My attempt to read the Bible.

Methodology:
-- Reading through the NIV, so I understand the broad strokes
-- Do a second pass with the KJV to get the "true translation"
-- Refer to the Cambridge Bible Commentary, and see if they have any useful analysis

Starting with Genesis 1, I immediately noticed a discrepancy.
God creates the "heaven and the Earth" in verse 1. But later on, he creates the Firmament and names it "heaven". The NIV cheats here, using the word "sky" in the second case.
I was intrigued by this, and wanted to understand it better. I looked up the actual Hebrew translation, and the word is the same in each instance. The word is "Shamayim" שמיים.

Using the cambridge Bible commentary, I learned that ancient Hebrews believed the "firmament" was a large glass dome over the sky. Above this dome was a tremendous quantity of water, which leaked through cracks in the dome, explaining the rain and the dew. You can see in Genesis 1 how this transpires.
>verse 2: the entire world is nothing but a ball of water
>verse 6-8: god spawns the firmament into the middle of this water, and uses it to lift a portion of the water high up, explaining why the sky is blue
I also found a note mentioning the word for "seas" was מיים. My eyes went wide, as I noticed that this was *very similar* to the word Shamayim שמיים. The difference is the character "ש" which means "there" or "place".

I went to /pol/ and asked 4 different Hebrew speakers about this. They were actually shocked when I pointed this out, it was something they never noticed before. They said that adjoining the words "seas" and "place" had the effect of saying "the water in a high place" or "the water far away".
In other words, the word "heaven" in the Bible, LITERALLY means "the water over the sky dome".
In other words, there is no mystical, ethereal plane called "heaven" in the Old Testament. It doesn't exist. In fact, that is a neoplatanoist idea that was added in with the New Testament