Jack the Bodiless

It's a popular expression based on flat-Earth religious myth.
Yes, I'm aware of the nature of Revelation. However, if the backdrop of the whole story (not just Revelation, but the entire epic series we call "the Bible") had undergone a radical change in geometry, then nobody seems to have mentioned it.

All I'm saying is that we don't know what the shape of the Earth in their worldview was: but we have a modern example of Christians determined to resist scientific facts known to the general population, because they contradict the Bible. It COULD have been a similar situation back then, especially given the intensity of the "culture clash" between flat-Earth Judaism and round-earth Greco-Roman culture.

Clivedurdle

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

The Flat-Earth Bible
[copyright] 1987, 1995 by Robert J. Schadewald
Reprinted from The Bulletin of the Tychonian Society #44 (July 1987)


edited to save bandwidth and for copyright reasons - please use the link

Bede

Yes, Jack. It COULD have been. But you have given us absolutley no reason to believe it is other than reading Revelation against itself and against the Greek the culture it arose in. Read Philo and tell me if as devout a Jew as he believed in a flat earth.

The fact that Christian dogma has never at any point in any church (bar the odd nutcase) been in favour of a flat earth torpedoes your argument. While you COULD be right, the evidence shows you almost certainly are not. Oddly, I'd say same the same thing about ID.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

PS: Clive, a link will do. No need to post an entire article and probably a breach of copyright.

GakuseiDon

Yes, no doubt the OT writers believed in a flat earth. But I'm arguing about the logic in your comment. You said:

...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.

So, why does that imply a flat earth cosmology? Couldn't stars have fallen onto a spherical earth? And if, as you say, they regarded the firmament as a dome, then how can you say that they also assumed it as a flat surface that could be rolled back like a scroll?

Peez

It doesn't. To clarify: Here are a few Biblical verses that individually imply a flat and/or unmoving earth, and taken together imply a flat and unmoving earth.

Peez

Jack the Bodiless

GakuseiDon:

I meant that small stars attached to a solid sky are elements of the (flat-Earth) Hebrew cosmology, and also elements of the Revelation cosmology. Therefore they might well be the same (flat-Earth) cosmology. Hardly proof, but an indication of continuity.

And, while a sphere can't be rolled back like a scroll, a dome might (especially a flattish dome, rather than a half-sphere). The analogy of a tent had already been used, in Isaiah. The covering of a tent can be peeled off and rolled up, and I find it suggestive that this can still be done with the sky in Revelation: again, evidence of continuity.

Jack the Bodiless

Bede:
It is entirely possible that I am not right. However, if you can't provide evidence that the early Christian writers unanimously favored a spherical Earth, or even that a majority of them did: isn't it rather a stretch to say that "the evidence shows you almost certainly are not"?

I expect they had a range of opinions on the subject, just as they evidently had a range of opinions on how "Jewish" Christianity should be.

Clivedurdle

I would argue that the entire Bible - please read the link carefully especially about the role of enoch - consistently puts forward a flat earth scenario - it was how they thought!

Yes when pressed or at a later date some xians agreed the earth was spherical - that had been worked out centuries before hand!

But the point is the Bible is not useful at all for making scientific statements! If people argue it is, an obvious rejoinder is that the Bible consistently shows a flat earth!

Bede

Clive, you are almost entirely right. The only point I would make is that Christians have generally agreed with your statement that the Bible is not at all useful for making scientific statements.

While we are talking about first century writings we are having a 21st century argument. As Toto pointed out, the correct statement that the Hebrew Bible implies a flat earth is simply an argument against modern biblical literalism, it is not an argument about early Christians. They, and most of their successors were fully aware that Genesis 1 was an allegory.

So be careful what you say. "Weren't Christians silly to believe the earth is flat" is invalid because it isn't true. "Aren't modern young earth creationists inconsistant for not believing the earth is flat" has a good deal of merit.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library -faith and reason

secular buddhist

I've posted this before, but I'm not sure whether it was to this forum. Forgive if this is a repeat.

Certainly the educated people of the first century realized that the earth is a sphere. I find it hard to believe that the authors of the Gospels wouldn't know this. (Although who knows who they really were?) However, it was believed at that time, and right up to Columbus, that all the landmasses were on one side of the earth, and the other hemisphere was all ocean. (Maybe some islands, I don't know the exact details of first century cosmology). So with this understanding, it makes sense that to tempt Jesus, Satan would bring him up onto a very high mountaint to show him all the kingdoms of the earth.

So, do the Americas exist, according to the Gospels?