Hebrew Cosmology: A Plea For A Geocentric Terrestrial Plane

By Jake Wilson

 Who is the man that could comprehend all the works of heaven? Or who is there among the children of men that is able to know the length and the breadth of the whole earth? Or what man is there that can know the extent of heaven, what its elevation is, or how it is supported, and how great the number of the stars is?  (1 En 92.20, 22–24) 

The answer to the above is: “There is none.” And because this is so, the following can only serve as a synopsis of our cosmos. It cannot go beyond that, but it may help to appreciate God’s wonderful creation. Giving credence to heliocentrism is as little compatible with biblical faith as ignoring the law of causality or biogenesis. Intriguing tales about expanding singularities sparked off by magical quantum flutters are covered by scientism; they can be absorbed at school and university but will not be dealt with in this paper. The subject at hand is sometimes called a tool of division and therefore avoided, but I beg to differ. If the Messiah came to bring division, then who are we to stand in His way? The sword, i.e. the Word of God divides, and I intend to use it. Since various non-canonical and rabbinic sources4 add helpful information on the topic, I will quote them extensively, particularly the Book of Enoch. 

The Foundations The Jewish historian Josephus ascribes the discovery of cosmological secrets to the progeny of Adam’s third son Seth. One of Seth’s descendants, the primeval sage Enoch,  was entrusted by God to record and disseminate this information: Give them the works written out by thee, and they shall read them, and know Me to be the Creator […] They shall distribute the books of thy writing to their children’s children, and from generation to generation, and from nation to nation.  And I shall not require them till the last age, for I have instructed My two angels to guard them, that the account of what I shall do in your family shall not be lost in the deluge to come. (2 En 33.8–9, 11–12)

After the flood, this knowledge was passed on from Noah down to Abraham, the patriarch of the Hebrews. The foundation of Enoch’s divine insights reaches back to the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth (note: not in their final form). Initially, the earth resembled an unstructured waste surrounded by water, known as the abyss or the deep (tehom תהום .(When God said, “Light be!”, the Son of God was called into being and the Word of God materialized as the Light of the World. The Second Book of Enoch expands on this: And I commanded in the deep that visible things should come out of invisible […] and there came forth a great light.  And I was in the midst of a great light, and as light was born from light, there came forth a great world, revealing all creation which I had purposed to make. And I saw that it was good. And I placed for Myself a throne, and sat upon it, and said to the light: Go thence up higher and fix yourself high above the throne and be a  foundation for the highest things. And there was nothing higher than the light, and as I reclined, I saw it from My throne. (2 En 25.1, 3–6) 

After the Son had been begotten, God fixed the earth firmly and immovable in place. The Genesis account omits the foundation of the earth, but numerous verses attest to it. Enoch states that God summoned the deep for a second time: Let the solid thing which is visible come forth from the invisible. And the world came forth, bearing the creation of all lower things. And I saw that it was good. And I said: Go thence down below, and make yourself firm, and be a foundation for the lower things; and it was so. And it went down and fixed itself and became the foundation for the lower things. And there was nothing else below the darkness. (2 En 26.1, 3–4) 

The foundation for the lower things is symbolized by the Behemot (בהמות’ | beasts’). This lower realm is associated with darkness and comprises one half of our closed system, i.e. the lower or southern hemisphere. After it was fixed, God divided the light from the darkness by placing a ‘lid’ on Behemot, to wit, a circular plane: And I commanded that it should be taken from light and from darkness, and I said: Let it be thick, and it was so. And I spread it out and it became water, and I stretched out the path of the waters above the darkness, below the light.  And I separated between the light and the darkness, between the waters here and the waters there. And I said to the light: Be thou day, and to the darkness: Be thou night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (2 En 27.1–4) 

 The Dome 

The Creation of the Dome Upon completing the southern hemisphere and a terrestrial plane on day one, God covered the latter with a concave northern hemisphere, i.e. with a dome: And then I made firm the circle of heaven, and fashioned it like crystal, moist and dry, like glass and ice. And I showed the waters and the other elements their paths […] and I saw   that it was good. Thus I made fast the firmament and fixed it above the water. And the evening and the morning were the second day. (2 En 28.1, 4) 

In Hebrew, this hemisphere is called rakia (רקיע (whose verbal root means ‘to beat out,’ ‘to stretch out’ or ‘to spread out.’  It is the visible sky, traditionally rendered firmament. The word firmament is the anglicized form of the Latin firmamentum (‘support’) which in turn derives from the Septuagintal steréōma (στερέωμα from stereós ‘firm’). The firmament is therefore not an atmospheric expanse nor a metaphor or a phenomenal expression nor some radiation belt nor poetry nor a myth but a solid vault. He made the heavens above firm. (Prov 8.28) Thou hast hung the heavens as a vault. (Eth Didasc 37.4)19 

A poetic description of the dome, however, is also provided: I shall not keep silent about its parts or the matter of its mightiness and the grace of its proportions: It is firm and immovable, who can strip off its outer covering? Who can penetrate its double layer of armor? Who shall open the [flood] gates of his cheer? Its chest is solid like a rock, solid like a millstone. Its inwards are as brazen plates, and the texture of its skin as a smyrite stone [extremely hard crystallized alumina]. One part cleaves fast to another, and the air cannot come between them. Its eyes are like the red of dawn, and comets pour out of its mouth. When it sneezes, the sunlight sparkles like lightning across the vapor droplets, and its wake is a luminous path. It does not run away from arrows, and any hope of overcoming it is in vain.It looks down on all high things; as pointed earthenware fragments are its underparts. Nothing else on earth is equal to it; it is made without a flaw. (Job 41.12, 23, 13, 24, 6–7, 18, 24, 28, 9, 34, 30, 33)21 

The dome was created to divide the upper waters from the water bodies on the earth. The literally meaning of yamim (ימים’ | seas’) and shamayim (שמים’ | heavens’) is ‘seawaters’ or ‘skywaters’ respectively. The Holy One, blessed be He, took all the primeval water and poured half in the firmament and half into the ocean; hence the word peleg (river), meaning palga (half). The firmament is like a lake, and above the lake is a vault.   (Bereshit Rabbah 4:4–5) 

William Blake, aware of the alleged science advancements in his day, observed: The clouds bow to meet the flat earth and the sea in such an ordered space […] As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner [Newton, Bacon, Locke et al.], as of a globe rolling through voidness, it is a delusion.  The Material of the Dome Various biblical and extra-biblical sources point to the dome being made of vitreous matter, which fits Enoch’s description of the way it was fashioned on day two. There was something that looked like a dome made of dazzling crystal. (Ezek 1.22) Pride of the heights, a clear vault of the sky – such is the beauty of the heavens, a glorious sight. (Sir 43.1) All the spirits of the clear vault rejoice in His glory. 

(4Q405 23 i)26 Josephus employs the word krustallon (κρύσταλλον | ‘crystal’, ‘ice’): On the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts; and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth. We cannot examine the firmament, but the properties of graphene would make it the perfect material. The Foundation of the Dome The ancient sages believed that the earth was planar, and the mere fact that a dome cannot rest on a sphere and provide a closed system, suggests the earth’s shape to be a circular plane. 

 In a vision, Enoch found himself near the outer rim of the terrestrial plane where he saw the vault of heaven touching the earth: 30 I saw the ends of the earth whereon the [vault of] heaven rests. (1 En 33.2) The ends or extremities of the earth denote the region where God marked out a circle and hedged in the sea on day one. This hedge is a 50-meter ice wall which constitutes 95% of the Antarctic coast and is some 60,000 miles in length. 31 The remaining 5% are transantarctic mountain ranges up to 4,500 meters above sea level. The ice shelf is several hundred meters thick and serves as the foundation for the vault: [He has] founded His vault on the earth. (Amos 9.6)32 He spreadeth out the heavens like a vault; upon the waters hath he founded it.  (2 Esdr 16.59)33 

Given that Antarctica has been penetrated for 800 miles, the circumference of the vault at its base and thus of the earth ought to be reckoned at 65,000 miles. The apex height may be taken at 4,000 miles, an estimate which will be corroborated below. The Floodgates of the Dome Both the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch state that the vault is equipped with seven floodgates or arubot (ארבות:( And [Yahweh] opened seven floodgates of heaven, and the floodgates began to pour down water from the heaven forty days and forty nights. (Jub 5.24–25)

And again I raised my eyes to heaven and saw a lofty roof, with seven sluices therein, and these sluices flowed with much water into an enclosure. (1 En 89.2)  The expression mabul (מבול (is often simplistically translated as ‘flood’, but it conveys neither a mere flood nor conventional rain. Mabul is an old designation for the celestial ocean, and the torrents that gushed out of those gates were the mabul, i.e. the waters which had been stored in the vault. The Throne on the Dome Yahweh is enthroned above the heavenly ocean. 

(Ps 29.10) Heaven is God’s throne. (Mt 5.34) The realm above the heavenly waters is the so-called Third Heaven or the Heaven of Heavens. Paul was translated to this place and so was Enoch: And he translated my spirit into the heaven of heavens, and I saw there as it were a structure built of crystals, and between those crystals tongues of living fire. And round about were Seraphim, Cherubim, and Ophanim. (1 En 71.5, 7)

Since the heavenly abode of God finds its counterpart in the earthly tabernacle or mishkan (משכן’ | dwelling’), it seems obvious that the vault answers to the veil which separated the holy from the most holy place and thus divided the sanctuary. Behind the veil, that is, above the vault is the Throne of God: Above the dome there was something that looked like a throne made of sapphire.  (Ezek 1.26) The exact location is given to us by the fallen cherub who used to guard the throne:  

I will climb to the sky; higher than the stars of Hashem I will set my throne. I will sit in the mount of assembly, on the summit of Zaphon. (Isa 14.13) The summit of Zaphon (‘north’) is the crown of the dome; it is located above the North Star aka Polaris, one of the luminaries. The Luminaries And God said: “There shall be Lights in the expanse of heaven, to distinguish between the day and the night; and they shall be for signs and for times, for the numbering of days and years. And they shall be for luminaries in the expanse of heaven to shine upon the earth;” – and it was so. And God made the two great luminaries: the greater luminary to rule in the day; and the smaller luminary to rule in the night, and the stars. (Gen 1.14–16)  The celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon, and the stars do not move below the firmament like the birds, nor are they located above the firmament like the throne, but in the firmament. The firmament is not solid through and through, otherwise it could not contain the heavenly ocean and serve as God’s floor at the same time. 

The Targum shows that Yahweh separated between the waters below the expanse, and “the waters which were above in the collection (or covering) of the expanse.” In other words, the vault is water-filled and the luminaries move within it. That is why the dome is portrayed as shiny or resembling water mixed with fire: I saw something that looked like a glass sea mixed with fire, and people stood on it.  

(Rev 15.2) The cherubim bless the image of the throne-chariot above the firmament, and they praise the majesty of the luminous firmament beneath His seat of glory. (4Q405 20, ii–22) 

The laws which govern the movement of the luminaries in the vault were shown to Enoch who noted them down in a book: [The] Book on the Motion of the Luminaries of the Heaven, how each one of them stands in relation to their number, to their powers and their times, of their names and their origins and their months. (1 En 72.1) 

The Sun Swift is the sun in his course, for he compasseth the heavens round about, and fetcheth his course again to his own place in one day. Is He not great that maketh these things?  (1 Esdr 4.34–35) The sun, as he emerges, proclaims at his rising: How wonderful a thing, the work of the Most High! At his zenith, he parches the ground, who can withstand his blaze? Great is the Lord who created him and whose word speeds him on his course. (Sir 43.2–3, 5) The sun’s ancient name shemesh (שמש’ | servant’) is indicative of his role as a manservant. It may baffle our post-Enlightenment academia (who is obsessed with providing rational explanations) but the greater light is alive and subject to God. Viewed physically, he is a rotating sphere made of gas with a surface temperature of 5500°C and a diameter of c. 40 miles, illuminating about half of the earth at any given time. 50 Due to his clockwise movement the sun always seems to rise in the east and set in the west, but this impression is merely due to convergence. 

The horizontal lines described by the earth’s surface, the sun’s path and the observer’s eye-line appear to converge in the distance. The rising and setting points tally with the zodiac signs that appeared to Enoch in the form of horizontal gates. The light called Sun has his exit among the gates of heaven in the east and he sets among the gates of heaven in the west. (1 En 72.2) One revolution of the sun around the earth’s hub takes 24 hours, and his journey between the tropics takes 1 year. Plane trigonometry puts his height at c. 6,000 km above the inner tropic and 3,000 km above the outer, thereby establishing the sun’s conical ecliptic in the vault.

This ecliptic transits 6 altitude zones or ‘gates’ (Aram. tar‘in| תרעין (which in turn result in 6 gates on the horizon, to wit, in 6 sunrise and sunset zones: Where the sun rises and sets on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice, this route of the sun is the face of the north. The sun rises in the northeast and sets in the northwest, and thus travels [within the 6th gate] from east to west […] Conversely, where the sun rises and sets on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, this route of the sun is the face of the south [in the 1st gate]. 

Thus, the ecliptic between the solstices passes from north to south and vice versa. For instance, when the sun spirals downward, his orbit increases and his rising and setting points move towards the earth’s circumference. Each gate comprises thirty or thirty-one sections, one section a day. After six months the sun reaches the Tropic of Capricorn, i.e. the 1st gate. Then he spirals up again for six months till he reaches the Tropic of Cancer or the 6th gate. [The sun] goes toward the south, and turns about to the north. (Eruvin 56a) And I saw six gates from which the sun rises and six gates where the sun sets. (1 En 72.3) The sun is constantly moving on a conical trajectory at an incline of 23.4 degrees and the gradual change in his altitude and orbital circumference causes the different seasons. 

The Moon The moon, ever punctual to mark the times, an everlasting sign: It is the moon that signals the feasts, a luminary that wanes after being full. The month derives its name from her, she waxes wonderfully in her phases, banner of the hosts on high, shining in the vault of heaven. (Sir 43.6–8) The moon, at times called levanah (לבנה’ | white one’), is the sun’s feminine counterpart. She is a rotating sphere56 and in circumference equal to the sun: With respect to their size the two [the sun and the moon] are equal. (1 En 72.37) The moon is the lesser or smaller light (ma’or ha-katan | הקטן מאור (because it differs in magnitude: The brightness of the sun is one kind, the brightness of the moon another. (1 Cor 15.41) 

The ratio of brightness of the moon to the sun is 1 to 7: The sun has a light seven times greater than the moon. (2 En 11.2) Since Genesis defines the moon not as a reflector but as a luminary, we know that she emits her own light. Put another way, the moon illuminates not through reflection but through transduction. As commonly held, her position in relation to the sun determines the phases, i.e. the visible area of the moon’s illuminated hemisphere: On the first day she is called New Moon because on the day light appears on her. The whole time in which the illumination of the moon progresses, light is transmitted to her, facing the sun, until the fourteenth day when her light is complete; then it amounts to one seventh of the light of the sun. (1 En 78.12, 11; 73.3) The moon then wanes over fourteen days until she exhibits zero illumination: 

In her waning the moon decreases from her light. On the first day she has 14 parts, and on the second day 13 parts… [and on the fourteenth day 1 part]. And all the rest of her light is removed, and her orb emerges, devoid of all light, hidden by the sun. (1 En 78.8, 14) The moon’s primary name is yareach (ירח’ | wanderer’). She moves clockwise like the sun, yet she is a bit slower, completing her daily circuit in 24 hours and 50 minutes. Yet, instead of one year it takes the moon only one month to wander her cone up and down. The reason for this lies not so much in the fact that her cone is a tad smaller, but rather that her trajectory is much steeper. 

On the average, the moon passes through each gate 2.5 times, not thirty times like the sun. Accordingly, the moon covers some 3,000 km in altitude within two weeks. Table 1 shows the positions and phases of the moon during the month of Sivan (May–June). 61 Throughout the entire month the sun rises and sets in gate six at the celestial Tropic of Cancer: 

 Any sun and moon tracking app will confirm the above movement which was shown to Enoch 5,300 years ago: the moon stays for four days in G6 at the celestial Tropic of Cancer, then spirals down to G1 above Capricorn where she orbits for eight days before going back to G6. This pattern repeats itself every month with a different combination of gates. The Stars The sun shines differently than the moon, the moon differently than the stars. (1 Cor 15.41) 

There are two types of stars: the fixed stars that maintain their relative position in a constellation and the wandering stars that move independently. The only motionless star is Polaris which is circled by the mazalot (מזלות’ | constellations’) in anticlockwise direction. 

 a) The Fixed Stars The fixed stars move in the upper half of the sphere which we perceive as the sky. At times, depending on the season, some of them enter the lower hemisphere which we cannot perceive; the stars complete their round within 23 hours and 56 minutes.

The Jewish Sages say the celestial sphere of the zodiac is stationary, and the constellations revolve in their place within the sphere.  Like the sun and the moon, the stars were put into the vault, from which follows that they are surrounded by water. Stars can be described as sonoluminescent cavities (‘bubbles’) which constantly expand and collapse, thereby emitting short bursts of light. Each star pulsates at a different frequency which determines shape and colour. 

The stars differ from each other in their beauty and brightness. (1 Cor 15.41) Thus, physically seen, a star is sound turned into light. 63 Spiritually seen, however, stars are spirits. They are messengers who convey a narrative: The spirits are exalting the mighty deeds of God; they are proclaiming soundlessly a divine oracle. (IIQ17viii)64 We cannot hear their words, and yet, we know exactly what they are saying: they are proclaiming the Glory of God, i.e. the Messiah and his redemptive work.  The heavens are proclaiming the glory of God; and the firmament declares his handiwork. Day after day they bubble forth speech; night after night they tell it again. Without a sound or word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. 

(Ps 19.1–4) Can it be that Israel hasn’t heard the message? No, they have heard it, for: The voice has been heard throughout the world, and its message has gone to the ends of the earth!  (Rom 10.18) The stellar hemisphere has been communicating the gospel since creation. Each year the sun leads us through the redemption story commencing with the virgin in G4 (Virgo) and concluding twelve months later in G5 with the reign of the Lion of Judah (Leo). 

 Unlike the sun which revolves 360° in 24 hours, the stars orbit 361°, which causes the signs to shift. After one month the starry host has moved by 30°, and the relative position towards the sun of e.g. Capricornus is taken by Aquarius, and a month later by Pisces, etc. That is the reason why the sun spirals down through the remaining six signs and not through the previous six. 67 b) The Wandering Stars Wandering stars aka planets change their relative position. Like the sun, they travel on a conical ecliptic in clockwise direction but with different orbital periods. Planets slow down or speed up depending on their proximity to the sun. For instance, Venus and Mercury move inside the sun’s cone and are the fastest, while the outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are the slowest. 

The ‘Hebrew Bible Historiale’ approximates the sun’s innermost planets accordingly: The second degree is the habitation [orbit] of Mercury, in which it describes its circuit in the firmament. The third degree is the habitation [orbit] of Venus, in which it also describes its circuit in the firmament. The fourth degree is the middle of them, viz. the habitation of the sun [ecliptic]. 

Given that the radius of Jupiter is 0.8 km as per plane trigonometry, an overview of planet sizes appears rather unnecessary; wandering stars are small. Conclusion The views which were presented describe the real world we live in, not a virtual solar system. Although Copernicanism is meant to be an impregnable concept, there is no need to falsify it, since its folly is apparent. From the days of Constantine, Rome has aimed to replace the worship of God with the worship of the sun, and when Holy Writ went public, she started to employ other means than merely corrupting Scripture and killing its readers. To undermine the Bible’s authority, Rome began to change the perception of the masses regarding reality. That way she would nullify its main opponent without having to burn people or Torah scrolls. Heliocentrism was simply a tool of the Counter-Reformation and has been the bedrock of Jesuit ‘education’ ever since. Like the big bang and macro-evolution, it is an ancient pagan belief that was revived by ‘the beast.’ Jesuit priest Bernhard Stempfle, the ghostwriter of Mein Kampf, explains the secret of Rome’s success quite aptly: In the big lie, there is always a certain force of credibility because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily. And thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously, even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation.

Added to this, we find that by and large fallen humanity prefers deception if it negates the Creator’s existence. The few, however, who neither dread the ridicule nor the risk of losing friends or reputation, will find the probing of the topic most rewarding and refreshing.