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Author | Topic: The "Circle of the Earth" | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Is there a ancient Hebrew word for sphere? the question, more appropriately, should be "is there an ancient hebrew word for planet?" and there is not. the modern word for "planet" or "world" is the ancient hebrew word for "eternity." there is, however, a word for "ball" as sidelined pointed out. had that been what isaiah meant, he could have written that.
The transliteration of this word from from Hebrew to English varies. What I found is chuwg, chagag, and hhug. the "hh" seems to be representing the hard "h" sound, which typically renders "ch" and "chutzpah" and "chanukah." there isn't a sound for it in english. chagag ’’ is a different word, the root from which chug ’ originates. the first one has to do with celebrations, and the second comes from it, and the aspect of dancing in a circle. the verse is actually very poetic:
quote: the chag or "grasshoppers" repeats the chug of "vault," and the shab is repeated three times. ki is used three times, and the -im endings match in the middle two lines. the natah from hanoteh matches the matach from matachem. there's a lot of "sound alikes" in the hebrew that just don't come into english. anyways, i've rendered the verse rather sloppily, but it does seem that "vault of the earth" is the correct translation, and that it refers to something that both encircles the earth, and forms non-flat shape: the dome of the heavens. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given. Edited by arachnophilia, : typo spotted too late!
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I think the only one here who knows any Hebrew is arachnophilia (and he is more a student of modern Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew, I think) we used to have some members who were fluent, such as amlodhi. but i haven't seen him around here recently. this is a verse that even if i knew all there was to know, i wouldn't be able to settle this once and for all. the particular sense of the word (which you can check with the concordance, for the other instances) does not seem to be spherical, but rather something that surrounds to puts boundaries on the earth. and in hebrew cosmology, that would be the dome of the heavens. from the context of the verse, that seems to be what it means here. however, i'd also like to point out that this is one of the modern words for "sphere." probably because of this verse.
I should point out that Strong is out of date by now (I used it mostly because I have no other resources, but am open to corrections) i'd like to point out something, which i really feel blue letter bible should take some effort to correct. when you click their "concordance" link, you get taken to a page that has two functions: a dictionary definition, and a list of places it appears in the text. the concordance is the second part, and not the first. because BLB is popular, people on the internet typically conflate the two. but concordances don't define words. dictionaries do. strong did not write those defitions. he just cataloged where root words appear in the text. the definitions on that site seem to be related to the graphics below them, from the Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testamament Scriptures by Wilhelm Gesenius. bible dicionaries, such as BLB's, are notoriously biased, often inserting personal interpretation of the authors (see leviathan, for instance). you will get better results with a hebrew bible and a modern dictionary, and a little knowledge of the language. that's all i use.
In that case, I suspect that "tent" rather than "home" would go better with "vault" yes, i would agree with that.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
The best way to figure a biblical definition is to be able to see how it is used in the rest of the Bible.Often that takes a pretty good scholar actually, that is what a concordance is for.
quote: quote: quote: ...and that's it. it's used three times total in the bible. that doesn't give us a lot to work from. but all references seem to talk of surrounding (which reflects the word's grammatical origin).
Anyway, the scholar showed a pretty interesting way of (among other things) disagreeing with the type of definition Arach gave. Does anybody else have access to the volumes aside from me, so I dont need to select quotations from it? no, i don't believe so. please contribute.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I don't know if the link below will help the understanding you have of 40:22. However, it seems to me that after reviewing the ch/vs 40:22, that it is saying: "it is he who dwells above the vault of the earth". minor quibble: it says on, not above. you use al like you would say he "he lives on a mountain" or "we talked about something[/i]. i think this is important to how we read the verse. he's clearly on something, looking down at the people of the earth. i don't think god living on the sphere of the planet earth makes sense here. it seems to parallel "vault" with "heavens" and relate the idea to a "tent."
The word TENT was translated from "ohel" and also means "HOME". er, this is one of the problems i have with BLB's "concordance." ohel means tent. period. it can be used to refer to the tabernacle -- that's imagery that's important here, actually. in 345 verses, it's translated "home" once, in judges 19:9, where it says:
quote: but since it's much more likely the levite in question lived in a city, the KJV (and most other translations) renders it "and you may go home." which is probably idiomatically acceptable, although it does not contain the negative connotations you might be able read into it if it were read literally. the problem comes when one starts with an ideology, pulls out a concordance, and thinks that because a word was translated that way once, it can mean that whenever it suits their needs. and that's just not the case.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I think you're taking the passage to literal. that's not the first time i've been accused of being overliteral. the thing is, we cannot simply make the text say whatever we want it to. we have to start with what it says on the page, and the meaning comes from that. this particular verse is a very common theme in the prophets: the power of god, and god as a protector. look at the earlier verse too, for context, if you like. this one sums it up well:
quote: but we can learn other things from the imagery used. and we can argue against inappropriate interpretations or misrepresentations of that imagery, quotemined to serve an ulterior purpose. using this verse to back up the accuracy of the bible is an inappropriate use. not only does not support that, but the usage doesn't actually make much sense. the intent of the verse relies upon the imagery of the flat earth, with the dome of the heavens, and god watching over all. it relies on the imagery of the tabernacle in the wilderness. by changing around the literal qualities of the text, one can rob it of its meaning and significance, trading in a powerful message for a consolation prize of a little supposed accuracy that doesn't even make sense in the verse. all meaning and symbolism must be drawn from what the text literally says, first and foremost. all exegesis (midrash) is founded on the simple meaning of the text (pshat).
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
before you editted it out:
The way you write it seems to me that you are a none believer. personally, i don't think belief should have any impact on how the text is read. i am a person of faith, but i do frequently argue against fundamentalism. specifically of their mistreatment of the bible.
I am not sure exactly what we are arguing. Are we arguing over what the verse says? or is translated to say? or are we arguing over Isaiah's understanding of the universe? or the earth? well, this thread is in reply to people who insist that this verse indicates that isaiah had a correct (supernatural) understanding of the universe, and the shape of the earth. he very plainly did not.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I removed the comment because it was irrelevant to the topic we are discussing. then we agree.
Now, I will agree that if we take verse 40:22 out of context that we can learn that Isaiah's understanding of the universe seems to be different then our own(if the translations are correct). the whole is made from the sum of the parts. in this case, the particular misunderstanding of the universe is actually a very important image and concept in this verse, and works into the whole context of the chapter.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
However, I disagree with this. i think the details matter. all of the details. the kind of image that isaiah wishes to portray -- god literally watching and towering over everyone, and god forming the heavens like a protective tend similar to his own house of worship -- aren't particularly as salient if we fudge the details to make it describe a round planet without a solid division just outside our own atmosphere. the cosmology is important to the image isaiah is trying to paint.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i think i elaborated on that fairly well above?
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
it's generally bad form to bump threads here. this board, for whatever reason, doesn't handle threads with greater than 300 posts or so very well at all. everyone gets email notification of replies, and that helps keep things efficient, no need for bumps.
i saw your reply. i've responded several times -- i'm not sure what better explanation you want, but your last several responses have not had any real content to speak of. now, if you have a question to ask, or a comment or argument to contribute, that's fine. but ask your question, or make your argument -- don't just pointlessly bump the thread.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
While it is true that "circle" does not refer to a spherical reality, it is also true that "earth" does not refer to a global reality. In fact the word "earth," as used in the Bible, is never a planetary reference. The Hebrew 'erets, which sometimes appears as "earth" in the Bible, is most often translated: land, and is also given as country, ground, and field. Our word "earth" is not that flexible. well, it's never a planetary reference because they didn't have a concept of the earth as a planet. but this particular instance (and the one in genesis 1) are about as close as you will ever get in the bible.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Who cares what they had, or what you think they had?? The important point is what did the One that inspired the bible mean??? And let's not pretend that you have some evidence He never inspired it. yes, he used his mind control ray from his UFO. since the authors of the bible had not invented tin foil hats just yet, they had no choice but to comply.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Right, to believe in a God, as the bible describes Him, including the flying throne, is foolish in your eyes. OK. Not like you have the slightest evidence for your incredulity. Of course. er, no, we're talking about the bible. you're talking about flying saucers, and grossly mishandling the text in order to support some supposed correlation between the two. it's not my fault that hearing your own points makes them sound like gibberish. they're gibberish. it's like you find the single most crackpot interpretation of the text, and run with it. hey, maybe it's referring to isaiah's cd-rom collection? and, in any case, i happen to be a closet UFO fanatic. enough to know that "flying saucer" is a misnomer -- they're rarely circular. and the person who accidentally coined the term wasn't describing circular UFOs, either.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
The first words of Genesis are more limited in scope than I had previously imagined. er, well first of all, is a dualism, which idiomatically means "everything." i'm not sure how you can say that's limited in scope. genesis 2 is the cultural, localized mythology, but genesis 1 is trying (literarily) to usurp babylonian (and other) mythologies, and portray the hebrew god as creator of everything. it's a somewhat globalized story, without the concept of a globe. i think the aretz here is probably meant to apply to land in general -- all land, anywhere. the description we are given is certainly one of god setting up the hebrew cosmology (dome of the heavens, etc). so it seems to me that this is about the whole of their cosmos.
The popular interpretation of Genesis 1:2 (very like that of Philo) requires acceptance of an oxymoronic statement. The Hebrew expression tohu-bohu becomes complete nonsense when given the English: "without form and void." That rendering baffles the mind of the reader and leads to equally mind-numbing alternatives, such as the NLT’s: “formless mass.” Philo devotes a number of pages to explaining those two little words. He goes on and on trying to rationalize how there can be such a thing as an Unsubstantial Substance. ‘ doesn't seem to me to be an oxymoron. tohu can mean "emptiness" or "desolation" (as in a desert wasteland) but i think in this case it more accurately reflects the idea of nonexistance: "nothing." bohu reflects the same idea -- a void. the best idiomatic translation would be "and the earth did not exist." or more literally "and the earth was unformed and nonexistant." it's not precisely ex-nihilo because the water is there, but the idea of the verse seems to be that land -- any land -- does not exist. the standard rendering does create some problems, yes, but imho they're an artifact of translation.
To the point: "tohu-bohu" is descriptive of a desert wasteland. a desert wasteland... underwater? that makes very little sense.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1374 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Eze 1:15 Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. 16 The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. 26 And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. 27 And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. 28 As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. please read the entire chapter. in fact, read revelation while you're at it. if i, mister "overliteral," am inclined to say any books are pretty strictly metaphor, it's these two. and the vast majority of jewish commentary agrees. in any case, god's throne is not "a flying saucer" or even one of ezekiel's "wheels within wheels." if you read the description, there are four such wheels, as well as four drivers, forming the basis of god's chariot. the whole contraption is called the merkabah. in no way is it circular.
But, if one was to ride on the thing, one would see the people as little bugs in size. One also could maintain an orbit. this is missing the entire point of the verse. god does not see men as grasshoppers because he drives a UFO. he sees men as grasshoppers because he is all powerful. the height issue, having god be above earth, is secondary to that meaning of the verse -- you are attempting to rob the verse of its meaning and belittle god, just to stick him in a UFO.
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