The notion of the solidity of the firmament is moreover expressed in such passages as Job, xxxvii, 18, where reference is made incidentally to the heavens, “which are most strong, as if they were of molten brass”. The Hebrew word yr p7 means something beaten or hammered out, and thus extended the Vulgate rendering, “firmamentum”, corresponds more closely with the Greek stereoma (Septuagint, Aquila, and Symmachus), “something made firm or solid”. In the first account of the creation (Gen., i) we read that God created a firmament to divide the upper or celestial from the lower or terrestrial waters.
That the Hebrews entertained similar ideas appears from numerous biblical passages. According to the notion prevalent among the Greeks and Romans, the sky was a great vault of crystal to which the fixed stars were attached, though by some it was held to be of iron or brass. Like-wise to the mind of the Babylonians the sky was an immense dome, forged out of the hardest metal by the hand of Merodach (Marduk) and resting on a wall surrounding the earth (Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strasburg, 1890, pp. Thus the Egyptians conceived the heavens to be an arched iron ceiling from which the stars were suspended by means of cables (Chabas, L’Antiquite historique, Paris, 1873, pp.
stereoma Vulgate, firmamentum).-The notion that the sky was a vast solid dome seems to have been common among the ancient peoples whose ideas of cosmology have come down to us.
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