When the ancient writers of the Hebrew bible and the christian New Testament wrote about a place called heaven they really meant a place up above the sky. That was where God lived. If they wrote about people being dragged down to Sheol or descending to Hades they really did meant a place below their feet in the depths of the earth. For the writers of the bible, heaven and the land of the dead were real places that lay above and below them. Their writings may seem naive and even ridiculous to us because of that but the modern 'scientific' reader must understand that these ideas were shaped in a word that looked and felt very different from ours, a world which had a very different 'shape'. This post tries to describe that 'shape' and understand how a physical heaven above us and Sheol below us were very logical implications of their world view. Such a view of heaven was “upper-worldly” rather than “other-worldly.” Furthermore, the gulf between heaven and earth was constantly bridged by etherial beings. Angels and demons shared the same physical space as human beings. Far from being empty, the upper air was filled with boisterous, contending powers. Angels stood close to hand, to impart comfort and guidance to the faithful. Demons would frequently create chill pockets of moral and physical disorder in the everyday world. Demons, indeed, were believed to occupy distinct ecological niches on earth, lurking in out of the way corners within the settled world and claiming as their own the threatening silence of the desert spaces. In the words of an exorcistic prayer, scratched on a tile in northern Spain, that was where the demons should remain: “where no cock crows nor hen cackles, where no ploughman ploughs nor sower sows.” Peter Brown Under the domeIn order to understand the ancient conceptions of the afterlife, it is really helpful to grasp how the ancients understood the nature of reality, how their cosmology worked. In our modern scientific age we know that the world is round, that our planet goes around the sun, that space is infinitely vast and filled with millions and millions of galaxies. We know that, as John Lennon memorably put it, there is "no hell below us above us only sky". But that's not the way the ancients saw it. Their world looked something like this The earth lay between "the heavens" above, and the great deep below (Genesis 7.11; Psalm 36.6; Amos 7.4-6). "The heavens" were thought of as a dome made from something like incredibly thin beaten metal. God and his domain lay beyond, on the other side. The heavenly bodies the stars, the sun and the moon were bright objects that hung suspended from the dome or which traveled across the dome. The weather came from the "other side" where it was kept in "storehouses" and fell on the earth through holes in the sky. (Job 38.22-23, 25). Paula Gooder's book Heaven is an incredibly helpful guide to ancient conceptions of how the universe looked to people in the ancient world. She writes about the creation story in Genesis 1, and points out that as much as it is about creation, it is about separation. The day is separated from the night, the waters above are separated from the waters below, and eventually the land is separated from the sea. The feature which separates the waters above from the waters below (Genesis 1.6-8) is a kind of dome-like structure. Particularly important here is the description of the separation of the waters above and the waters below. The NRSV translates the means of separation here as "a dome in the midst of the waters" (1.6). The Hebrew word for this is Raqia', which literally means an extended surface or "an expanse as if beaten out". It is almost impossible to translate it into an English word that makes sense to the modern reader. The word translated into Latin is firmamentum and from there was put into the English form "firmament" in around the thirteenth century, The word was then used by the translators of the King James Bible and was widely used in all English translations until well into the twentieth century. The problem is that it doesn’t mean very much to the modern reader as it is simply an Anglicized version of a Latin word. It may therefore be preferable to stick to using the original Hebrew word raqia'; the more usually used 'expanse' or 'dome' do not quite communicate everything bout the raqia' that is inherent in the original word which has the resonance of something that has been beaten out and is as a result thin. So the structure which is called the "sky" or "heaven" is a solid boundary keeping the waters above in check. It sits like a great bowl over the flat disc-like earth. It is permeable (for the transit of weather, angelic messengers and unusual people, like Elijah and Enoch). Gooder quotes the New Jewish Encyclopedia 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.⁷ Gooder includes this picture to illustrate the ideas The importance of this is that for the ancient Hebrews heaven and sheol were regarded as real places. In our age where we know that God does not live beyond the blue firmament of the sky and where we know that the centre of the earth (although extremely hot!) is not a place inhabited by the dead, we have necessarily "spiritualised" these places. But for people in the ANE in the biblical times (and for some centuries afterwards) if heaven lay literally just above the clouds, a chariot could come and whisk a special, godly man like Elijah up to it. Jacob could see a ladder leading up to heaven and it was no surprise to see messengers (angels) coming and going on that ladder (Genesis 28.10-13). When Jesus comes up out of the river Jordan after being baptised by John, we read in Matthew's gospel (Matthew 3.16) that the heavens were "opened to him" and that he saw the Holy Spirit descending as a dove. We should imagine the sky literally parting, being pulled apart like curtains, giving access to the realm of God lying beyond, a physical, real vision of a physical, real place. And when he ascends to his Father in heaven, it is not surprising to read that the disciples who witnessed the event are found looking up, presumably in the direction where their Lord had just headed - up above the clouds to rejoin his Father in "the heavens". (Acts 1.9-11) Up close and personalFor the ancients, heaven and Sheol were very close, and, importantly, very 'physical'. The reality of this other dimension was always close to hand and its power and strangeness could break into this reality at any time. In his Tanner lectures The End of the Ancient Other World: Death and Afterlife between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Peter Brown makes the point that it was this concrete, materialistic view of the other world that significantly shaped the theology of the early church. In the fifth and sixth centuries, as at an earlier time, the other world was still thought to lie close to hand. The human gaze brushed the very edges of the other world when it looked up at the night sky. For heaven itself lay behind the stars. The blaze of the inner halls of God’s great palace was merely shielded from direct human view by the shimmering veil of the physical heavens. Heaven was near and yet so far. Looking up at the clusters of the Milky Way, one could almost imagine that it was possible “to catch a glimpse of the high pomps within; the vast, lighted con-cavity filled with music and life." This is what the stars still meant to Symeon the Mountain Man, as he wandered in the hills above the Euphrates, in the sixth century: “at every moment he would raise his eyes to heaven, and be lost in ecstatic wonder at the hosts above, how they stood continuously before God without impediment, and that there is no cessation in their song of praise even for a short span.” The idea that God was present just beyond sight behind the visible sky must have given people a radically different perspective on life. Not least of course because that meant that the intervening space was filled with strange and potentially dangerous contending 'powers and principalities'. Angels and demons wrestled constantly for dominion in that space Such a view of heaven was “upper-worldly” rather than “other- worldly.” Furthermore, the gulf between heaven and earth was constantly bridged by etherial beings. Angels and demons shared the same physical space as human beings. Far from being empty, the upper air was filled with boisterous, contending powers. Angels stood close to hand, to impart comfort and guidance to the faithful. Demons would frequently create chill pockets of moral and physical disorder in the everyday world. Demons, indeed, were believed to occupy distinct ecological niches on earth, lurking in out of the way corners within the settled world and claiming as their own the threatening silence of the desert spaces. In the words of an exorcistic prayer, scratched on a tile in northern Spain, that was where the demons should remain: “where no cock crows nor hen cackles, where no ploughman ploughs nor sower sows.” But it also meant that for believers in the early centuries after the death of Jesus Christ, there was a very real possibility of experiencing the reality of paradise, the existence which lay beyond death, where the power and love of God embraced the faithful believer and banished the forces of darkness But Paradise, also, lay close to hand. In the monastic settlements of holy persons and at the tombs of the saints, it was possible to find precious cracks in the wall that separated this world from the next. Light had been known to pour through those cracks, as did fragrance, and, with the fragrance, healing of all kinds— the miraculous blossoming of plants, the multiplication of food-stuffs, the flowering again of the shrivelled bodies of cripples and of paralytics, touched by the healing draughts that blew from the Paradise in which the saints now dwelt. A hole ground by generations of believers in the side of the sarcophagus of Theomastus, an obscure fifth-century bishop and refugee from the Rhineland, which stood in the courtyard of the church of Saint Hilary at Poitiers, showed that the healing flavor of Paradise was to be found in its very dust: “for the power coming from his tomb proves that he lives in Paradise.” A phial filled with water from the spring in which the head of Saint Julian had been washed after his decapitation quickly took on the wondrous qualities of that adjacent world: it was transformed “into the color, the consistency and the fragrance of balsam.” A visiting bishop had no doubt as to its status. Here was a fragment of the other world in this world: the martyr had “distinguished [it] with the powers of Paradise.” When we wonder (if we do) how people in the ancient period could have been so superstitious, we have to understand that their ideas of the very structure of the cosmos in which they lived made such a faith not only possible but consistent with their perceived reality. And they lived a different kind of life and believed in a wholly different kind of way. Altogether, we are dealing with a religious sensibility molded by a haunting awareness of the immanent presence of the other world in this world. In the words of the nineteenth-century religious poet Francis Thompson, cited by Henri-Irénée Marrou in one of his many masterly evocations of the quality of the thought-world of late antiquity: You might also be interested in . . . .
1 Comment
Victor Hill
6/8/2018 01:05:19 am
In the last few years the Flat Earth believers have been making inroads into the Christian scene. They reject science because of the Big Bang theory and Evolution and it would appear some have seriously rejected the concept of a global earth. Although some may be joking it is quite clear that some seem to actually believe this nonsense. Basically they believe that if the Bible says it they believe it, therefore if the Bible says the earth is flat and unmovable then science is wrong and the Bible is right. It appears to be an offshoot of fundamental extremism that is rearing its ugly head in Christendom. They have adopted the pre-scientific world view of antiquity over and above what NASA and the school system teaches. How would you deal with them?
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
Categories
All
|