By Hugh Henry and Daniel J. Dyke
Experimental physics has recently verified the prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity that outer space has structure. Yet was this concept already described by Genesis 1 many centuries earlier? A comprehensive analysis of the complex Hebrew word rāqîa‘ seems to suggest that it was!
Rāqîa‘ appears seven times in Genesis 1. The King James Version (KJV) translates it as “firmament.” This curious word choice is carried over into the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and the New King James Version (NKJV). Yet other modern English Bibles translate rāqîa‘ in a variety of different ways: “expanse,” “dome,” “vault,” “sky,” “space,” and even “horizon,” “air,” and “solid arch”. These various translations seem to convey contradictory concepts; which emphasizes the complex meaning of rāqîa‘. This complexity is reinforced by the fact that modern translations often use different, contradictory words for rāqîa‘ in different passages.9
According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary:
This word means simply “expansion.” It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered rāqîa‘ by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body….It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion” (emphasis added).
Genesis 1:8 says: “God called the expanse [rāqîa‘] ‘sky’”10 (NIV). Hence, based on Easton’s explanation, we might say the word rāqîa‘ could refer to “an expansive (or expanding) solid such as inner and outer space.” This seems nonsensical. Modern educated people know sky is not a solid and that outer space is a vacuum that we usually think of as nothingness.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a plausibility argument that the seemingly contradictory character of rāqîa‘ might be consistent with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Although one must be careful not to read too much science into Genesis, the ancient Israelites seem to have understood the word rāqîa‘ as conveying a contradictory complexity that might have foreshadowed this revolutionary concept of twentieth century physics.
Click here for the full article and active footnotes.
