tracer

A flat Earth, but with a circular edge?
Bah.
Lukewarm biblical literalism at best.

I have biblical proof that the Earth is SQUARE!

Jack the Bodiless

Did you mean to say "medieval Christian belief", Bede? I assume Revelation was written by a Christian.

Even in a time when it was generally accepted that the Earth was round, there would be devoutly religious people who refused to accept it: the equivalent of modern creationists.

Bede

The writer of Revelation almost certainly thought the earth was a sphere. It would be most unlikely that a literate person at that time would not. We have to use the historical context in which something was written and in this case the context is everyone thought the earth was a sphere. Hence any flat earth refs in Revelation are figurative.

There is one exception in the sixth century, widely derided at the time, who was explicitly flat earth but otherwise nothing.

BTW, Eco is just up to his old tricks in dredging this up. Ironically he wrote an essay about how the flat earth idea was a complete myth but can't resist putting it into his fiction.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Dilandau

Which goes around what may be a matter of sight. So is the shape of teh earth different from annother point of view. The questions must be, what are the opportunity of one or annother model.

Clivedurdle

All right, I'm sure some people think Francis Wheen is deluded!

Am I allowed to moderate a thread I started?

OK hardly anyone believes the world is flat - I think the OT/HB shows it is shaped like a tabernacle - not circular.

We have creationists stating we must take the Bible as the word of god - that is why they reject evolution.

As a comment by a poster on walkaway stated, the biblical arguments for a flat rectangular shaped earth are much stronger than those for a created earth.

The guy on Wheen's programme is not mad - his conclusion is an absolutely necessary one that follows directly from his belief system. His basic premise is wrong, not the logic!

Is it not therefore sensible to attempt to agree on what the HB states about the shape of the earth, and then using the word of god argument, tell creationists that the moon landings did not occur and they are not watching TV programmes on satellite TV. It's called cognitive dissonance!

Jack the Bodiless

...And yet Revelation repeatedly alludes to elements of the Hebrew flat-Earth cosmology:
So stars are little things that can be knocked off the Firmament dome, and the heavens are a flat surface that can be rolled back like a scroll.

Yes, this may be intended figuratively, but the author is basing his metaphors on a flat-Earth worldview. Is there any evidence that the author of Revelation (or, indeed, ANY New Testament book) knew that the Earth was spherical? I have found none.

The claim that the shape of the Earth was "common knowledge among the educated" isn't sufficient. Again, I will refer to modern creationists as an analogy. "Everyone knows" that the Earth is several billion years old, that humans evolved from apes, and so forth. Could future historians use this to argue that creationist sources "must have been speaking figuratively", because actual Young-Earth Creationists couldn't possibly have existed among educated people in the 21st century?

It appears that you are indulging in wishful thinking, Bede.

Clivedurdle

Is a tabernacle shaped heaven and earth, with heaven like a scroll - rectangular - and stars like figs - now agreed as the old and new testament world view?

If it is, we ought to tell the creationists either they are right and it is of Satan that they can fly to Israel to visit Gethsemane around a spherical world

Or maybe if they cannot take their Bible literally in terms of a tabernacle shaped universe, maybe there are also some difficulties with their objections to evolution!

GakuseiDon

Why does that imply a flat earth? Couldn't stars have fallen onto a spherical earth? If the firmament is a dome, then why do you say that they assumed it was a flat surface?

If it was common knowledge among the educated, then why isn't it sufficient? In the absence of any information either pro or con, then the common knowledge of the day would need to be evaluated.

Jack the Bodiless

This was the Hebrew cosmology:

(from the New American Bible, St. Joseph edition)

Isaiah refers to the heavens as a "tent", which could concievably be peeled back and rolled up.

...Yes, it's possible that when the NT was written there could have been a spherical-Earth variant, like the "crystal spheres" of medieval Europe. Of course, this would be almost as embarrassing to a Biblical inerrantist. And the Greeks considered the Sun to be very distant (IIRC, the calculations of Eratosthenes make this assumption) with the stars presumably being more distant still: difficult for a dragon's flailing tail to "knock them down", this sounds more like a dragon trapped under a smallish dome to me.
Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism, whereas the Roman culture that oppressed the Jews was an offshoot of Greek culture. There were two opposed bodies of "common knowledge". I suppose we'll never know for certain, but it seems reasonable that most Christian writers would look for consistency with Jewish sources first (though admittedly they incorporated some Greek concepts too, such as the Logos).

Bede

Jack,

Are the producers of the Channel 4 travel programme "To the Ends of the Earth" flat earthers? If you think not please explain why not.

Furthermore, if you should be aware that Revelation is stepped in figurative and highly colourful language. While I realise you always try to think badly of Christian writers, to attempt to make literalistic distinctions about cosmology from a book that includes seven headed dragons, pits of fire and the four horseman of the apocalyse seems naive even by your standards.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason