In Biblical times when people looked up at a clear, blue sky, they saw a transparent dome that covered the entire flat earth. It was an awesome object, created by God himself on the second day to hold back the endless quantities of blue water clearly visible above it. There was water above and water beyond the horizon; doubtless there was also water below. God had divided the waters “above” from the waters “below” by constructing this immense dome that held open the space for dry land. In ancient Egypt the dome had been the goddess Nut, who arched her back over the earth so that only her hands and feet touched the ground. She was the night sky, and the sun, the god Ra, was born from her every morning. In the Hebrew Bible the dome is called “raqi'a,” meaning a firm substance, and rendered in the King James translation as “the firmament”—a concept that cannot be understood independently of the flat earth cosmology in which it made sense. The firmament in Biblical times was understood to be firm only by the will of God. If God were angered, as everyone believed had actually happened in the time of Noah, “the windows of heaven” and “the fountains of the deep” could burst open once again and those lovely blue waters would destroy the earth. God was said to have promised not to do it a second time and to have sealed this covenant with the rainbow, but who could predict the behavior of God? A watery Sword of Damocles hung over every creature on the flat earth, and God held the threads.