(Prov 8:26-27 NRSV) when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, …
(Isa 40:22 NRSV) It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
Some fundamentalist Christians claim that the Old Testament Biblical authors knew that the Earth is a sphere floating in space hundreds of years before the Greeks first suggested such an idea.
But the Biblical authors thought the earth was flat just like all other primitive people did in ancient times before the Greeks in the 3rd century BCE.
Some will claim that the ancient Hebrews had no word for sphere and that’s why they had to substitute the word “circle” which just by coincidence happens to indicate a flat circular earth. However that’s false. The ancient Hebrews had a word for “ball” which would have been a much closer substitution than “circle.”
Old Testament Biblical authors also believed that the earth was supported by pillars:
(1 Sam 2:8 NRSV) For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.
Can you please tell me roughly when people went from believing in the flat earth to the round earth and which culture made the discovery?
As far as western thinkers, it was around the 4th Century BCE that most “educated” people (with some exceptions) began to think the earth was a sphere. The idea was introduced by the Greeks. This was hundreds of years after most of the books of the Old Testament were written.
Thanks for the info :D.I love your site by the way :)
Thank you Alan!
I don’t believe the story of Noah and the flood, but I think flat-earth theory might account for some of the illogicality of the story.
7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
Here’s where I think the flat-earth idea comes into play. My theory is that Noah went out to sea, rounded the earth’s surface and when he couldn’t see land anymore he assumed everything was submerged underwater. He certainly did not circumnavigate the globe in 40 or 150 days (depending on interpretation); it took the earliest explorers at least two years to do so, *with* astronomical knowledge, and having to stop for supplies, so there was no way Noah could have confirmed the entire earth was flooded.
And he settled only a few hundred miles from where he started his voyage, so clearly he didn’t venture far at all.
Matt 4 also suggets a flat earth.
1st Enoch is also enlightening on the whacky world of Hebrew cosmology
The Greeks had it figured out so well more than 300 years bce that one mathematican calculated Earth’s circumference with only a 2% error. He used shadows to do it… The same guy invented longitude and latitude.
And for all who were taught that Christopher Columbus had to convince his crew in 1492 that they would not sail off the edge of the planet: You’ve been had by a fiction story (Washington Irving) that was brilliantly talked into fact. (Let’s see… has this ever happened before?)
There was no Noah, and no ark. The “flood story” exists in every ancient culture — it’s a rebirth story from pagan traditions.
And as far as bible references to the shape of Earth: who cares? It is just an old collection of text. Just like you would ask if you found a similar error in Socrates…
It’s from a book, and a poorly written, poorly translated, zero-fact-checked, shoddily edited one at that.
Christians will claim this all metaphorical of course. But the Book of Enoch, even if not counted as “Inspired” gives a wonderful view of what some Hebrews believed the earth and space to be. And if these are all metaphorical, why can’t that extend to all the other wacky bible stories?