Suppose, in other words, that the ancient Israelite scriptures were right, and that heaven and earth were after all the twin halves of God’s created reality, designed eventually to come together. Suppose that what has kept them apart all this time is that the human creatures who were put in charge of the “earthly” part of this creation had rebelled, and that their rebellion had generated a sufficient head of steam for “earth” to declare, as it were, independence, the desire to rule itself.
