Renaissance and Reformation challenges to the medieval cosmos and the response of the Counter-Reformation

The Renaissance brought with it a revival of Neoplatonic and Stoic concepts which clashed with the traditional Aristotelian reasonings of the scholastics. It brought also the humanists' demand that Biblical texts be studied in their original languages. The Hebrew word mkiah for 'firmament' in Gen. 1: 6, Dixitque Deus fiatfinnamentum in media aquarum et dividat aquas ab aquis? was claimed to have the meaning of 'stretched-outness' or of 'spread-outness'" and not of something solid and hard.