The inspired writers of the New Testament, though they found the world full of all the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and their Greek translations of the Bible continually using the word stereoma, which expressed these notions, never used it but once, and then not for the sky, but for the steadfastness of faith in Christ. Their thus using it once shows that they were acquainted with the word, and its proper meaning, and that their disuse of it was intentional; while their disuse of it, and choice of another word to denote the heavens, proves decisively that they disapproved of the absurdity which it was understood to express. Now, whether you account for this fact by admitting their inspiration, or by alleging that they drew their language from the Hebrew original, and not from the Greek translation, it is in either case perfectly conclusive as to the scriptural meaning of the word. Indeed, it is marvelous how any man who is familiar with his Bible, and knows that the Scriptures usually describe the sky by metaphors conveying the very opposite ideas to those of solidity or permanence—as, "stretched out like a curtain," "spread abroad like a tent to dwell in," "folded up like a vesture," and the like—should allow himself to be imposed on by the impudent falsehood of Voltaire, that the Bible teaches us that the sky is a solid metallic or crystal hemisphere, supported by pillars.
Those beautiful figures of sacred poetry in which the universe is represented as the palace of the Great King, adorned with majestic "pillars," and "windows of heaven," whence he scatters his gifts among his expectant subjects in the courts below, have been grossly abused for the support of this miserable falsehood. We are assured, that so ignorant was Moses of the true nature of the atmosphere, and of the origin of rain, that he believed and taught that there was an ocean of fresh water on the outside of this metal hemisphere, which covered the earth like a great sugar-kettle, bottom upward, and was supported on pillars; and at the bottom of the ocean were trap-doors, to let the rain through; which trap-doors in the metal firmament are to be understood, when the Bible speaks of the windows of heaven. Now, the bottom of an ocean is an odd place for windows, and a trap-door is rather a strange kind of watering-pot; and if Moses put the ocean of fresh water on the outside of his metal hemisphere, he must have changed his notions of gravity materially from the time he planned the brazen hemisphere for the tabernacle, which he turned mouth upward, and put the water in the inside.
While such writers are quite clear about the metal trap-doors and the ocean, they have not yet fully fathomed the construction and arrangement of the pillars. Whether the Bible teaches that they are "pillars of salt," like Lot's wife, or of flesh and blood, like "James, Cephas, and John," or such "iron pillars and brazen walls" as Jeremiah was against the house of Israel—whether they consisted of "cloud and fire," like the pillar Moses describes in the next book as floating in the sky over the camp of Israel, or are "pillars of smoke," such as ascend out of the wilderness—whether they are those "pillars of the earth which tremble" when God shakes it, or "the pillars of heaven which are astonished at his reproof"—whether they are the pillars of the earth and its anarchical inhabitants, which Asaph bore up, or are composed of the same materials as Paul's "pillar and basis of the truth," or the pillars of victory which Christ erects "in the temple of God"[241]—they have not yet decided. Whether the Hebrews understood these pillars to be arranged on the outside of the metal hemisphere, and if so, to imagine any use for them there; or in the inside, and in that case whether they kept the sky from falling upon the earth, or only supported the earth from falling into the sky, these learned men are by no means agreed. Having trampled the pearl into fragments, their attempts to combine them into another shape are more amusing than successful; and it is hard to say which of the seven opinions ascribed to the Bible by Infidel commentators is least probable. That opinion, however, will, doubtless, after more vigorous and protracted rooting, be discovered and greedily swallowed amid grunts of satisfaction; an appropriate reward of such laborious stupidity.
The absurdities of the Greek philosophers were not drawn from the Bible. Had the Greeks read the Bible more, they would have preserved the common sense God gave them a great deal longer, and would not, while professing themselves to be wise, have become such fools as to adore blocks and stones, and dream of metal firmaments. But they turned away their ears from the truth, and were turned unto such fables as Infidels falsely ascribe to the Bible. A thousand years before the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomy were invented, and before learned Greeks had learned to talk nonsense about crystal spheres, and trap-doors in the bottom of celestial oceans, the writers of the Bible were recording those conversations of pious philosophers concerning stars, and clouds, and rain, from which Galileo derived the first hints of the causes of barometrical phenomena. The origin of rain, its proportion to the amount of evaporation, and the mode of its distribution by condensation, could not be propounded by Humboldt himself with more brevity and perspicuity than they are expressed by the Idumean philosopher: "He maketh small the drops of water; they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof, which the clouds do drop and distill upon man abundantly. Also, can any understand the spreadings of the clouds, or the noise of his tabernacles?"[242] The cause of this rarefaction of cold water is as much a mystery to the British Association as it was to Elihu; and even were all the mysteries of the electrical tension of vapors disclosed, "the balancings of the clouds" would only be more clearly discovered to be, as the Bible declares, "the wonderful works of Him who is perfect in wisdom." But the gravity of the atmosphere, the comparative density of floating water, and its increased density by discharges of electricity, were as well known to Job and his friends as they are to the wisest of our modern philosophers. "He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven, to make weight to air, and regulate waters by measure, in his making a law for the rain, and a path for the lightning of thunder."[243] Three thousand years before the theory of the trade winds was demonstrated, or before Maury had discovered the rotation and revolutions of the wind-currents, it was written in the Bible, "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about to the north. And the wind returneth again, according to his circuits."[244]
Thousands of years before Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus were born, Isaiah was writing about the "orbit of the earth," and its insignificance in the eyes of the Creator of the host of heaven.[245] Job was conversing with his friends on the inclination of its axis, and its equilibrium in space: "He spreadeth out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."[246]
So far from entertaining the least idea of the waters of the atmosphere being contained either on the outside or the inside of a metal or solid hemisphere, the writers of the Bible never once use, even figuratively, any expression conveying it. On the contrary, the well-known scriptural figures for the fountains of the rain, are the soft, elastic, leathern waterskins of the east, "the bottles of the clouds," or the wide, flowing shawl or upper garment wherein the people of the east are accustomed to tie up loose, scattering substances.[247] "He bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them." "Who hath bound the waters in a garment;" "As a vesture thou shalt change them;" or the loose, flowing curtains of a royal pavilion; or the extended covering of a tent: "his pavilion around him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies;" "the spreadings of the clouds, and the noise of his tabernacle;" "he spread a cloud for a covering."[248] Instead of the notion of a single ocean, the "number of the clouds" is proverbial in the Scriptures[249] for a multitude; and in direct opposition to the permanence of a vast metallic arch, the chosen emblems of instability and transitoriness, and of the utmost rapidity of motion, suitable even for the chariot of Jehovah, are selected from the heavens.[250]
In short, there is not the slightest vestige of any foundation in Scripture for the notions long afterward introduced by the Greek philosophers. Yet Christians, who have read these passages of Scripture over and over again, allow themselves to give heed to Infidels, who have not, asserting, without the shadow of proof, that Moses taught absurdities which were not invented for a thousand years after his death. The Bible gives hints of many profound scientific truths; it teaches no absurdities; and, instead of countenancing the notion that the sky is a solid metal hemisphere, it teaches, both literally and figuratively, directly the contrary.
4. We come now to the fourth objection, that the Bible represents God as creating light before the sun, which is supposed to be an absurdity, and as creating the sun, moon, and stars only two days before Adam. This is the only astronomical objection to the Bible account of creation which has any foundation of Scripture statement to rest upon; but we shall soon see that here, also, Infidels have not done themselves the justice of reading the Bible with attention.
I have already corrected that confusion of ideas and carelessness of perusal which confounds the two distinct and different words, create and make, so as to make both mean the same thing. God created the heavens, as well as the earth, in the beginning; a period of such remote antiquity that, in Bible language, it stands next to eternity. The sun and moon then came into being. Through what changes they passed, or when they were endowed with the power of giving light to the universe, the Bible nowhere declares; but on the fourth day, it tells us, they were made lights, or, literally, light-bearers, to this earth. The comparatively insignificant place allotted to the stars, in the narrative of this earth's formation, corresponds, with the strictest propriety, to the nature of the discourse; which is not an account of the system of the universe, but of the process of preparation of this earth for the abode of man. Compared with the influences of "the two great light-bearers," those of the stars are very insignificant; since the sun sheds more light and heat on the earth in one day, than all the fixed stars have done since the creation of Adam. It is evident, from the words, that Moses is not speaking either of their original creation, or of their actual magnitude, but of their appointment and use in relation to us, when he says, "And God made two great light-bearers (the greater light-bearer to rule the day, and the lesser light bearer to rule the night), and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heavens, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and to divide the light from the darkness."
Neither here nor elsewhere does he say they were created at this time, but in all the subsequent references uses other words, such as "prepared," "divided," "made," "appropriated," "made for ruling," "gave;" a studious omission, which shows that the Author of the Bible had not forgotten how long it was since he had called them into being. The Bible, then, does not say that God created the sun and stars only two days before Adam.