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Biblical cosmology

Biblical cosmology encompasses concepts of the Cosmos as an organised, structured entity, including its origin, order, meaning and destiny.

The Bible was formed over many centuries, by many authors, and reflects shifting patterns of religious belief and practice, as discussed under Internal consistency of the Bible; consequently, its concepts of cosmology can be inconsistent. Nor should the Biblical texts be taken to represent the beliefs of all Jews or Christians at the time they were put into writing: the majority of those making up Hebrew Bible or Old Testament in particular represent the beliefs of only a small segment of the ancient Israelite community, the members of a late Judean religious tradition centered in Jerusalem and devoted to the exclusive worship of Yahweh.

The universe of the Hebrew Bible was made up of a flat disc-shaped earth floating on water, heaven above, underworld below. Humans inhabited earth during life and the underworld after death, and the underworld was morally neutral; only in Hellenistic times (after c.330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven. In this period too the older three-level cosmology was widely replaced by the Greek concept of a spherical earth suspended in space at the centre of a number of concentric heavens.