The mere fact that they can look up in the sky and see things flying around,
but they don't see Yahweh flying around or angels normally or anything,
they don't see any of that. There must be different levels.
He says; did the biblical authors believed there were 7 heavens or 3 heavens?
I think it depends on who they were reading
and what the writers, what the second temple of writers were trying to express.
I mean, you get these levels of heaven from Old Testament language
about Yahweh inhabiting the heaven of heavens, you know, phrases like this,
where you've got this layered or this multiplied sort of feel to it.
I think if you're sticking with biblical cosmology, you have a three-tiered universe,
a three tiered system. But you know, as time goes on, this gets elaborated on.
The heavens were the skies, but this is also the language of the supernatural world,
which humans don't get to experience. And so, it's open to speculation.
You know, heaven, is where God lives. It's not only where God lives,
it's where all supernatural beings, whether they're good or evil, live.
They live in that world over there.
Okay, heavens (Shamayim) it's just a generic term, not only for the sky
that birds and other flying animals inhabit,
but also this sphere of supernatural domains, supernatural realm.
And even in the New Testament, there are bad guys there;
the prince of the power of the air. Okay.
We have dark sinister powers in the heavenlies, plural.
You know, we have these references in Ephesians, like that.
So, I think they thought that, that the spiritual world,
if we're talking about heavens in that way, has lots of locales.
And some texts tried to articulate seven, others tried to articulate three.
Again, I think the three is closer to Old Testament cosmology.
But, you know, I'm not willing to just restrict it to that either.
Because the plural language later on, it doesn't often get restricted to three,
it's just plural.
So, I guess I'm wondering why even matters
because what they're doing is they're trying to think about a placeless place.
The heavens can't... you know, these heavenly levels.
The heavens of heaven where God dwells.
You know, we don't look up in the sky and see Yahweh.
So, he must be in part of the heavens that are beyond what we're looking at.
So, he's in the heavens of Heavens, the heavenliest of heavens,
the most heavenly heavens, all these phrases you get from the Old Testament,
the highest heaven. What is that? They don't know.
They don't know. They're just articulating the fact that they can look up in the sky
and don't see Yahweh floating around. But he still must be up there.
Because again, the celestial world, the world that isn't the world of men
must be the world of the gods.
This is why gods live in places that humans can't.
This is why you have deities come from the sea.
Because humans don't live there. It's not fit for human habitation.
Even mountains, humans don't live there.
There's no REI. Nobody's buying mountain climbing gear in ancient Israel.
Nobody's going to the top of these mountains. Okay,
they're remote. They're distant. They're where people aren't.
And where people aren't, the gods must be. This is just the conception.
And so again, the mere fact that they can look up in the sky
and see things flying around, but they don't see Yahweh flying around
or angels normally or anything. They don't see any of that.
There must be different levels. It's a reasonable thought.
But you know, how much should we base our doctrine on
as far as is it seven or is it three?
Again, they were all speculating because they needed some layering up there
to explain not only what they do see, but what they can't see.
Again, this must be the gateway somehow,
the clouds, through the clouds or something, must be the gateway
to get to the spiritual world, the spiritual realm, because this is...
and we shouldn't think of these people as primitive. We still do this.
We still talk about God being up there.
You know, in all of our modern sophistication, we talk about God being in heaven.
God being up there or over there.
Okay, we still do this, because we don't live there.
Okay, we know that it's not the terrestrial world.
So, it's another world. It's the world of supernatural beings.