BIBLICAL COSMOGRAPHY. - The ancient Hebrews had ideas about the structure of the world consonant with those then widespread in the East. They depicted the earth as a flat and round disk, with Palestine and Jerusalem at its center, broken here and there by seas and surrounded by the great ocean, to which God has set limits that must not be crossed (Job 26:10).
This disk rests on the primordial waters of the great abyss or tĕhōm (Gen. 1:2; cf. the Akkadian tāmtu) and is consolidated by columns (Ps. 18:16). From the great abyss the waters rise up to feed the springs and rivers. In the depths of the earth is found the śĕ'ōl (Job 10:21 ff.; cf. the Akkadian arallû) destined as the dwelling of the departed souls, who appear as shadows, rĕphā'îm (Ps. 88:11). Above, the solid celestial vault ("firmamentum") has the task of dividing the upper waters from the lower (Gen. 1:6 ff.) and holding these back in their reservoirs (Job 38:22). When God wishes to send rain he opens the floodgates (Gen. 7:11; 8:2) and lets the waters flow. The heaven of the stars would be the highest (according to G. Schiaparelli) and as thin as a curtain or skin (Vulgate, cf. Ps. 104:2); according to others, the stars, with the sun and the moon, would instead be attached to the solid firmament (cf. Gen. 1:14, 15, 17), with the consequent difficulty of explaining the motion of the stars, recognized and admitted by the Hebrews. In short, the Hebrews depicted the cosmos according to the analogy of a house, whose ground floor corresponds to the earth's surface, the underground level to the śĕ'ōl, the roof to the celestial vault, the terrace to what is found above the heavens (v. ESAMERONE).
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Giorgio Castellino