The world was never flat

It's also a good reminder that no amount of human ingenuity will ever replace good old-fashioned dumb luck when it comes to advancing mankind.

qwertyuiop,

If someone could answer that question for me, I'd be a happy woman.

Prepare to be very happy, Rachel.

One of the weirdest and weakest claims that Christians make is that the Bible contains hidden gems of scientific knowledge that miraculously predate real scientific knowledge. It would have been helpful if such knowledge consisted of something that might have saved millions of needless deaths – like telling people about germs and the importance of boiling water. Oh, well. Not surprisingly other religions make the same claim about their holy books. And not surprisingly, none of them hold up under close scrutiny. Let's take a closer look at this popular one.

qwerty writes: "How does the skeptic explain that thousands of years before science discovered that the earth was round, scripture stated it. 'It is he that sitteth on the circle of the earth . . . that streches out the heavens as a curtain. (Isaiah 40:22)"

The claim made is that the writer of Isaiah miraculously knew that the earth was a sphere. Did he? First off, I don’t know where qwerty came up with “thousands of years.”Let’s remember that the main point Rachel is making in this post is that the ancients did know about the spherical nature of the earth. When did they know? It appears that Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who lived from 276 BC - 194 BC, was the first person to calculate – more accurately than Columbus – the circumference of the earth. It is likely that someone before him discovered that the earth was a sphere. The oldest copy of Isaiah in existence dates from approximately 100 BC. There is widespread debate over when Isaiah was written, but most scholars would place Isaiah 40-66 in the post-exilic period. So, it is entirely conceivable that the writing of Isaiah came after it was known that the earth was a sphere. Just to keep things interesting, though, I’ll grant for this debate that Isaiah was written before such knowledge was widespread.

So is Isaiah 40:22 stating that the earth is a sphere? Young’s Literal Translation of the first phrase is “He who is sitting on the circle of the earth.” So what is the circle of the earth and how does one sit on it? Some commentators believe that the best meaning of “circle” is actually “horizon.” Even before people knew the earth was a sphere, they knew that the horizon formed a circle. If you just spin around in a circle, you will see the horizon all around you for 360 degrees. This is accentuated if you climb to a mountain and look all around. The earth appears round. This is almost certainly what was meant by “the circle of the earth.” Some ancient people believed that the earth was round and flat, like a giant tortilla or plate. Saying that the earth is a circle is not the same as saying the earth is a sphere.

If you read Isaiah 40 in context, you will see that the author is speaking in highly figurative terms. I suspect that even qwerty would acknowledge that God wasn’t literally sitting on a circle. Or maybe qwerty thinks God really was sitting on a circle? Does God live in a tent in the heavens? Is the wind literally God’s breathing?

There are far more passages in the Bible that assume the earth is flat, such as speaking of the four corners of the earth or being able to see the entire world from a mountaintop. Do you think you can see the entire world from a mountaintop, qwerty? Theologians went further and told Galileo that there was no way the earth could orbit the sun because the Bible says the earth cannot move. From statements throughout the Bible, starting in Genesis, it is obvious that the primitive cosmology of the ancient Hebrews was almost identical to the cosmology of other ancient peoples.

One of the weirdest and weakest claims that Christians make is that the Bible contains hidden gems of scientific knowledge that miraculously predate real scientific knowledge.

You should preface Christians with a qualifier like - some, as in some Christians - otherwise you are stating a fallacy. Not all Christians make that claim.

yes and no,
you are right, everyone 'back then' did not think the earth was flat, just ignorant christians who read the bible literally. Which was a great part of the masses. Im sure by the topics in this site that you refute evolution; mainly b/c of your beliefs. You and all the uneducated people who refute it are no differnt than the idiots who thought the earth was flat just b/c jesus and satan were on a mountain and saw the entire earth. Poeple have known it was round for thousands of years. Any child who has seen the phases of the moon knows it is a shere, why wouldn't earth be one as well. Evolution is very real, and usful in todays world. It helps fight deseases, stay ahead of bacteria developing drug resistance, and helps us understand the changing eviroment and predict usful things. Our religious president knows evolution is real. The last pope knew it was real. all the people that matter just as you mention above about the earth being flat. Just ignorant religious idiot nobodies like yourself doubt it. Most don't even understand the scientific definition of a theory, which doesn't mean a hunch or guess, that is a hypothosis.

I would be glad to engage you in a point by point debate, Mr. Qwerty, but we might want to move this to a forum more suitable for such extended and detailed discussions, such as infidels.org. Let me address what I see as the key issues.

You and I could go round and round citing authorities who agree with our interpretation of Isaiah 40:22, but I think this can be settled by going to what is regarded as the single most authoritative commentary on Isaiah among evangelicals. The following is what Dr. John Oswalt, an eminently qualified and respected conservative theologian says about Isaiah 40:22 in his massive commentary:

John Oswalt, New International Commentary on the Old Testament

“Commentators agree that this probably does not refer to the circular nature of the earth, but they do not agree on what it does refer to. It might be the earth itself with its circular horizon (Prov. 8:27; Job 16:10), or it might be the vault of the heavens (Job 22:14), which seems to extend in a half-circle from horizon to horizon. On balance, the latter seems more likely.”

With regard to Isaiah 53, a significant number of conservative scholars believe that this is not a messianic prophecy at all, but a description of suffering Israel. The best "layman's" answer to your position comes from the Jews for Judaism website. You can Google them.

The Old Testament does indeed contain a few helpful suggestions on health, but they could easily have been derived from common sense or experience. Many surrounding cultures had the same practices. Far more disturbing is the fact that God could have given a few more clues that would have saved millions or perhaps billions of needless deaths. So why didn't he? Why focus on destroying houses with mold and endless obsession with skin problems and forgetting to mention the importance of boiling your water? Why didn't he mention that cures to many of the horrific diseases he invented could be discovered through medicine?

On burying one's poop outside the camp, you forgot to mention why he told people to do this. It wasn't for health reasons. The reason is found in Deut 23

12 “You must have a designated area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. 13 Each of you must have a spade as part of your equipment. Whenever you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the spade and cover the excrement. 14 The camp must be holy, for the Lord your God moves around in your camp to protect you and to defeat your enemies. He must not see any shameful thing among you, or he will turn away from you."

Did you get that? It was God wouldn't see their poo poo. Apparently that really offended him and I guess he couldn't see through dirt.

While we're in that chapter, could you explain the health benefits of this practice:

"10 “Any man who becomes ceremonially defiled because of a nocturnal emission must leave the camp and stay away all day."

I thought you might turn down the opportunity for a more detailed debate. I think you probably made the right decision. The infidels forum can be very scary for Christians.

John Oswalt does have a book coming out next year entitled “The Bible Among Other Myths.” If you had done a tiny bit of research, you would have discovered that it is a conservative response to those who dispute the Bible. You can read about it on page 16 of Zondervan’s catalog: http://zondervan.com/media/cms/Lead_Teach/academic_catalog08_cms.pdf

Among those who endorse the book is Daniel Block, an OT professor at Wheaton. Is that conservative enough for you? If not, here are the thoughts of another conservative commentator on Isaiah 40:22, J.A. Motyer “The circle is either the heavens or the horizon, both of which are circular to the observer’s eye.”

So you don’t like the translation I used for Deut 23? Fine, what translation(s) do you consider good?

EX: "I thought you might turn down the opportunity for a more detailed debate."

Martin Luther once said, "Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved." This was your chosen battleground and you have taken flight on several key issues.

1.Ex proposes that the "oldest copy of Isaiah in existence dates from approximately 100 BC," and in the next sentence claims that "most scholars place Isaiah 40-66 BC." No comment from him on the proof that Isaiah's proclaimation of a circular earth predated the Greeks by 600 years. When asked, "If Isaiah was written in 40-66 BC, how could a copy of the entire book Isaiah (found at Qumran and already ancient) be dated 300 BC?" No answer.

2. He passes off the messianic prophecies in Isaiah 53 as "referring to Israel," with no evidence to back it up.

3.He claimed that "it is obvious that the primitive cosmology of the ancient Hebrews was almost identical to the cosmology of other ancient peoples."
When challenged to name one -- silence.

4. When asked which was more accurate, the count of 5000 stars (by the ancients) or 30140 stars (by Galileo) or countless stars (by Jeremiah) -- again there was silence.

5. When asked, "How does the skeptic explain the bible's accurate description of the hydrologic cycle thousands of years before it was discovered?" Again there was silence.

6. When asked to explain the Bible reference to "the circle of the earth" he comes up with this gem: "Commentators agree that this probably does not refer to the circular nature of the earth, but they do not agree on what it does refer to. It might be the earth itself . . . " Blah, blah, blah.

7. He made the absurd claim that "many surrounding cultures had the same (hygenic) practices" as the Jews, when asked him to "name one," again silence.

8. When asked a simple question like what Bible translation he uses, he refuses to answer and asks me the same question, even though it is obvious.

This is the same man who boasted:

"Prepare to be very happy, Rachel. . .
One of the weirdest and weakest claims that Christians make is that the Bible contains hidden gems of scientific knowledge that miraculously predate real scientific knowledge."

And now he wants to shift the argument to a venue where even less of a chance of getting a straight answer.

Rachel would not be pleased.

Ok, it looks like we mostly more or less agree that most people going way back to an-undetermined-but-clearly-ancient time have believed the world is spherical. So why are kids still taught in school that Columbus was the stalwart hero over against the ignorant flat-earthers? It's simply not true, and I don't understand why such an important historical happening is taught so inaccurately. Is there some subversive reason for teaching this way? I can't even think of a group for whom this inaccuracy might be useful. It puzzles me.

Rachel: "Is there some subversive reason for teaching this way? I can't even think of a group for whom this inaccuracy might be useful. It puzzles me."

Here are a couple articles that address your questions. It appears to have been useful to some to create the myth that (historically) flat earthers were a force to be reckoned with. I must admit that I also believed it to be the prevailing opinion, even after the Greeks, but the evidence suggests otherwise:

There might have been debate about a flat earth among some of the ancients, but from our own research of over 5000 books from ancient times we have to say that Professor Russell seems to be correct when he says the flat-earth myth flourished only recently. Claims that people used to believe that the earth is flat are mostly in modern writings. Charles Darwin made the claim in his Voyage of the Beagle, Rudyard Kipling used the idea in Kim, Arthur Conan Doyle used it in Lost World, and other writers of recent centuries have also used it (such as Thomas Paine, and Swift, Bullfinch and Maugham whom we quoted earlier). All are recent writings.

(Another article)

Flat-Earth HeyDay Came with Darwin

The idea that the earth is flat is a modern concoction that reached its peak only after Darwinists tried to discredit the Bible, an American history professor says.

Jeffrey Burton Russell is a professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He says in his book Inventing the Flat Earth (written for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's journey to America in 1492) that through antiquity and up to the time of Columbus, “nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical.”

Russell says there is nothing in the documents from the time of Columbus or in early accounts of his life that suggests any debate about the roundness of the earth. He believes a major source of the myth came from the creator of the Rip Van Winkle story-Washington Irving-who wrote a fictitious account of Columbus's defending a round earth against misinformed clerics and university professors.

But Russell says the flat earth mythology flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. He says the flat-earth myth was an ideal way to dismiss the ideas of a religious past in the name of modern science

"If the Bible does have scientific errors in it, (I'm no scientist and so can't judge whether or not it does), is it still perfectly inerrant?"

That would depend upon whether the presumed errors were human redactions, or not. There is no such thing as an inerrant translation and what is inerrant in the original may be errant in the translation. This is particularly true of modern translations, which
take liberties with the text, sometimes in an effort to accomadate what they believe is more scientifically accurate.

I think that any alledged scientific error should be addressed on it's own merits.

Here are some interesting scriptures that touch on scientific issues. (Best read in the KJV)

Hydrology Hydrologic Cycle Ecclesiastes 1:7; Isaiah 55:10
Evaporation Psalm 135:7; Jeremiah 10:13
Condensation NucleiProverbs 8:26
Condensation Job 26:8; 37:11,16
Precipitation Job 36:26-28
Run-off Job 28:10
Oceanic Reservoir Psalm 33:7
Snow Job 38:22; Psalm 147:16
Hydrologic Balance Job 28:24-26
Springs in the Sea Job 38:16
Geology Principle of Isostasy Isaiah 40:12; Psalm 104:5-9
Shape of Earth Isaiah 40:22; Job 26:10; Psalm 103:12
Rotation of Earth Job 38:12,14
Gravitation Job 26:7; 38:6
Rock Erosion Job 14:18,19
Glacial Period Job 38:29,30
Uniformitarianism 2 Peter 3:4
Dinosaurs Job 40,41
Astronomy Size of Universe Job 11:7-9; 22:12; Isaiah 55:9; Jeremiah 31:37
Number of Stars Genesis 22:17; Jeremiah 33:22
Uniqueness of Each Star 1 Corinthians 15:41
Precision of Orbits Jeremiah 31:35,36
Meteorology Circulation of Atmosphere Ecclesiastes 1:6
Protective Effect of Atmosphere
Isaiah 40:22
Oceanic Origin of Rain
Ecclesiastes 1:7
Relation of Electricity to Rain
Job 28:26; Jeremiah 10:13
Fluid Dynamics Job 28:25
Biology Blood Circulation
Leviticus 17:11
Psychotherapy Proverbs 16:24; 17:22
Biogenesis and Stability
Genesis 1:11,21,25
Uniqueness of Man Genesis 1:26
Chemical Nature of Flesh
Genesis 1:11,242:7; 3:19
Cave-men Job 12:23-25; 30:3-8
Physics Mass-Energy Equivalence
Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3
Source of Energy for Earth
Psalm 19:6
Atomic Disintegration 2 Peter 3:10
Electrical Transmission of Information Job 38:35
Television Revelation 11:9-11
Rapid Transportation Daniel 12:4

I looked over those articles questioning scientific truth in the scriptures. It was amusing to see them, time after time, use examples of passages that reveal scientific truth (previously unknown in the scientific world), and claim that it doesn't say what it says, and even if it did, it doesn't mean what it means.

A prime example was reference to "the circle of the earth." It stated:

"To find evidence of scientific foreknowledge in Isaiah 40:22, then, the inerrancy advocates would have to prove that the passage referred to a spherical rather than a discoid circle. I seriously doubt that they can ever do that, but until they do, they have no argument."

Obviously this places an undue burden of proof on Isaiah. Somehow he should have taken into account that a seminary trained sceptic 2900 years later would question if the word circle could have meant "discoid". Therefore, in order to prove divine inspiration, he should have indicated that it was a spherical circle, as opposed to a . . . (fill in the blank).

Imagine if Isaiah had referred to the "disc" of the earth. Would this naysayer have said: Now we have to prove that the passage did not refer to spherical disc . . . I seriously doubt that they can ever do that, but until they do, they have 'no argument' that this was a biblical error.

The article continued:

"The Grecian philosopher Pythagoras, who was born in 532 B.C., defended the spherical theory on the basis of observations he had made of the shape of the sun and moon. If this information was generally known by educated Greeks and Egyptians before and during biblical times, how can anyone say with certitude that Isaiah couldn't have known about it?"

This assumes wrongly that
"educated Greeks and Egyptians before biblical times" were aware of a circular earth. My research in has shown that there is general agreement that the Greek Parmenides, said to be 65 years old in 450 B.C., was the 'first to declare' that the earth was round (Diogenes Laertius IX.3) Other scholars claim that Pathagorous (650 BC) was the 1st.

This obviously ignores the fact that Isaiah (950 BC) was the the 1st in recorded history to declare, in writing, a circular earth.

If anyone out there can quote chapter and verse where
someone before Isaiah declared a round earth, I would be obliged. More importantly, Rachel would be happy.

Summery

0 to 950 - Flat/Cylindrical
(Egypt - Babylon - Assyria)

950 - Isaiah - Round
(Israel)

650 - Pathagorous - Round
(Greece)

650 - 2008 - Round/flat.
(Europe - Asia - America)

The article continues . . .

"Yet after all has been said on the matter, the fact remains that hares and conies are not cud-chewers. But "Moses" said that they were."

This is a red hare-ing often cited as a scientific error in the bible. My contention is that Moses was not in error, but a lazy translator who took the word "arnebeth" (probably an extinct animal), and for lack of a better word, called it a "hare."

Modern translators did the same thing in the book of Job, rendering the word "behemoth" as "hippo," even though it was described as dwelling among the "reeds" in the marshes and having "a tail like a cedar."

I hope that helps, Ex.

None of the history textbooks at my high school makes the claim that is was widely believed in Columbus's time that the earth was flat. Could someone please give me the title and publishing information of any current history text that makes this claim? Can you give me the publishing information of any history textbook, old or new, that makes this claim? I would be surprised if any of you could do this. Even my fifty-year-old World Book Encyclopedia states:

"Columbus was not trying to prove the world was round, as has so often been said. He didn't have to. Thinking people knew the world was round. Columbus was simply trying to find a short sea route to the Indies."

Maybe a parent or an ill-informed teacher said this, but I don't think it is "still taught in school that Columbus was the stalwart hero over against the ignorant flat-earthers" as Rachel seems to think. It was never taught in any school I attended, and I live in Tennessee, not exactly a bastion of education excellence.

Can anyone provide any evidence other than anecdotal that this is taught in schools?

Rob,

Here's a start:

http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/10-11-04.asp

http://www.textbookleague.org/26flat.htm

http://www.textbookleague.org/91bflat.htm

Thanks for the links, Rachel. The instances cited are very few, indeed, and not so egregious as the critics make them out to be. I think the most recent example is from 1992. And, like I said, my very old encyclopedia and my textbooks from the sixties and seventies had it right. If that's all they have, then the overwhelming majority of textbooks must be getting it right!

You need to take Gary DeMar with a grain of salt. I've seen his takes on history eviscerated at sites like Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Positive Liberty. DeMar is a bit of a nutjob, I'm afraid.

Rachel, I recall hearing the flat-earth/Columbus myth in my youth and since, but it was always in a cultural rather than an academic context. So your anecdote about the conference rings true. It is easy absorb a cultural myth and store it in the same part of the brain as things you learn in school. I think it is a bit like the George-Washington-chopping-down-the-cherry-tree-I-cannot-tell-a-lie story. Also, some teachers probably relate these cultural myths and fail to note that they are myths. In other cases, students may forget the "legend has it" or "it has often been said" preface to the relating of these stories. There are many cultural myths that have acheived a prevalence that real history can only aspire to!

I have always been surprised at how many things "the Bible says" are not actually found in the Bible. It's an old joke, the self-important man pontificating a la "Like the Good Book says..." and then just making stuff up. But it is surprising how many actually do this among both religious and unreligious folk. Perhaps even more common and vexing is the wrenching of phases and passages from their contexts to suit one's rhetorical purposes. I suppose the lesson here is that the price of free discourse is eternal vigilance.

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