Historical Standpoint

[Blondie]

[robvalue]

Let's say they did know something really clever, and we have no idea how they could have known it.

What can we conclude?

[JesusHChrist]

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! Pick me pick me pick me!

Is the answer "God"?!?

[Crossless2.0]

Regarding your first and third quotes, there is nothing there to suggest that the authors thought of the Earth as a sphere; rather, it seems they conceived of the Earth as a sort of disk. Circles are not three-dimensional. The first real demonstration that the Earth was spherical was made by the Greeks, not the Hebrews.

Your second quote would require a pretty tortured reading to come up with an expanding universe, to put it mildly. I can only speculate what lay behind the verse in question, but I would guess that the idea of the Earth hanging on nothing would be an inference based on the observation that the sun, moon, and stars apparently also seem to hang on nothing.

[houseofcantor]

[Chad32]

Circular does not mean spherical. They may have still thought the world was flat, but that it just doesn't have corners. There's an old depiction of the world where the top is flat, but it isn't a circle, and it shows a dome above it. Like a tent, as it were. Obviously there is no dome above the world.

Hangs is not really an accurate term either. The world spins and rotates around the sun, held there by centripetal force. Hanging on nothing is better than saying the world sits on pillars, but still isn't quite there.

It's not easy to test the roundness of the world without planes or space shuttles, but given enough travel time and study it's possible to figure out the world is round without divine inspiration.

[Jenny A]

Nope.  I think the ancient Hebrews knew the difference between a circle and a ball just as well as we do now.  Their cosmology is in Genesis and it looks like that of much of the rest of the ancient world around them. There's a flat circle floating on the deeps. Four pillars hold up a dome that supports the heavens. There's an ocean of water above the dome. Read the first couple chapters of Genesis. The descriptions in Job and Isaiah are generally consistent with Genesis.

The Greeks on the other hand really had figured out the earth is round and did a pretty good job estimating it's circumference.

[JesusHChrist]

Hebrew model of the universe. Derp!

[Athene]

I expect there were a few persons keen and observative enough to surmise certain things about the world and their surroundings back then. There always are, aren't they?

[Minimalist]