[QUOTE=cmkeller]
I AM a literalist. However, there is no place in the text that makes a declarative statement that, for example, “the world has four corners.”
[/QUOTE]
You can’t get more of a declarative statement then:
[QUOTE=Revelation 7:1 NASB]
After this I saw (A)four angels standing at the (B)four corners of the earth, holding back (C)the four winds of the earth, (D)so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.
[/QUOTE]
But admittedly Revelation does have much spiritual context which had to be translated into physical world things so we can understand them and relay that to others.
You caught me there - as an Orthodox Jew, my scriptural knowledge is limited to the “Old” Testament, which does not include Revelations. I should have qualified my statement thusly.
[QUOTE=cmkeller]
You caught me there - as an Orthodox Jew, my scriptural knowledge is limited to the “Old” Testament, which does not include Revelations. I should have qualified my statement thusly.
[/QUOTE]
That Revelation verse does have a cross reference to:
[QUOTE=Ezekiel 7:2 NASB]
"And you, son of man, thus says the Lord GOD to the land of Israel, 'An (A)end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land.
[/QUOTE]
Which is no way as decisive as the Revelation verse. Also there are cross references to the OT about a 4 corner Heaven.
Dante’s cosmology, which I think was pretty standard for 1200, had a spherical earth with the mountain of purgatory directly opposite Jerusalem. He also had an explicitly earth centered solar system, though. So, by that time a spherical earth was accepted.
cmkeller I have a question that I hope you won’t mind me asking, I would really appreciate the view of a Orthodox Jew literalist, on the following:
[QUOTE= Job 1:2,3 NIV]
He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Job 42:10 NIV]
After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Job 42:12, 13 NIV]
12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters.
[/QUOTE]
As I read it Job had:
7 sons, 3 daughters, 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 oxen, 500 donkeys
After his test the Lord doubled what he had to:
7 sons, 3 daughters, 14000 sheep, 6000 camels, 1000 oxen, 1000 donkeys
I am asking you for your view of why the # of children didn’t seem to double as the Lord had ‘given him’
The view I have is from a Christian perspective that his first set of children are still alive in heaven, but I’m not sure you would agree with that.
kanicbird:
Nor does it refer to the entire earth - it’s clearly referring to the land of Israel, which can be said to have, if not precise corners (I don’t think ancient Israel was Colorado or Utah), finite extremes in two-dimensional spatial directions.
Usually those will be poetic form for “all over.” That said, do we KNOW that the universe (physical heaven, if you prefer a physical rather than spiritual interpretation thereof) is not shaped like a pyramid? 
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica a thousand years after the Bible was codified, so this doesn’t count as Scripture. Still, in the Summa, Aquinas wrote (around 1270 AD) “A physicist may prove the Earth to be round by one method, the astronomer by another. The latter proves it by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort, while the former proves it through physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the center, and so forth.”
Nobody condemned Aquinas as a heretic for saying the Earth was round. Nobody objected, period! Every educated person, however religious, knew the Earth was round and this didn’t bother anybody. And nobody in the Church saw this as a contradiction of Scripture.
kanicbird:
I don’t have my Artscroll edition of Job here (in the Catskills for the summer), and I might be able to answer you better once I’m home. I THINK there was one commentary that said that Job’s children were not actually killed in the first place, but merely “disappeared” while Job was being tested, so G-d rewarded him with new children in identical number plus the original ones were returned to him, which makes a doubling of those as well. This is pretty much because that commentator considers it unthinkable that G-d would kill people who don’t deserve to die just as a test to their parents, and the wiggle room is provided by the fact that we only see a messenger saying they died, but their deaths are not declared by the narrator as fact.
It’s also possible (and this one is just a WAG, I’m not certain there’s a commentary that says this, thought there might be, it’s just the sort of thing that would be in lie with Judaic thought) that animals are considered replaceable commodities, and doubling the number is giving double the value, but a human soul is unique and not truly “replaceable” so doubling the number would not have been the same effect.
If I remember, I’ll revisit this thread when I’m home. (with apologies in advance to the mods for resurrecting a zombie).