Bible Cosmology - Why does it appear to suggest a flat earth

Great Debates
1

OK, this thread stemed from another topic. Rather than highjack that discussion, lets discuss it here.

There are many verses in the Bible that suggest a flat earth cosmology. For example:

There are many other references to stars being knocked out of their place in the firmament, 4 corners and so on.

The discussion is whether the authors intended the readers to think that the earth was either a flat disc, or a rectangle, resting on a foundation of pillars with a solid dome overhead that holds up the stars, sun, moon etc.

If they didn’t intend for people to believe this, what did they intend?
How do you know what the authors intended? What did the authors believe and why did they believe it?
Again, how do you know?

Here is what I believe:
The Bible references match the Sumerian/Babylonian view of the earth. This was a common view in most midlde east cultures due to the S/B influence in the region. Considering this, it would not be surprising that the writers of the Bible held this world view as well.

Pretend for a moment that you are a person who has absolutely no preconceived notions of what the world looks like. You spin around and see that the horizon appears to be a circle. It appears that the Earth stands still and the Sun, Moon and stars revolve around it. The stars are almost always in the same place each night so they must be fixed in place. The Moon appears to give off its own glow. The blue sky seems to be the same color as the seas when viewed from a distance so there must be water up there… (Sumerians weren’t familiar with he concept of mirrors apparently.)

Taking this at face value it is not surprising that most ancient people thought this was how the world was. Every culture has references to the sun rising and setting. That is how it appears to us in our context.

The Bible seems to reflect this world view. Some Greek scientists 2000 years+ ago determined that the Earth was indeed a sphere orbiting the Sun, after much study of the subject. However to most casual viewers of the world, the flat earth view would be most acceptable and easy to grasp.

If you have different suggestions on why the Bible seems to support a cosmology as described by Sumerians etc, please post them.

Comments I’ve heard recently from other boards suggest the following:

It’s just poetry, metaphors, what is important is the message it conveys to us.
True enough. The message is indeed what should matter. However, most poetry does not comment directly on scientific or other views. Generally any writer of anything will tailor his/her words to what the audience can relate to. If you and everyone around you thinks the world is flat, you are going to write stuff that reflect these views. The fact that they represent these views or beliefs is irrelevant to the topic you are writing about, but the fact that these views are reflected in some writing is telling.

Much of this misunderstanding is due to bad translations and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the authors.
OK, so what is the intent and how do you know? Which is likelier? The authors knew exacly what the earth was like but dumbed down their writing, or the authors reflected their own views and the views of their audience in what they wrote?

If this was all just bad translation, what does it say about the inerrant word of the Bible? What does the Bible really say in the original Hebrew text? How was it that the translators got it so wrong, consistently throughout the work?

2

The Bible is wrong.
But it’s o.k., they were ignorant back then and didn’t know any better.

3

They were describing the world as they understood it. Sure, they got the details wrong but the physical description of the universe was incidental to the message about who created it.

4

You’re going to have to find some better quotes. The 1 Sam line in Hebrew refers to cliffs/boulders rather than “cliffs”, and the word for world can also mean “the land” - therefore, all its saying that God rules the boulders that the land lays apon; the Genesis lines touch apon the order of cretion, not shape or form; the Daniel lines describe a vision the prophet had (and I think your translation sucks, although the original is in Aramaic and is very difficult for me to decode); the Sam 2 line is from a song David is singing, and is clearly metaphorical - after all, it’s the word of Man, not of God. Besides, I’d say that “foundations of the Earth” would be a good description of the ocean floor in relation to the continental plates.

This is why I keep a Hebrew Tanach by my computer.

5

Rather than “pillars”, of course.

6

Simple. The people who wrote the various bible passages that suggest a flat earth thought the earth was flat.

7

maybe I’m just having a bad day and need a rest. maybe this post should be in the pit. but i’m increasingly amazed at just how ill informed these threads can be.

look at the cites! look at every single one of them. take your time. not one of them-----not one---- says that the earth is flat. not one of them even infers it.

to accept that any one of them, one must take the additionally intellectually dishonest step of putting words and meaning into the author’s mouth, because the author doesn’t say it once.

boys and girls, imho, we are often breeding ignorance.

8

They clearly conform to the normal Mesoptamian view of a flat disc with a dome over it. The fact that the world is descibed as being three-tiered with water “above and below” quite plainly indicates a flat earth. Not just because there is no way to indicate water “below” anything under than a flat eath but because theat precise cosmology is reflected in other non-Biblical sources from the exact same time and place that these myths were formulated. Don’t forget the Genesis creation myth (like much else in Genesis) is Sumerian in origin. To infer anything but a flat earth is Genesis is is rather reaching and illogical.

9

A quote can’t ever infer anything. The word you’re looking for is “imply”.

I think they clearly do imply a flat earth. For example, the world is said to have foundations, to be “above” the sea and to have a giant tree in the middle of it. How can a globe in space have foundations, water below it and how do you find the middle so you can put the tree there?

Alessan has pointed out that the other translation seems to be inaccurate, so I’ll leave that alone.

10

Have you ever said anything like “The sun rose this morning” or “The moon is full”? Were you implying that the earth is stationary and the sun moves up into the sky above it? Were you implying that the moon is full of something, or that there are times when it is not all there? I don’t look for scientific precision in ordinary speech, let alone in poetic language.

And the quote from Daniel is a vision, a dream, fercryinoutloud! It’s certainly not supposed to be a description of reality.

11

Thanks for the responses.

First of, the quotes are from the King James version. There are many more like them that all say roughly the same sort of things. Yes, the translations may well suck in any non aramaic translation.

OK the quote from Daniel is from a dream. None the less, there are similar statements throughout the Bible.

We use phrases like that in our everyday language because that is what our ancestors thought the world was like. Any arguments like you propose simply strengthen this point. :wink:

[b/Raindog**
There are numerous quotes that suggest a flat earth. Maybe I chose the wrong ones. How is it possible to see all nations on earth unless the earth is flat? Whether it is from a tree as in Daniel or a mountain in Matthew (I think)?

Is it your position that the text does not imply any shape to the earth at all? That is quite possible, but realize that the way many verses are worded, it seemed that way to the translators and to subsequent generations reading the text for a reason. It’s not like there was one translator who wrote down a few things wrong. It is consistent through all translations. Sure some words could have been mistranslated in one version but correct in another, or wrong in all of them, however it is the central underlying theme of the work.

I read an apocriphal (sp) test, Enoch 1/2. It went into great detail about the supposed shape of the earth. I don’t know much about the history of these books but from what I understand, it was being debated whether to include them in the gospels. Apparently they were rejected, not becasue of the detailed descriptions of the flat earth world, but because of descriptions of fallen angels. Does anyone know the full story of Enoch 1/2? Am I way off?

In any case, Enoch was text written at the same time as the Bible. Noone can say for sure what the motives of the author/s were but the same can be said of the gospels themselves. If this contemporary work can go into such detail of the flat earth, and the text of the actual gospels supports this cosmology ina superficial way, doesn’t it stand to reason that this is the common view held by people in those days?

12

Yes, especially when we confuse “imply” and “infer.”

13

You should read the Staff Reports on who wrote the Bible

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

You also need to be more specific than ‘Bible’. Old testament? Jewish Apocrypha?
New Testament? Christian Apocrypha?

Off the toppa mi hed-The Enoch Apocrypha is based on a sentence in the canonical Enoch ‘The sons of Heaven lay with daughters of man.’ A lot of people over the centuries have read ‘sons of Heaven’ as meaning angels. This led to the legend of the Watchers. The Watchers were a group of angels meant to guard and instruct the human race. But, they lusted after human women. Eventually, they abandoned their duties in favor of fleshy pleasures. They were cast down. Their half human children had strange appearances and abilities, and were of large size. These children were called Nephilim (There’s an X Files episode with Nephilim in it).

The canonical interpretation is simply that ‘sons of Heaven’ means sages, clergy and the like. So, Enoch merely says ‘the scholars and priests turned away from their duties for a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll’. As far as I know, the word Nephilim appears once in the Old Testament. ‘The Nephilim were in the earth in those days.’ I have no clue what it means. I’ve read that many times it is simply translated as ‘giants’. The Cardiff man hoax was believed by some to be a Nephilim.

Re Translation
#1 Most of the Torah is in Hebrew, not Aramaic.

#2 As I’ve said many times, a single translation is useless for getting more than a vague understanding of a work. You want to get many different translations from different schools of thought.

14

It’s one thing to say that the Babylonians or other cultures believed that the earth was flat, and therefore that the bible writers may very well have labored under the same belief, or were influenced by them. It’s not likely, but certainly possible.

But that’s not the premise of the OP. Far from it.

BrianJ3’s post posits that the bible indicates a flat earth. I’d be a little less testy if I didn’t see such a steady diet of posters at SBMB who were so unimformed about the bible, yet spoke with such aplomb. Lobsters, Mixed threads, Pauls’s views on sex, Peter’s view on kosher meals, the existence of a never ending burning hell----the list goes on and on. Now I don’t expect the percentage of posters here to be any greater in knowlege of the bible than the popualtion at large. But here, more than any other message board I’ve ever been on, the posters post with such abandon, with the absolute flimsiest of knowledge. More than once, I’ve had posters remind me of the lofty ideals and standards here, but frankly from my experience the stuff that is thrown out as fact (or semi fact) is stunning for it’s error. I would hope that any sincere person would not listen to almost a single thing here as far as the bible is concerned. (Including me!) I mean no disrespect, and I hope that it is taken constructively, but as far as the discussions here about the bible (and I mean the bible, not specific interpretations) this board, IMO, is a virtual bastion of ignorance.

Nor am I picking on BrianJ3. But in thread after thread posters are throwing out as fact bible “truths” that are absurd. Remember “Gay=Satanic?” How about the hypocrisy of wearing mixed threads? The stunningly inane comments about lobster? How about Paul being repressed ,or “strange’ even for his culture?” That doesn’t begin to outlins the lunacy of it all.

Now BrianJ3 has mentioned that perhaps he had the wrong ones. (And once again I mean no disrespect to BrianJ3) Cool! To Alessan’s credit she correctly pointed out that the references in Daniel do not indicate a belief in a flat earth. Thudlow Boink put it best, “And the quote from Daniel is a vision, a dream, fercryinoutloud! It’s certainly not supposed to be a description of reality.”

Yet time and again in these threads I see a patently false claim swallowed wholesale at which point a full blown "intellectual’ debate rages; all from a faulty premise.

But from my POV, if a claim is made it should be probed for validity rather than accepted as “truth” before it is accepted as a sound premise from which to “fight ignorance.” Yet right out of the gate Czarcasm responds with “The Bible is wrong. But it’s o.k., they were ignorant back then and didn’t know any better.” Hazel follows up with, " Simple. The people who wrote the various bible passages that suggest a flat earth thought the earth was flat."

As to the cites in the OP, any careful consideration of them, individually, will show that they are not suitable texts to make the claim that the bible authors labored under the false belief the world was flat. That being said, I would imagine that more cites are on the way. Nonetheless, I am convinced that they will need a great deal of speculation, imputing of intent, tortured logic and non-biblical support to dress them up for the task at hand, for finding simple unabridged language that says as much will not be found. Put simply, we’ll need to put the words in their mouths.

My greatest fear is that I think that many people actually believe that this place is a place of knowledge. While there is some really bright people here, and some great information, there’s also some really bad information. For those interested in the bible, I’ll say it again: Don’t get your faith, or truth, from the internet. If you wish to know what the bible has to say on a matter, pick it up and read it thoroughly and thoughtfully. Don’t take my word for it.

15

Perhaps my post was unclear. I was referring to the authors themselves, not the quotes. I can see how that was unclear.

Thanks for your insightful contribution to the dialogue. :dubious:

16

<nitpick>Being familiar with mirrors just causes you to have a different erroneous explanation of why the sky is blue. Shine a flashlight through slightly milky water for a better start toward the true explanation.</nitpick>

Why isn’t it likely? Why is it more likely that the Bible writers believed something that none of the other cultures in the area at the time believed, and just never bothered to write anything that implied (or allowed one to infer, if you prefer) that the Earth was actually a spheroid?

There are passages that imply a flat Earth (even if they don’t exactly say “the Earth, she is a’flat!”). There are not passages that imply a spheroidal Earth. Everyone else in the area believed in a flat Earth. Why do you think it’s unlikely that the Bible writers believed in a flat Earth?

17

Ok, so when we see the phrases “the cites…every single one of them…not one…not one…not one”, the last “not one” means something completely different. Riiiight.

You made a grammatical error, in underlined italics. 'Fess up, and let’s move on.

18

Why is it not likely again? Why is it anything other than the obvious conclusion given that the only evidence to the contrary requires the assumption that the Bible is singularly and anachronistically inerrant? You accuse people of torturing logic, but you’re the only one doing gymnastics here in order to come to the non-obvious conclusion.

What supports the idea that the Bible writers had special insight into and understanding of the geometery of a planet they had never seen when there is no evidence at all that they did?

19

Well…I have NOT taken the position that the bible offers conclusive evidence to support that the bible authors believed in a globe earth.

Frankly, I don’t know what they believed. And, in my readings I find NO obvious conclusions either way.

The burden is on the person who asserts that the bible authors believed the world was flat to show this conclusively. In the past, assertions like this have been held out as a shining example that the bible was/is wrong. I’m game for this, and will accept that the bible is wrong when the case is made. But the cites at the outset of this thread don’t even begin to make this case. By any measure, those particular cites don’t say this, and don’t imply it. (As I said, I’m assuming that more cites are on the way)

As I said earlier, in my short tenure here I’ve seen my share of posts like the one that asserted that “Paul was against sex-all sex” and others just as ill informed. Almost without exception, they wilted once exposed to scrutiny. I appreciated both
Thudlow Boink, and Alessan, both of which just challenged BrianJ3 on the merits of using those texts to make that claim. It would appear that BrianJ3 may be having second thoughts that those texts are the most appropriate texts for this case.

I am fully aware of the bigger issue here; the question as to the inerrancy of the bible. It’s for this reason, I am quite interested in challenging any poster to have his/her facts straight and fully understand the texts being used .

And just as I make no claim that the bible conclusively identifies what the authors believed about the geometery of the earth, I recognize that the average 8th grader knows more things about the physical world around us than the Apostle Peter did. But for many believers, the bible is inspired of God and that essentially makes God the de facto author.** (2 Tim 3:16, 2 Pet 1:20)** And so, there is a distinction between the man who penned the words and the person (God) who directed the writings. It’s one thing to acknowledge that the men of bible times were ignorant (vis a vis today) of the world around them, and perhaps labored under the impression that the world was flat. (Astronomy being just one small thing that they may have misunderstood) It’s another thing entirely to say that God put into the bible alot of patently false information, ergo, it is not a reliable source of truth. And so it would appear that it is not just Daniel who’s being questioned as to veracity/competence, but God (and religion by extension) as well.

But if you are going to prosecute not just Daniel, Samuel, Gad and Nathan (the writers of 1 & 2 Sam.) but God and religion it is only reasonable that I ask to have your facts straight.

20

Excellent point. I don’t know exactly what the bible writers believed, and I’m not sure all of the other cultures believed in a flat earth.

It’s certainly possible that they believed in a flat earth. But as to whether they transmitted those beliefs into the bible for broad dissemination needs to be proven.

I’m acquainted with the bible, and I see no texts that support the claim. Further, if this excercise resembles the other ones I’ve seen, there will be, by necessity, no shortage of speculation and imputing of intent/meaning. We’ll be stuffing their mouths with words, that can’t be supported by the background or context.