The Solid Firmament of Genesis 1 and Ancient Israelite Cosmogeography
Introduction The recently released images of our universe captured by the James Webb space telescope bring home just how ancient and vast it is. Currently, the universe is believed to be 13.8 billion years old, and while we don’t know how large the entire universe is, the observable universe is estimated to be around 93 billion light years in diameter, and consists of around 200 billion galaxies. The current view of the universe as an unimaginably vast expanse containing hundreds of billions of galaxies is a fairly recent view, dating back around 100 years. Prior to the early 20 th century, astronomers believed the Milky Way composed the entire universe, and what we now know as galaxies were called spiral nebulae and believed to be located in the far reaches of the Milky Way. We know that the sun is not the centre of the universe, but that view only appeared in the late 18 th to early 19 th centuries following considerable astronomical observation and theorising. Heliocentric co...
