(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?
Pressbox: “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…”
Problem is, no one is claiming that Socrates was divinely inspired, nor that his beliefs are eternal.
However, writings by Socrates would be rather valuable… ;-)
The story of Noah is probably fiction but
I do think that there was some sort of great flood that did happen in that region. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers had a habit of flooding, there probably was one time when there was an unusual amount of rain and the river over flowed more than usual to the point where it appeared as the entire world flooded.
This is basically sci-fi and a badly written one at that. For this story to work you have to accept so much outright BS even more than some of the worst Z grade sci-fi films. How did Noah fit all the animals in that ark, how did he deal with having a boat filled with animals that in nature will try to eat each other. How did he managed to feed those animals for 40 days?
Someone mentioned Washington Irving, in in our civilization myth and outright fiction has a way of becoming accepted “fact”. Look at Paul Revere, the midnight ride did not happen the way we think it did. That came from a poem written in 1860, to reassure a nation that was about to enter the civil war. The actual ride was a covert operation with 30 other people, one who joined only because Paul met him after he was leaving a lady friends house at 1am.
That is why scientists hundreds of years later were persecuted for saying the world was round.
A quick question for those who believe in the biblical version of Noah’s Arc. How big would his arc have been? Always wondered about that.
cheers
I doubt any of them at that time knew that the world is indeed round. I think it was just a coincidence for them to refer to it as a “circle” and another case of reading the bible and interpreting it how YOU want it.
Agreed. A “circle” is round, but it’s also FLAT. Some of the primitive people who wrote the Old Testament thought the earth was a flat round circular object. They probably derived this from scanning the horizon and noting that it appears to make a circle around the land on which they were standing.
Is there another subject other than religion that get’s people’s juices flowing. I love the fact that the humor of this site is completely missed by most of the religious folks. Beautiful.
this actually makes you think, If Jesus is really the son of God, and God created the world, wouldn’t you think he would have told his son that the world is round over dinner or something?
Maybe God and Jesus didn’t have a great relationship. Some Dad’s just don’t communicate well with their sons?
One thing I’ve always wanted to ask a Biblical literalist is “Why didn’t any outgoing spacecraft crash on the Firmament? The moon may be inside the Firmament, but what about the Pioneers and the other outer-planets probes? Did they fly through the “windows of heaven?”
I don’t think the Biblical literalists *really* believe this shit; they’re just convinced that they are damned if they don’t believe it. Mark Twain said it: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
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