How could the ancients not have at least suspected that the earth was round? Anyone who’s ever looked out at the sea will notice that you see the top of of the ship over the horizon before you see the rest of it; even without the most rudimentary of math skills you can grok that there’s a curve involved.
It may have been the ancient Greeks who first hammered out equations and started writing this stuff down, but MHO is that Job, Isaiah, Joshua, et al (to include everyone else who was within a day’s walk of the Mediterranean Sea) probably knew the earth is round.
Well you can head east for an infinite time on earth and never be going west. As well, you can head west and never be going east. However if you go north and keep traveling you will eventually be going south. Therefore the distance between north and south is measureable but the distance from east to west is not. This is what the verse implies. If you read the verse you will see this is it’s meaning.
I don’t see anything here implying the interpretation that it has to do with parallel transport of directional vectors along themselves. The preceding line about heavens and the Earth suggests it is to be taken as simply the distance between two particular points, which is precisely the natural interpretation I originally took of it.
Things like this always seem obvious after the fact. But there were equally compelling arguments in the opposite direction. In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle summarized them here (see Part III beginning with “There are similar disputes about the shape of the Earth.”)
All we know for sure is that no clear written argument for a spherical Earth survives from before the sixth century B.C. Arguments from that era survive only from ancient Greece, and even among educated Greeks, the matter didn’t become settled until the fourth century B.C.
If “everybody within a day’s walk of the Mediterranean” knew of it before then, it seems unlikely that no written record would survive, or that Aristotle would treat the matter as a live controversy as late as the fourth century B.C.
A number of important people in the founding and maintenance of The Flat Earth Society are Biblical literalists. They would provide a long list of cites from the Bible “proving” it. (Note that at times it seems that many members of TFES are jokers, but most of the time the leaders are serious.)
Other interesting quotes:
“I saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth; the tree grew and became strong, reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth’s farthest bounds.” (Daniel 4:10-11)
“The devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.” (Matthew 4:8)
Neither possible on a round Earth.
While not canonical, The Book of Enoch, (3rd to 1st century B.C) is quite direct on the Earth being flat. And since it’s
[quoted/paraphrased in the Bible]
(Book of Enoch - Wikipedia) some, it’s viewpoint must have been part of the common knowledge in New Testament times.
Jerusalem was widely viewed as the center of the Earth for many centuries, even in societies where the round Earth was known. I don’t know how they worked that out.
The official answer to just about any question involving “Does the Bible promote X?” is “Yes, absolutely.” and “No, never.” Ergo, you have Christians that are pacifists and others that are genocidal SOBs.
The Bible is a collection of words. The interpretation of those words is legion.
One verse often used to say that the Bible has a flat-Earth concept is from the Gospels when Jesus is tempted by Satan. At one point, they go up to a mountains and see the whole world. Obviously, you could not see the whole world on a spherical object, no matter how high you got, but you could see a flat world.
On the other hand, you can only see so far even during good weather. Seeing the whole world pretty much has to be figurative regardless of what you believe about the shape of the planet.
Joshua. And the sun does move across the sky - the sky is what we see above us, and the position of the sun changes within that field of vision. Granted, that appearance is based on rotation of the earth rather than movement of the sun itself, but it is not wrong to say that “the sun moves across the sky.”
Indistinguishable:
“Chug” means circumference, and a sphere has a circumference as well as a 2-dimensional circle does.
Plain Jane:
The “four corners of the earth” does not mean Earth, the planet, it means “land.” The phrase essentially means the extreme edges, in all four directions, of the landmass.