Picture of talmud picture of firmament3/15/2024 Demons, indeed, were believed to occupy distinct ecological niches on earth, lurking in out of the way corners within the settled world and claiming as their own the threatening silence of the desert spaces. Demons would frequently create chill pockets of moral and physical disorder in the everyday world. Angels stood close to hand, to impart comfort and guidance to the faithful. ![]() Far from being empty, the upper air was filled with boisterous, contending powers. Angels and demons shared the same physical space as human beings. Such a view of heaven was “upper-worldly” rather than “other-worldly.” Furthermore, the gulf between heaven and earth was constantly bridged by etherial beings. This post tries to describe that 'shape' and understand how a physical heaven above us and Sheol below us were very logical implications of their world view. Their writings may seem naive and even ridiculous to us because of that but the modern 'scientific' reader must understand that these ideas were shaped in a word that looked and felt very different from ours, a world which had a very different 'shape'. For the writers of the bible, heaven and the land of the dead were real places that lay above and below them. If they wrote about people being dragged down to Sheol or descending to Hades they really did meant a place below their feet in the depths of the earth. ![]() ![]() When the ancient writers of the Hebrew bible and the christian New Testament wrote about a place called heaven they really meant a place up above the sky.
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