Heaven: not the end of the world II

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
Our heavenly story begins at the beginning, as all good stories do,* way back when God created the heavens and the earth. Wait a minute - the earth, yes; but 'the heavens'? Plural? And the heavens are created too? So where was God before he made heaven to live in?

It is relatively common for many Christians (at least in my experience) to conceive of 'heaven' as a place outside of time, where God dwells and to where we will escape once this temporally conditioned creation reaches its use by date. For some, it is simply a really nice place, where we go when we die, a realm of bliss and reunions, of negativity negated. Images of harps and clouds are routinely ridiculed from pulpit and stand-up mike, yet they remain the default for a culture without any conception of what else might replace them. This series will attempt a re-reading of a number of the key texts in order to feed our imagination on solid food.

Heaven's above!
Starting at Genesis 1, we come across the first and probably most common biblical use of the term 'heaven'. 'Heaven' or 'the heavens' refers to the expanse of sky visible by night and day above us. We'd also use 'the sky' (indeed some translations use 'sky' from verse 8 onwards). There is not necessarily any great precision in this usage, no careful distinctions between stratosphere and ionosphere; it's simply a phenomenological term for what you see when you look up. Heaven in this most basic sense is quite visible, quite changible, quite physical (at least in a gaseous kind of way). It is the realm of both birds and stars. Out of the six hundred odd times the term is used in the Bible, this is by far the most common.

When paired with 'earth' as it is in verse 1 (and 2.1, not to mention many other times), it is a common hebraic way of referring to 'everything' or 'the universe'.

And when God finished making everything, he saw that everything was good, indeed considered as a harmonious whole very good. The universe is not divided up into good bits and bad bits, into nasty matter and beautiful ideas, into heaven and hell. It is not even earth versus heaven, but earth and heaven. Everything that is, is good.
NB However, this is not necessarily to say that everything was mathematically perfect.

Much more could be said about creation, and about the creator. But for the moment, I think this is the place from which to start.*

And of course, Genesis is all-too aware of the painful fact that this goodness is not the end of the story. There's much more to come.*It is possible, indeed often desirable, to start good theological stories from Christ. This is still to start at the beginning, since he is the beginning. Rest assured, for the theologically fastidious, Christ is indeed the centre of this series. For we can't understand heaven without him - nor him without heaven...
Series: I; II; IIa; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV; XVI.