 Heaven was separated from the Earth by the firmament, the visible sky, a solid inverted bowl where God's palace sat on pillars in the celestial sea.Humans looking up from Earth saw the floor of Heaven, made of clear blue lapis-lazuli (), as was God's throne ().According to Dunn, "the typical mind-set and worldview of the time conditioned what was actually seen and how the recording of such seeings was conceptualized," and "departure into heaven could only be conceived in terms of 'being taken up ', a literal ascension."