Observations On Atheism Part II - God And The Bible

[Daystar]

Daystar- do you really think that in the time the Bible was written people thought the earth was round? How would they take "the four corners of the earth?" Isaiah 40:22 says nothing about dimension, and in fact reinforces my point- the earth is a circle, with "the Heavens" spread out like a canopy above it- this is plainly thinking of the earth as a flat place where heaven is directly above. Not a sphere. The sun is the same idea, and almost all ancient cultures thought this way, that the sun was moving around the earth. It has nothing to do with expressions. Egyptians thought the sun was a god riding across the sky. A quick google search yields 68 sun gods. And why not? The sun brings life, warmth, everything. But nobody knew until Copernicus that the earth was moving around the sun (although some scholars, but not christian ones, postulated that perhaps this could be so). But before him the prevailing idea was Ptolemaic.

And obviously if you were to use the expression now, I would understand that you meant all over the earth. But the expression itself is FROM the bible, where it literally meant the four corners of a flat earth. These expressions are only expressions now, but they came from what was thought to be correct.

Lukec, I think that at the time of the writing of Isaiah 40:22, people thought that the earth was flat - generally speaking. What Isaiah wrote there, by devine inspiration, was that the earth was a circle or spherical. He used the hebrew word chugh (or hhug).

It reads: "There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth."

This was two hundred years before Pythagoras formulated his theory.

At Job 26:10 it says: "He has described a circle upon the face of the waters, To where light ends in darkness ."

When God looks down upon the earth from heaven he sees the earth as a circle, just as we see the moon as a circle.

The Hebrew word chugh can be translated as circle, globe, sphere, or round (A Concordance of the Hebrew and Chaldee Scriptures, by B. Davidson), but it is interesting that only a sphere would be seen as a circle when looked at from most angles. A flat disc would have more often appeared as an illipse rather than a circle, so from heaven would have appeared more than likely as such.

So other than your circular reasoning based upon the assumptions that they must have thought the earth was flat because that is what people are thought to have thought back then, indicates that the BIble said the Earth was a sphereical shape object hanging upon nothing long before anyone else did.

[leo-rcc]

Daystar,

I've been reading up on that claim as you have made it before. I came across this article(and other). How do you account for this?

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF9-...eider.html

[Daystar]

Daystar,

I've been reading up on that claim as you have made it before. I came across this article(and other). How do you account for this?

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2001/PSCF9-...eider.html

What, do you want me to read all of that?! They lost me when they suggested Luke 17:34-36 is thought to have indicated that Jesus knew the earth was spherical. Why? Who said and why?

What did you think of it?

[leo-rcc]

Well I did read all of that and more articles.

It looks to me the most accepted view is that the writers thougt the Earth was flat floating in a ring of Ocean.

[Daystar]

Well I did read all of that and more articles.

It looks to me the most accepted view is that the writers thougt the Earth was flat floating in a ring of Ocean.

Why is that the most accepted view or more importantly, what is that opinion based upon?

[leo-rcc]

Why is that the most accepted view?

As neighbors, the ancient Hebrews had the Egyptians to the southwest and the Babylonians to the northeast. Both civilizations had flat-earth cosmologies. The Biblical cosmology closely parallels the Sumero-Babylonian cosmology, and it may also draw upon Egyptian cosmology.

what is that opinion based upon?

Well there is the word Chug you keep dragging in as sphere.

“Circle of the Earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The common view of the earth in ancient times was that it was a flat circular disc as seen in drawings from Babylon to Egypt. The sky above was a solid dome (Job 37:18). The Hebrew chug means circle or vault, not a sphere. The Bible also mentions the “circle of the sea” (Job 26:10) that surrounded the circular earth, and the “circle of the heavens” (Job 22:14).

.

[Daystar]

Why is that the most accepted view?

As neighbors, the ancient Hebrews had the Egyptians to the southwest and the Babylonians to the northeast. Both civilizations had flat-earth cosmologies. The Biblical cosmology closely parallels the Sumero-Babylonian cosmology, and it may also draw upon Egyptian cosmology.

“Circle of the Earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The common view of the earth in ancient times was that it was a flat circular disc as seen in drawings from Babylon to Egypt. The sky above was a solid dome (Job 37:18). The Hebrew chug means circle or vault, not a sphere. The Bible also mentions the “circle of the sea” (Job 26:10) that surrounded the circular earth, and the “circle of the heavens” (Job 22:14).

The neighbors differed quite a bit on their views on astrology and other things so take that for what it is worth. They (Hebrews) tended to get into trouble by adopting some of the pagan thinking - with idols and things of that nature, so it is possible that they were influenced their neighbors.

Really, though, we are talking about the Hebrew word chugh, and specifically how Isaiah, under inspiration, used the word more than what the people thought. Chugh can mean spherical, as Davidson's Concordance of the Hebrew and Chaldee Scriptures agrees.

I am almost sure that I posted on this at least once here but I have no idea where it is.

The Hebrew word raqia (expanse) was translated into the Greek stereoma which means a solid structure and the Latin firmamentum and from the Septuagint and Vulgate the early translations in English held the view of a flat earth with a solid vaulted ceiling from that belief of the time. So you have the dark ages thinking influencing the meaning in a translation more so than the original language.

Diagrams of a solid vault with sluice holes through which rain could enter were included in Bible dictionaries and some translations. The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia: "But this assumption is in reality based more upon the ideas prevalent in Europe during the Dark Ages than upon any actual statements in the O[ld] T[estament]." - Edited by J. Orr, 1960, Vol. I, p. 314.