File:MoonThruTorus-Engelbrite.jpg

Summary

Viewing the "lesser light" (moon) from Earth through a water toroid.

On this day, the zone of transparency around the Sun has expanded out to the Earth’s orbit and the sky (mostly) clears. The vapor torus still circles the Earth in the same plane as the Sun and Moon, blocking any direct sight of them. Notice that Genesis does not use the terms Sun and Moon; it talks about a greater light and a lesser light. We have always taken this to be poetic. However, Genesis mentions the stars specifically as stars. If it were consistently poetic, it would have called them tiny lights. Perhaps it really means what it says. Perhaps the light from the Sun and Moon was filtered through the water vapor torus orbiting the Earth, making them appear as blurry lights by diffusion. They would not be seen as the disk of the sun or the moon, but as great lights. But wouldn’t the stars be blurry also? Yes, they would, but only in the equatorial plane. The water vapor is orbiting around the Earth at the equator, leaving the pole areas free. These are what are mentioned later in Genesis 7 as the “Windows of Heaven.” Looking up into the night sky, you would see a great band of water vapor stretching over the sky. To the north and south of this band you would see the stars, as brilliant as they are today. If the moon was out, you would see it as a bright area, but not our familiar globe.

Copyright status:

Creative Commons License (Peter Engelbrite created this graphic.)

Source:

http://www.kneelingmedia.org/windowsofheaven/