What was the logic behind changing "firmament" to "sky"?

Question

The King James version (as well as many other versions in various languages) states in Genesis 1:8 -

And God called the firmament Heaven.

The wording in the American Standard version is exactly the same. However, here's what some other versions have to say about this:

New International Version: God called the vault "sky."

New Living Translation: God called the space "sky."

English Standard Version: And God called the expanse Heaven.

New American Standard Bible: God called the expanse heaven.

Why?

Answer 1

Firmament

The primary reason the word "firmament" has been updated in modern translation (using the term "changed" is incorrect - new translations start with the original language, not the KJV text) is because language changes. While the word was an ordinary one in 1611 meaning something like

The arch or vault of heaven overhead, in which the clouds and the stars appear; the sky or heavens. (Oxford English Dictionary)

it is now used almost exclusively in connection with the Biblical account of creation. As such, the word has taken on connotations of what people think the Bible authors meant. With such connotations often derived from ideas expressed by other Ancient Near East cultures, ideas which were not necessarily shared by the Hebrew people.

The Hebrew word in question is רָקִיעַ (raqiyaʿ; root רקע, rqʿ ). It literally means something more like "expanse" or "extended surface", deriving from the verb רָקַע (raqa) which means "to beat, stamp, or spread out". Figuratively it is used for "the vault of Heaven." (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Heaven

The word translated as "Heaven" by the King James and "sky" by some modern translations is שָׁמָיִם (shamayim). The word usually means "sky" or "heavens", but sometimes the abode of God (i.e. "Heaven"). (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Modern translators correctly understand that God is not creating his abode here, but rather the sky, as the context makes it clear the creation of the parts of the Earth is what is being described. The King James translators probably understood this too, but were influenced by the theology of their day which did not see a difference between the place beyond the visible sky and Heaven. Thus, they chose the more powerful word choice.

The modern understanding of Heaven not being "up there in the sky" makes "Heaven" an inaccurate translation of the Hebrew, which is clearly talking about the physical sky in some sense. (Not all modern translations have chosen to make this update, though, as "heaven(s)" can still mean "sky" in some usages.)

Verse meaning & translation

In Hebrew, then, verses 7 and 8 are basically saying God created the sky-like stuff and called it sky, but it a much more elegant way. Translators are tasked with translating this in an intelligent way that both retains a distinction between the creation action and what the creation was then called and uses sufficiently elegant language. In 1611, firmament was a good choice because it was a normal, semi-poetic word for arch of the sky. In 2015, firmament is a poor choice because the word is mostly archaic and has connotations that the Hebrew does not support. Thus, translators have variously picked "expanse," "vault," or "space" to express the idea conveyed in the creation act, believing such words capture the idea without the confusing (to a modern reader) use of an archaic word.

Answer 2

No one changed "firmament" to "sky". Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Hebrew source word is raqiya, which signifies something thin and stretched out. (To get a sense of the imagery involved, raqiya was used to refer to gold leaf, among other things.) There are many who believe that the Hebrew text is direct revelation of literal truth. Without getting into such claims, it's worth noting that in this specific case it's a surprisingly accurate description of the atmosphere, which is incredibly thin compared to the diameter of the Earth.

The word firmament denotes something quite different, almost diametrically opposite. It contains the word "firm" and that's not a coincidence; the KJV translators essentially ignored the meaning of raqiya because it didn't fit their conception of the sky--which draws heavily on Greek philosophy--being comprised of a solid crystal dome above the surface of the Earth. Such a dome would certainly be a firm-ament, but it bears little resemblance to either the actual Hebrew text or the scientific truth as we now know it.

As beautiful as the King James Version text is, this is one specific place in which the translators really dropped the ball, and newer versions are correct to render the "firmament" as "sky" or "expanse".

Answer 3

Above us only sky?

I understand the OP to be asking why the firmament was given a specific name in v.8, and secondarily, why various translations render the Hebrew words differently.

Briefly, while ‘firmament’ is now a synonym for ‘the heavens’ and so could suggest a redundancy in Gen.1:8 in the KJV, in the 16th century it was a type of thing, not a specific thing. ‘Firmament’ comes from the Latin firmamentum which the Vulgate used for the Greek stereoma in these verses, meaning a ‘firm or solid structure’. Firmaments were literally firm: the Hebrew root word means ‘beaten’, ‘to spread out by hammering’, like gold plating or iron.

So according to the ancient Hebrew cosmology underlying this story, a solid structure (raqiya' in Hebrew) held the watery chaos of the primordial cosmic ocean at bay. The 'firmament' of Gen.1 was thus not the inner atmosphere as we conceive it: it was the dome superstructure inside of which God created the universe as they conceived it, both heaven and earth.

The Genesis author wrote that God called this dome ‘shamayim’, traditionally rendered here as ‘heaven’ (Gen.1:8). This is a correct English translation, in my view, because Hebrew tradition as preserved in scripture held that in addition to being the expanse above we call ‘sky’ and ‘space’, shamayim was ALSO the dwelling place of God. They believed God literally looked down on them from heaven above, which was also the place from which came rain, hail, and lightning. It is unclear whether later biblical writers, like most people today, understood God’s ‘heavenly’ abode poetically or metaphorically or removed to a spiritual dimension altogether. But the ancient Near Eastern worldview reflected in Gen.1 described God as creating a dwelling among the clouds and stars above, literally.

The English word ‘heaven’ in Gen.1 retains, or at least allows, for this ancient worldview. Using the word ‘sky’ for shamayim (e.g. NIV, NLT, NET, HCSB) strips the ancient story of its original cosmology and secularizes ‘the heavens’ to align with later theological and scientific understandings. A similar anachronistic accommodation is made by translations that render 'erets (literally, ‘land’) as ‘earth’ which has, since c.1400, suggested a cosmology wholly at odds with that of the biblical authors.

Gen.1 is a case where readers unfamiliar with Hebrew cosmology will only get half the story – if you don’t understand their universe, you won’t understand their creation story. My preference would be that translators leave such texts ambiguous or confusing rather than edit-out archaisms that would at least signal to alert readers that there's more here than meets the untrained eye.

Answer 4

Because since it was written we’ve invented telescopes, and have sent satellites and humans up into space, and we know there’s no solid firmament up there, as the writers of Genesis apparently thought. When the relevant portions of the Bible were written humans didn’t even know there was an outer space up there. They thought the Hebrew god sat up on the firmament, where he could smell the fragrance from their sacrifices, observe them, open floodgates when he got pissed, and basically supervise the world. During Biblical times humans thought they could build a tower high enough to reach the Hebrew god, and people could fly up to him on chariots or on clouds. They called it a firmament because they could see it in all directions and above the zenith, so they believed it was dome shaped, with the blue sky reflecting the waters they thought were above it. Like a lot of things in the Bible, thanks to technology, we know that’s a bunch of bologna. Galileo said it best when he realized from looking through telescopes that the heavens weren’t at all what the Bible said they were. Ultimately he said the Bible teaches you how to go to heaven, but not how the heavens go. The wording was therefore changed from firmament to vault or sky to avoid embarrassment. It’s certainly not the only portion of the book that’s been changed to help keep it popular in changing times.

Answer 5

Some scriptures to look further into this matter to name afew would be Psalms 19:1-10 Isiah 40:22 Isaiah 48:13 ISAIAH 34:4 really sums it up and tells physically what I believe God was meaning about this subject. It says in the end times there will be many false teachers and decievers and they will wax worse and worse... it also says in Timothy somewhere that they also will not listen to sound doctrine and to themselves will have itching ears.

Prov 30:4 is another there's literally hundreds of scriptures about this topic. Please think and pray on this someone's got it wrong was is it God? or the space ppl 🤔