The canopy theory has possibly been discredited. I haven't seen a thorough examination of the theory by either side, so I won't jump to conclusions, but most mainstream creationists are quick to say that the canopy theory is good to avoid. AiG for instance.

Kent Hovind still believes it as far as I know, but he also believes that flouride in the water is (very vaguely) something the government puts into the water with a hidden agenda. Though he doesn't go on to explain this in detail.

I was a big fan of his presentations until I heard that, and then I actually found sources from whom the issue was taken seriously. As this point, I'm convinced that Hovind was a plant by evolutionists to discredit creationists.

I'm really rambling here, on to the point.

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When reading the bible, we're finding a set of stories by more than a hundred different authors that were written over a time of more than 1000 years. As can be naturally expected from a collection of this size, the stories contain thousands of historical and logical mistakes and self-contradictions.

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This belief is fine and dandy, but what strikes me about so-called skepticism is its ability to make mountains out of molehills.

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Bible apologetics is a challenging game

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I will agree, but for different reasons. Namely, the bible is a book written by an ancient culture long ago. We're now living in a 'modern' culture, and generally people don't give a fig about 'primitive' cultures, because such progressive societies view themselves as superior to any such ancient society. The challenge isn't reinterpreting the bible, but teaching others to interpret it properly. There are grey areas, where any explanation can be difficult or perhaps just plain not good enough with our current knowledge. However, 99% of the time, the problem isn't the text, but the skeptic coming to the text, reading it with a modern mindset as if its a newspaper written yesterday with them in mind.

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a) re-interpret the text in a way that the mistakes and contradictions between the stories disappear, and

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Reinterpretations are intellectually dishonest. I would be embarrassed to admit that I felt forced to do this from time to time, because I didn't realize that I could just admit that I didn't have an answer, except skeptics make a living out of misinterpreting the bible so no big deal.

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interpret a literal meaning into the text (regardless of how it was really meant)

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Well, when I participate in apologetics, I usually go through the trouble of explaining it from both angles. There's nothing wrong with entertaining differing interpretations, because even then the different interpretations don't cause any "problems."

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This passage was written in 500 BC in the Babylonian exile, and obviously refers to the Babylonian creation myth where the God Marduk did the same thing (creating a vault and separating the waters below from the waters above). The Babylonians assumed that there must be water above the sky because of it's blue color, and because sometimes it falls down. The vault is needed to keep it up.

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I was under the impression that the "babylonian" influence idea had been left for dead.

My initial objection is that throughout history, the Hebrews had strong national pride and went through great pains to avoid any influence from outside cultures.

For instance, in the book of Ruth you won't find the name of God anywhere. But if you take the first letter (in Hebrew obviously) of many of the sentences, His name is spelled out. It was a way of encoding their beliefs to avoid pagan influences.

Beyond that, their entire ritual system was meant to stress their unique nature as God's people.

The differences between the Hebrew and Babylonian accounts are quite extensive.

-Right from the beginning (in fact, the phrase, "in the beginning" is that which I speak of), the accounts diverge. The Babylonian creation account(s) start with "on that day" or "when". Unspecified moments in a (somewhat implied) already created time.

-The Babylonian account records generations of gods and goddesses, whereas the Hebrews (with some objections by a handful of skeptics) tells the story of one God.

-Most of the story is devoted to explaining how Marduk became a "cheif god of babylon." By the time all is said and done, only about 1/3 of the story is about the actual act of creation.

And much more.

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So the sentence is true in its historical context. However, today astronomy claims that there is no vault and there is no water above the sky. Astronomy even claims that the earth is a sphere, so there is not even a "below" and "above". So when taken literally, either astronomy is wrong or almost everything in this sentence is wrong today... or am I wrong here? Apologists, to the rescue!

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I'm not going to try and reconcile a modern scientific understanding with the bible. Mostly because I'm not qualified.

It would be helpful to see what the Hebrews actually thought about that firmament and all of that, but I don't think its possible.