, they translated it as “firmament.” Good and well enough, at least in 1611. Allow me to not mislead you, but rather explain what I mean. It’s my strong temptation to say that “firmament” isn’t a word at all because that would capture the essence of what I want to say, but it would be a little misleading. Let’s move into what may be more controversial, but shouldn’t be. Where did these scholars get this idea and why are some believing Christians adopting it today? The factors could be multiplied ( ENDNOTE 1), but let’s keep it as simple as possible for now. And that’s also what a segment of Christians are now starting to adopt, assuming that these assumptions about Genesis, unaware of their dubious origins, truly teach. That’s what the unbelieving scholars will tell you. And the ground beneath the whole dome is flat. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.If you ask a liberal biblical scholar what the Hebrew word “ רקיע” (raqia) in Genesis 1:6 means, they’ll tell you that it means “firmament.” At this point, you will ask what “firmament” means, and your scholar will go on to explain that a “firmament” is the ancient Hebrew idea of the structure of the sky, specifically, the idea that the sky is a solid dome, rising up on all sides from its base (that is, the entire earth itself) with “foundations” or “pillars” under the ground, holding the whole thing up.įor those unfamiliar with the concept, think snow globe, but the snowflakes are the sun, moon, and stars, and they’re all fixed near the top of the globe. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. "Flat Earth" " During the 19th century, the Romantic conception of a European " Dark Age" gave much more prominence to the Flat Earth model than it ever possessed historically. The original caption bellow the picture translated to: " A medieval missionary (Bruno) tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet.". The woodcut depicts a man peering through the Earth's atmosphere as if it were a curtain to look at the inner workings of the universe. It is referred to as the Flammarion Woodcut because its first documented appearance is in page 163 of Camille Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (Paris, 1888), a work on meteorology for a general audience. The Flammarion Woodcut is an enigmatic woodcut by an unknown artist. Licensing Additional Information Ĭamille Flammarion, L'Atmosphere: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888), p.
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