SEF

All the landmasses are on one side of the Earth though (to surprising accuracy) with the other hemisphere being almost entirely ocean. Have you seen the Pacific? You can look at it covering almost a hemisphere with just the edge of Australia and America showing and a few tiny islands dotted around. That doesn't mean they really "knew" that though. Even Columbus chose a too small estimate which would have prevented that ocean trick from working. Plus it's still impossible to see all the kingdoms of the Earth from a high mountain. That's pure flat Earthism - or the inside of a sphere!

GakuseiDon

The Bible doesn't say that Jesus could see all the kingdoms, just that Satan "showed Him" all the kingdoms. Luke 4:5 has "Satan showed Him in a moment of time", which makes it sound like a vision.

Vorkosigan

You can see a vision anywhere. The implication of being taken to a high point is that he can physically see all the kingdoms of the earth.

GakuseiDon

I suppose so - that passage wouldn't be logical otherwise! Seriously, at the least, it doesn't say "Jesus could see them" as SEF stated. The implication is of a vision, IMHO. Since I don't believe it actually happened anyway, it doesn't worry me one way or the other, it's just that the claim often is that Jesus could physically see the kingdoms, and the verse doesn't - quite - say that.

SEF

It doesn't quite say that in the sense of using the word "see" (which in English still doesn't exclusively mean physically see light anyway!) but "show" which is easily as strong. The implication of real physicality is definitely there. Besides which the preceding verses in Matthew 4 demonstrate the devil had a pattern of using things which were actually there and moving the location in order to arrange that. First asking for the stones to be turned to bread rather than something else which wasn't there or from nothing at all. Next the going to the pinnacle of the temple to leap off (a cliff in the wilderness presumably wouldn't have been visible enough to everyone else). Then the high mountain. Why bother to move unless there was a significant physical point to be made by the move, ie the kingdoms were allegedly visible from there. So it isn't just the one word but the whole passage which implies visibility and betrays the ignorance of the bible writers.

GakuseiDon

SEF, I admit you may be right. It just seems unlikely to me that the Bible writers thought that someone could look from, say, Jerusalem to Rome, and see Rome and its "glory", without there being any miraculous intervention of some kind.

secular buddhist

I guess that while I suspect that the Gospel writers knew that the earth was a sphere, it is still possible for the writers to have an abysmal lack of geographic knowledge (perhaps even by the standards at the time). It may be possible for the writer to believe that all the kingdoms of the earth could be "seen" from the top of a mountain that is high enough, at least in the sense of being able to see all there was to see, even if the fartherst reaches were too far for any detail to be made out.

Of course, there's no reason this story can't be allegorical, either. After all, just saying that Jesus had a vision wouldn't be too interesting - going to the top of a mountain would be a dramatic element added to make the story a little more interesting. As someone who likes to tell stories myself (some of which even retain an element of truth), I am a little familiar with this tendency.

But interesting discussion my post generated - which was the original purpose, anyway. Thanks.

Clivedurdle

I don't remember ever arguing weren't christians silly to believe the earth is flat!

My view is that everyone throughout time has attempted to understand the world they find themselves in, and come up with hypotheses. There are often weaknesses in the hypotheses because of logical errors and lack of information, but no - one is silly! They may have Macchievellian motives.

The view of all biblical writers was clearly a flat earth - they weren't silly - they probably did not even think about the problem and just used the common understanding!

And that was the point of the thread ( and why I posted it in evolution and creationism to start with!)