Early Jewish apocalyptic literature represents the beginning of a systematic or scientific curiosity about the origins and structure of the cosmos.
The Astronomical Book focuses on Earth in its 77th chapter, where it has a fourfold division into the north, south, east, and west.
[2] The Book of Watchers focuses on the cyclic elements of the cosmos experienced by humans, especially the paths of the sun, moon, stars, the shifts of the season, the movements of seas and rivers, and so on.
For this book, however, man has made corrupted use of what should be a righteous for of contemplating the cosmos, by instead turning its elements into weapons and performing divination on the astral bodies.
In response, the text focuses on the voices coming from the gates of heaven, archangels, to whom pleas can be made such that they petition God to intervene for the sake of meting out punishment and purification.
Here, Enoch sees the 'storehouses of all the winds': these windows are forces which support the earth and firmament, move the astral bodies in their paths, and expand the skies.
[11][12] Peter Schafer has called b. Hagiga 12b–13a the locus classicus of rabbinic cosmology; this passage offers law on what constitutes prohibited sexual relationships, the works of creation (maʿase bereshit), and discusses the "chariot" of Ezekiel 1.
[13] The seven heavens are discussed and their names are stated ("(1) Welon, (2) Raqia‘, (3) Shehaqim, (4) Zevul, (5) Ma‘on, (6) Makhon, (7) ‘Aravot") and each is described.
The closest parallel to the structure of the cosmos outlined in this passage is found later, in the Seder Rabba di-Bereshit and in Re’uyot Yehezqel.
[14] Strikingly, a place for the punishment of the wicked is almost left out in the Talmud, as it is primarily taken for granted, although the Seder Rabba di-Bereshit provides a much more elaborate description of this region.
[15] A distinctive collection of ideas about the cosmos were drawn up and recorded in the rabbinic literature, though the conception is rooted deeply in the tradition of near eastern cosmology recorded in Hebrew, Akkadian, and Sumerian sources, combined with some additional influences in the newer Greek ideas about the structure of the cosmos and the heavens in particular.
[16] The rabbis viewed the heavens to be a solid object spread over the Earth, which was described with the biblical Hebrew word for the firmament, raki’a.
[20] A range of additional discussions in rabbinic texts surrounding the firmament included those on the upper waters,[21] the movements of the heavenly bodies and the phenomena of precipitation,[22] and more.
[25] In the Testament of Solomon, the heavens are conceived in a tripartite structure and demons are portrayed as being capable of flying up to and past the firmament in order to eavesdrop on the decisions of God.