The Bible's Flat Earth

This would also make sense if the earth was a sphere, but the Americas did not exist or were uninhabited (and the known continents smaller that they actually are).Either way, there is some 'splainin' to do.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

The image that comes to my mind is a flat earth with the sky-dome being put in place above it. It was a common belief in those days that the sky was a dome made of a solid material. I bet that is the image that the Bronze Age Hebrews had in mind, and I suspect that Isaiah was probably thinking the same thing.Considering that a flat earth with a material sky being erected above it was a common belief at this time in other cultures, why would you decide that the proper interpretation in this case is a spherical earth?

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Not to me it doesn't. A planet in an orbit wouldn't shake back and forth. If something were to strike a planet hard enough to change its orbit, then it would simply continue on in its new orbit.On the other hand, the quotation that you provide is very familiar to someone who has sat on a very wobbly chair -- a supposedly solid object that does rest on a "foundation" of solid legs. And, in fact, it pretty much describes what being in an earthquake feels like (I speak from my own experience). So, again, to me the verse pretty much describes an earthquake.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

I should point out that, if I recall correctly, the Old Testament as we know it took form during and after the Babylonian exile, which is about the same time as the earliest indications that the Greeks knew the earth was spherical. So it is entirely possible that the true authors, editors, and redactors of the Old Testament knew that the earth was a sphere.However, it's pretty clear to me that the language used in the Old Testament refer to a flat earth, not a sphere. I don't know enough to state whether this is mere poetical device, or whether the authors really believed that the earth was flat.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Hi, Granny. I believe that you are correct. I suspect that the writers of the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was flat. I was bringing up the possibility that they recognized the spherical earth to underscore my point: for whatever reasons, they chose to write language that indicates a flat earth.- The passages indicative of a flat earth in this case could just be poetry. That is what I believe, anyway. I could be wrong. One passage that comes to my mind is the temptation of Jesus, where he could see all the kingdoms of the earth from atop a high mountain. That could just be a not meant to be taken literally or, as I believe, it is consistent with the view of a spherical earth, but one where the Americas were not yet discovered.This is what I believe. I don't know what the writers of the various books of the Bible knew about the actual shape of the earth, although it is an interesting question. However, even if they did recognize that the earth is a sphere, it is clear that they were using flat earth imagery in their writings.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Much like the Bible, actually.- No, that isn't the attitude that GM is showing. It might seem that way to someone who is convinced that they know the truth and/or is carrying a chip on their shoulder. GM is merely pointing out that a flat earth is a much more natural reading of the texts and is consistent with what we know about cosmological beliefs at that time and place.Reading into the texts notions of a spherical earth is somewhat strained and only makes sense if someone is already convinced that the Bible must be some sort of infallible source of knowledge.

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

Yeah. Like that one. God showed Isaiah a photograph of the earth from space, and he mistook it for a picture of a disk. That is why Isaiah thought that the earth is flat.Or, more likely, Isaiah though the earth is flat because when you look at the horizon in a mountainless area it looks flat.

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

Yeah. There was a poster here who was convinced that God lived in a space ship orbiting above the equator.Makes about as much sense as anything the "literalists" (who we can now see are not actually literalists) are trying to say in this thread.

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

*sigh* I just don't understand why people can't just read these verses in the most natural way. Now people are trying to claim that Isaiah went into space and looked at the earth for their interpretation to make sense which, unfortunately for them, is having the opposite effect.

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

And so he used an even less accurate word for it?Will someone please just try to explain why we can't just accept that Isaiah, and the other writers of the Old Testament, used flat earth imagery in their writings? Why do we have to try so hard to force a spherical earth interpretation on all of this?

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

I'm not sure who you are intending this for, but this is exactly what some of us have been saying. Anyone looking around them, without the benefit of satellite images or the sophisticated arguments of the classical Greeks, would see a flat earth and so it's not surprising that flat earth imagery would be used in their writings.I can't see why people want to try to force a spherical earth interpretation on this. Even the literalists acknowledge non-literal poetic language in the Bible -- I can't see why they can't just subsume these examples in that category.

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy

By whom? What people are saying here is that the most natural reading of the verses themselves is that the writers of the Old Testament used flat earth imagery in their writings. Now one can sort of twist things around and explain how the writings are really describing a spherical earth, but that seems like a rather strained interpretation. Then the nonsense like that "foundations" and such refer to the earth in orbit around the sun are just plain nuts.Now given that the writers wrote passages that describe a flat earth, the question becomes whether they actually believed that the earth is flat or whether they were merely using poetic metaphor. Personally, considering that much of the imagery is very similar to other traditions that believed in a flat earth, especially that of the surrounding peoples who had a flat earth cosmology, then I think that most obvious answer would be that the writers of the Old Testament really did believe that the earth is flat.-Personally, I don't see what the big deal is, but some people seem to think that it is a very big deal. What I find interesting is when people try to "prove" the literal accuracy of the Bible by citing Isaiah to "show" that the Hebrews knew the earth is a sphere. Now if these versed don't prove that the Hebrews believed the earth was flat (although I think that they are pretty darn good evidence of it), then they certainly don't prove that the Hebrews knew the earth was a sphere.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Is ICANT Pentacostal? This would mesh pretty well with glossolalia.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev