Like most ancient peoples, the Hebrews believed the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it
The Copernican Revolution of the 16th century led to reconsideration of these matters. In 1554, John Calvin proposed that "firmament" be interpreted as clouds.[12] "He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere," wrote Calvin.[12] "As it became a theologian, [Moses] had to respect us rather than the stars," Calvin wrote. Calvin's doctrine of accommodation allowed Protestants to accept the findings of science without rejecting the authority of scripture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
In 1584, Giordano Bruno proposed a cosmology without firmament: an infinite universe in which the stars are actually suns with their own planetary systems.[16] After Galileo began using a telescope to examine the sky, it became harder to argue that the heavens were perfect, as Aristotelian philosophy required. By 1630, the concept of solid orbs was no longer dominant.[17]
In the same article you quote above, you will find:
The Greeks and Stoics adopted a model of celestial spheres after the discovery of the spherical Earthin the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE. The Medieval Scholastics adopted a cosmology that fused the ideas of the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Ptolemy.[14] This cosmology involved celestial orbs, nested concentrically inside one another, with the earth at the center. The outermost orb contained the stars and the term firmament was then transferred to this orb. Note the last phrase: "the term
firmament was then transferred to this orb". The word "firmament" changed its meaning to fit in with the traditional (spherical earth) geocentrism that was the consensus of Catholics for over a thousand years. The use of the word "firmament" in the 16th century refers to this traditional Catholic sense. It does not mean that anybody then believed the earth was flat with a dome over it.
While your partial quotes give an impression that the article disagrees with me, it is clear enough when one reads the whole thing that it supports what I have said.
Topic: "Flat" Earth -- Complete Balderdash (Read 101663 times)