Can Isaiah 40:21-22 “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” be interpreted as endorsing a spherical earth?
What about Job 26:7 “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” ?
And lastly, how pevelent was the idea of a geocentric flat earth with the educated and non educated christians in Colombus time?
There’s also Isaiah 11:12 “…and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” Or Revelation 7:1 “…I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth…” (King James Version)
The bible (and certainly books such as Isaiah, Job, etc) are poetry. Poets even today may make reference to the “four corners of the earth” without advocating a flat earth. Poetry takes liberty with language, and the bible especially contains enough verses that you can find a line of poetry to interpret about any way you’d like.
Separate “geocentric” and “flat Earth”. Two separate ideas. Educated people at the time of Columbus did not think the Earth was flat.
The Earth centered universe was promoted by Aristotle, whom the Christian church adopted as the go-to authority for matters concerning the natural world. In the Middle Ages, they fused Aristotelian thought with Christian doctrine so completely that “because Aristotle says so” carried about as much weight as “because the Bible says so”.
No, simply because it is not the intention of the authors to teach geography or cosmology, they used phrases that the readers/listenrs would understand.
It’s like that translation of rabbits being rodents. The author was not trying to out-Linné Linné, simply reflecting onn how the animals mouth moved.
ISTR a story about some prophet or other (Isiah?) calling upon God to make the sun stand still in the sky, so he could complete his task before nightfall. I’ve heard that some Christians have interpreted this as God’s word that the Sun moves, and the Earth stands still.
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay, “The Circle of the Earth” on exactly this topic. He pointed out other passages (Proverbs 8:27) where the Bible refers to using a compass to draw the circle of the Earth, which implies that circle means circle and not sphere.
If anyone is more interested the essay is collected in “X stands for Unknown”.
I’ve never understood that. How would that work in a globe? A four cornered object is a triangle. I’ve always thought the four corners refered to a flat earth.
Of course the Old Testament is written from a flat-Earth viewpoint. How could it be otherwise? The ancient Greeks didn’t deduce the sphericity of the Earth until long after most of the Old Testament was written. The authors weren’t being “poetic” in envisioning a flat earth, they were describing the world as they and everyone else in their day understood it.
A four cornered object is a tetrahedron (which is perhaps what PlainJain was referring to). A four-cornered polygon is a quadrilateral, of which a square is one type.
The authors of the quoted passages were not concerned with the shape of the earth. That wasn’t their point.
They would have believed in a flat, geocentric earth as would anyone in the world at the time.
The fact that the Greeks realized the world was round, and later astronomers realized that the world was not geocentric, does not diminish the point of the authors of the Jewish scriptures.
We still talk today in figurative language of the four corners of the world, the sun moving across the sky, etc.
So no, the Bible does not “promote” a geocentric flat earth. It assumes one, however, because of the time it was written.
Ridiculous. There is no evidence that the original authors believed in a flat earth. Those that interpreted it into the english bible perhaps did.
In fact there is a verse, Psalm 103:12, that says “as far as the east is from the west…” It didn’t say “as far as the north is from the south”. The former indicates a round earth, not a flat earth.
Why does “as far as the east is from the west” indicate a round Earth? It seems rather to indicate a flat Earth to me; on our round Earth, the east and the west eventually become the same and there’s no sense in talking about maximally east or maximally west, whereas on (one natural model of) a flat Earth, the east and the west get to be as far apart as can be.
Indeed, as one who quite definitely does believe in a round Earth, if I went to speak of points as far apart on the Earth as possible, I do speak of the North and South poles. Why wouldn’t I?