views of St. John Chrysostom, Ephraem Syrus, and other great
churchmen, see Kretschmer as above, chap i.

In the sixth century this development culminated in what was nothing
less than a complete and detailed system of the universe, claiming to
be based upon Scripture, its author being the Egyptian monk Cosmas
Indicopleustes. Egypt was a great treasure-house of theologic thought
to various religions of antiquity, and Cosmas appears to have urged upon
the early Church this Egyptian idea of the construction of the world,
just as another Egyptian ecclesiastic, Athanasius, urged upon the Church
the Egyptian idea of a triune deity ruling the world. According to
Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas.
It is four hundred days' journey long and two hundred broad. At the
outer edges of these four seas arise massive walls closing in the whole
structure and supporting the firmament or vault of the heavens, whose
edges are cemented to the walls. These walls inclose the earth and all
the heavenly bodies.

The whole of this theologico-scientific structure was built most
carefully and, as was then thought, most scripturally. Starting with the
expression applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in
the desert, Cosmas insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it
gives the key to the whole construction of the world. The universe
is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish tabernacle--boxlike and
oblong. Going into details, he quotes the sublime words of Isaiah: "It
is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth;... that stretcheth out
the heavens like a curtain, and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell
in"; and the passage in Job which speaks of the "pillars of heaven." He
works all this into his system, and reveals, as he thinks, treasures of
science.

This vast box is divided into two compartments, one above the other. In
the first of these, men live and stars move; and it extends up to the
first solid vault, or firmament, above which live the angels, a main
part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and planets to and
fro. Next, he takes the text, "Let there be a firmament in the midst
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and other
texts from Genesis; to these he adds the text from the Psalms, "Praise
him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens"
then casts all, and these growths of thought into his crucible t