The Bible's Flat Earth

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it could be a topic for a new thread and i'd most definitely be up for that. I think i could prove otherwise.

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Sure, a thread on the topic of comparisons (or lack thereof) between Judaism/Christianity and the beliefs of their neighbours could be interesting.

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Great. But tell me why the 'dome' cannot be taken in the same way...or the 'Four Corners' ... why would you choose to read these literally and not attribute them to being nothing more then a simile or an expression of speech.

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Most obviously, the passages you quoted were clear similes. The references to the "vault of heaven" and the "four corners" are not. There is no "like" comparison being made, they are simply referred to as if they were real. Let's look at Revelation again; The Revelator is describing what he saw. I know that we are talking about a vision, but the context is clear enough; he is describing what he saw in his vision. He is describing it in a visual context and what he saw were four angels, standing at the ends of the earth.It is the mental image that is important here. I can quite easily picture something like what John might have seen, if we are talking about a flat earth. He saw a disc-like earth with four points at its edge, one for each cardinal direction. An angel stands at each.Try as I might, I can't picture what he might have seen if he was describing a spherical Earth. Where were the East and west angels standing? It just makes no sense to me. Look also at Job; If this were merely a metaphor, the obvious answer would be something like "No, but then neither did God. It's just a metaphor in the first place!". It is no use appealing to great deeds that God never actually did when exalting his glory. On another level, the metaphor of "hard as a molten mirror" is a completely inappropriate choice when describing a gaseous atmosphere. Even as a metaphor, it makes no sense at all when applied to the Earth as it actually is. It does however, make sense if it is describing a literal vault of heaven. The verse is saying "Has God not spread out the sky? (answer; yes he has) Has he not made the heaven as hard as metal? (answer; yes he has) Is that not impressive? (answer; yes, very) Isn't God just BLOODY BRILLIANT?" They are clearly hoping for the answer "Yes, he's great!". This argument for God would be far less persuasive if all his achievements were just allegories.Another important point is that in the Jewish tradition, the literal/allegorical divide that we have been discussing simply does not exist. Any given passage can be interpreted from a literal viewpoint and an allegorical one. In some cases one view may be more stressed than the other. It is important to bear this in mind, because this is the tradition in which it was written (probably more true of the Old Testament than the New, but it still applies to both). Just because we can read an allegorical meaning into it does not mean that no literal meaning was intended.Also, there's the similarities with 1 Enoch, but I'll come to that...

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After all, people today still say 'the sun rises/sets' even though they know the sun does not move. We know this and yet still call it the way we see it...why could the writers not call it the way they see it?

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I am arguing that they called it as they saw it. They saw it as flat! That's why they described in those terms.You ask why I do not take it as idiomatic. Again, it is the context of the verses. Rev 7:1 does not make passing use of "four corners" as an idiom, but describes a visionary scene of an event taking place there. There is no idiom involved.

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to the contrary, the bible does not say much about the cosmos & earth at all. The only detailed account we have about the earth is in Gen Chp 1 & 2 and a few pages in the book of Job. the Genesis account is very general about the creation of the planet.

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A fair comment, but Genesis does get pretty busy making concrete claims about the cosmos. It is also far from general. It has a specific order of events, two specific orders in fact! Since the book of Genesis is entirely consistent with the flat earth model and even makes a good deal more sense when viewed this way, I say that the flat earth references, which are found in many books, should be taken as literally as we take Genesis. If you want to call the whole creation myth part of the book as allegory, then you have a case for treating the flat earth material the same way. If you insist upon the first few chapters describing real events, you have to take other passages just as literally.

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thats not true. As i said above, today we use the same imagery when talking about sunrise and sunset. We still say that the sun will rise at 6.20am and set at some time in the evening. Why do we use such language if we know that the sun does not set or rise.

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Its nothing more then a figure of speech and we know that...the hebrews used the same figures of speech.

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Perhaps I overstated somewhat. However, I have already argued above that an idiomatic interpretation simply cannot be usefully applied to many of the verses in question. Job 37:18 for example simply doesn't work when viewed this way. How is Matthew 4:8 or Daniel 4:10-11 idiomatic? I see no idioms. If not literal such verses become far less impressive and , since they are clearly meant to impress us, I find this interpretation unconvincing.There are simply too many verses, providing too internally consistent a picture of a Babylonian/Egyptian/Enochian style cosmos to ignore. Alone, any one or two of them might pass as metaphor. Together, they add up to a big picture.

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the point was that the bible calls both 'earth' and 'people' the world. It uses the same term for both. Showing once again that the language of the bible is often metaphorical or symbolic.

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As I said, just because it can be metaphorical, does not mean that it is not also literal. It makes the most sense to view these verses as literal. To insist that they are purely metaphorical weakens their meaning and requires some very stretched and tenuous metaphors.

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Jude may simply have quoted a common source such as an oral tradition handed down from generation to generation. Its never been proved that he actually quoted from that book,

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Don't be absurd, the passage explicitly identifies the inner quote as being from Enoch and then goes on to directly quote the Book of Enoch! Nothing could be clearer.

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not that it makes any difference to me if he did because there are other teachings in there that prove that it is not an inspired book.

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It is irrelevant to me whether you consider it inspired or not. I consider that to be an artificial and wholly arbitrary distinction. Jude clearly thought it was inspired though. What's more, there are unpalatable teachings and simple errors in fact throughout the Bible. If the presence of such material is sufficient to damn 1 Enoch, it is a double standard to refuse to apply it to the canon.

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The ethiopian church's also have the ark of the covenant in 3 or 4 sacred locations under guard... im not sure how reliable they are lol.

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Hah! I'm with you there actually. It's beyond me that anyone today could consider rubbish such as 1 Enoch as being true. Of course, I feel that way about Genesis as well. That's not important here though. What is important is that the author of Jude thought highly enough of 1 Enoch to quote it as prophecy. That demonstrates that it must have had currency at the time.

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thats a fine point.

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Although its based on the assumption that the jews did think in terms of flat earth though.

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No it's not. Imagine that the Jewish people knew of a spherical earth from the first composition of the Old Testament to the present day. The problem arises when we see that the author(s) of 1 Enoch clearly did believe in a flat earth. Why the disconnect? If the ancient Hebrews believed in a spherical earth, why would Enoch read the way it does? Why would it be taken seriously? Ever? By anyone, let alone the author(s) of Jude? To a spherical Earth-savvy people, the Book of Enoch would have been a joke, as it is today, yet it was popular enough at the time of Jude to be quoted as inspired scripture. Does this not seem strange to you?The simple truth of the matter is that the Bible's scattered comments on cosmology are completely consistent with 1 Enoch. I asked Black this before, I will now ask you; are there any Bible verses that explicitly contradict an Enochian cosmology?Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : Composed full response.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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the hebrew OT seems to imply that they did know something about the galaxy

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The quotes you present do no such thing. They mention stars yes. They mention constellations. They even mention them by name. But I wasn't talking about their knowledge of "the galaxy". I said that they had no knowledge of "galaxies", plural. If I know the way down the road to the post office, I have knowledge of the galaxy, since the post office is in the Milky Way galaxy. I wasn't talking about that though, I was talking about knowledge of other galaxies, of our place within the wider galaxy and the empty space in between galaxies.Where does the OT mention galaxies? Where does it mention space, not the objects in space, but empty space itself? Where does it distinguish between a star and a galaxy?Where does it show understanding of the fact that "constellations" are mere artefacts of our view of the stars from Earth? There is no such object as the Orion constellation. The stars that form it are light years apart. They have no connection to each other. Talking about it being bound by cords is an absolute absurdity. Talking about it as a single entity is a nonsense.Not a single verse you have shown me here contradicts the model of the stars being relatively-small objects, fixed to the vault of heaven. In fact the obvious errors in the way these constellations are described is further evidence that the OT authors had a very poor understanding of the cosmos. They could see and recognise stars, but they had no understanding of what they actually were.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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Wind is something that he would not have seen though...no one can see wind, so in this verse wind is obviously representative of something else.
It would make no sense that he saw 4 literal corners, but no literal wind and yet say that the saw both...therefore neither of them can be literal. Both must be symbolic or metaphorical.

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Nonsense. One cannot see wind but its effects can be clearly seen. It is perfectly possible to have a mental image of wind. Think of trees being blown about (something that is mentioned in the verse in question). Perhaps the vision involved the angels' wings being blown and buffeted. I do not see this as any kind of serious objection.

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When you look at the Hebrew words used, you see that its not a literal beating out of some solid celestial vault becasue the word 'skies' here comes from a word (sha`chaq) also rendered 'film of dust' or 'clouds' (Isa 40:15; Ps 18:11), and in view of the nebulous quality of that which is ‘beaten out,’ it is clear that the Bible writer is only figuratively comparing the skies to a metal mirror which gives off a bright reflection.

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But the basic meaning of shachaq is the sky and that is the sense in which it is being employed here. Are you really trying to argue that this verse is implying that the sky is insubstantial? It isn't. It is stating quite clearly that the sky is hard. The etymology of one word does not alter this obvious fact. There is only one natural reading here and it is of a hard sky.By the way, if you want to talk etymology, raqa is etymologically related to riqqua which means "beating out" as per a brass bowl, as per the brass mirror mentioned here. The context is clear; the sky is as hard as brass. I have no idea why you are so keen to change what the Bible says. If you don't like it you can always go write your own holy book.

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well the quote in Jude says that 'Enoch prophecied concerning all the ungodly deeds that they did in an ungodly way'

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Yes. He then goes on to quote directly from the Book of Enoch! The translation even uses quotation marks.

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Enoch was a real person, but the Apocrypral book of Enoch was not written by him. It was written in 2-1BCE. This means that the knowlege of Enochs prophecies was most likely handed down thru oral tradition as i said, otherwise any made up story coming on the scene would have been laughed out of town.

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There's no evidence at all to show that Enoch was real. He was almost certainly a fictional character, so no, he did not write his own lines. I never said that he did. So no prophecy was handed down. The fact is that the quote in Jude is almost word for word from 1 Enoch. It is obvious that it is quoting 1 Enoch. The only reason why you want to deny this is so that you can disassociate your favourite holy book from its embarrassing cousin.

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The only answer is that they knew of enochs prophecies via word of mouth tradition.

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The only answer? So it is somehow impossible for the Jude author(s) to have read Enoch? How exactly do you work this out? Answer; you haven't worked it out. you have just found this idea convenient. Nice try at dodging the question. I'll ask again.Are there any Bible verses that explicitly contradict an Enochian cosmology? The answer is either yes or no. Which is it?

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And so my conclusion to your question is that because the book of Enoch was written by a break away of the Jewish religion, its flat earth teachings cannot be connected in anyway with the bible.

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Your whole religion is a breakaway Jewish sect Peg! You might as well say that because the belief in Christ is part of a breakaway Jewish sect, it is not part of the Bible!The Book of Enoch provides us with a view of how people understood the cosmos at the time it was written. Denying this is pointless. I do not recognise the distinction that you make between inspired and non-inspired texts, so you are wasting your time with me on this line of argument.

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They may have been influenced by greek philosophy.

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No they couldn't. By the time Enoch was written, the Greeks had long known of the spherical Earth. It was influenced by Jewish cosmology, which had followed after Babylonian and other Near Eastern myths.

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They may also have carried over some of the oral teachings of the jewish system and so the information about the historical person 'Enoch' could very well have been common knowlege among the jews and if so explains why Jude could rightly use it in his writing.

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That does not explain how the two texts are so very closely worded. This similarity would be very unlikely in the case of an oral tradition.

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Keeping in mind that the book of Enoch was written centuries after the rest of the bible, Jude may not have been copying from the Dead Sea Sect at all...they were likely copying from the jewish religion.

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Totally false. 1 Enoch was written from about 300BCE to around the time of the New Testament. Do you get that?By the way, I am not suggesting that the Jude author was quoting from the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was quoting from the Book of Enoch itself. The actual copy used is not relevant.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

ICANT, would it amaze you to hear that I'm not interested in your loopy interpretations? Because I'm not. Yes really! Do you know what a constellation is? It is merely a pretty picture drawn in the sky, using the stars to play join-the-dots. IT is not an actual object. It is not a place. You can't go to the Orion constellation in a spaceship. The stars that make it up are light years apart and have no connection to each other, besides the fanciful sky-pictures made here on Earth.The Bible is spouting ridiculous and ignorant nonsense when it talks about the "bonds of Orion" It is totally wrong. It demonstrates that they had a very poor understanding of cosmology.

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Why don't you edit wikipedia to display the proper way to approach Orion then?

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Why don't you try reading the damn page you linked to? Then you might try reading the page on constellations. Okay? Orion is just a pretty picture. It has no objective reality.From this point on you just descend into rambling nonsense. Since ICANTism is yet to take hold as a major world religion, I am content to leave you to believe whatever you like. I think that anyone reading this can judge for them self how accurate your reading of Genesis is. I have no interest in debating your personal lunatic delusions. I will say this though;

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So you stand on your stump and proclaim your gospel all you want.

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I love the way you turn the word "Gospel" into a pejorative term! You of course, would never engage in such foolishness.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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So any things that you don't agree with is just dismissed like the questions I asked in Re Flat Earth (Message 232) which got no reply at all.

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No, it's you I'm dismissing. I have no interest in discussing your half-baked and manifestly wrong theories about Genesis; they're not relevant and they're not on topic. They are also unique to you, which means that I really don't have any percentage in debating them.So far as I'm concerned, nothing you have posted in this thread which deserves or requires a reply and I intend to ignore you for the rest of the thread. Okay?Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Thanks kbertsche.

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However, this doesn't mean that the Bible is "wrong" or that it is teaching error.

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It is wrong though. You may have decided that God had good reason to describe the Earth this way, but it still doesn't make a claim like "the Earth is immovable" correct. That is just plain wrong, however you frame it. If it is not a mistake, it must be a lie, even if it is only a white lie. In practise, as long as people go on teaching Biblical literalism, they will be teaching errors straight out of the Bible. Non-literal interpretations are much less troublesome.

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It means that the biblical authors were normal people, fallible and imperfect. God accommodated His message to the language and culture of the day. If He had first taught the biblical authors about the Big Bang and had them express theology in this language, their audience would not have understood what they were talking about. It was necessary to use the cultural imagery of the day to be understood.

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Yes, this strikes me as being quite sensible. Sensible that is, by the standards of religious belief in general!It does have its flaws though. Why is it necessary for God to alter the facts to make himself understood? He is God isn't he? Is explaining the truth somehow beyond him? Bronze Age and Iron Age people were not stupid. They were just as capable of understanding a spherical Earth as anyone alive today. All that they would have needed was to be told and shown evidence. If God is genuinely taking this role of a cosmic messenger, I see no reason why he would need to teach falsehoods such as the Genesis creation story. Could he not find true incidents with which to teach us theology? And doesn't this mean that God is lying to us?Further, when this kind of loose interpretation is employed, it must affect the way we read the rest of the Bible. The historical side of the texts for instance; now we know that Biblical cosmology is divorced from reality, why should we take the history at face value? Is, for example, Exodus merely a parable designed to teach us theology? I would say that it was very definitely intended to teach us history, but despite the fact that many people still cling on to its supposed historicity, Exodus is far less troublesome if one interprets it as simply a parable. You can't have your cake and eat it. Something cannot be both true and false. Either the Bible is infallible or it is open to error and if it is open to error, the whole thing must be viewed critically, not just obvious inconveniences like the flat earth.Does the following not make more sense? The authors were inspired by their belief in the divine. There were no explicit divine revelations, no communiques from God, the authors simply did their best to express their understanding of the divine and of the world around them. This is why the texts contain mistakes. Note that this version of events does not exclude the possibility of God inspiring the texts, it just moves him to a bit more of a "hands off" role, telling the authors "write" but not "write this...". What is the problem with this theory?

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Neither God nor the human authors were trying to TEACH cosmology with this language; they were trying to TEACH theology in a way that the people would understand.

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I can only partially agree with this. It is certainly beyond debate that teaching cosmology is not the Bible's raison d'etre. There is little direct mention of it. However, there is still the Genesis creation myth. This section at least, does seem to be intended to teach us how the universe began, at least that is part of its intent.In Jewish writing, the text is usually intended to be read from multiple viewpoints. In the case of Genesis I suspect that it was intended to be taken literally and symbolically. Trying to shoehorn the Bible, especially the OT, into only one viewpoint is always going to be misleading.For most of the texts upon which I have been relying though, there does not seem to be any intent of teaching cosmology. They are mostly passing references. I never claimed that they were explicitly intended to teach cosmology. Indeed, most of them seem to simply assume that the reader is already familiar with concepts like an immovable Earth or the four winds, etc. Nonetheless, they do provide an interesting picture of Jewish thought at the time.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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i'll be sure to send a letter to the australian govt and tell them that the southern cross is non existent and they can stop using it on their flag now LOL

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You can make as many sarcatic remarks as you like Peg. You are not going to change the fact that the verses you brought up to show that ancient Hebrews had an advanced understanding of astronomy prove the opposite to be the case.Where are the "bonds of Orion"? What are they? Why is the Bible talking about Orion as if it were a single entity, bound together? How can it be bound when its stars are light years apart and not directly associated with one another?The obvious answer is that the authors in question had only a facile knowledge of the heavens. They understood how the skies looked but not how they actually were. In other words, the text speaks in the voice of its ignorant authors, not that of an all knowing God.

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Here Here!

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I hope this very succinct point does not fall on deaf ears

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Absolutely. This point is correct insofar as it goes. But an error mentioned in passing is still an error. If I were to mention, as an aside, that 1+1=3, it would still be wrong. It would be a more serious error if I stood up in front of a class of schoolchildren and taught them that 1+1=3, but that does not absolve the passing error.Whether they are intended as direct teachings or not, the passages I have been quoting still give us an insight into what the Bible authors believed. That is all I have been trying to demonstrate throughout this thread.An error mentioned in passing may not be the most serious of errors, but it is still a deathblow to Biblical inerrancy.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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I generally agree with your statements, but to proclaim the Bible as "wrong" without qualifying this statement strikes me an unnecessarily provocative.

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I assure you that I am not trying to provoke you or anyone else. I am simply saying what I think.

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"Biblical inerrancy" is a technical, theological term primarily addressing the TEACHING or CLAIMS of Scripture, not the culturally-bound ways in which the writers expressed these claims. Hence, errors in the understanding of the biblical authors ARE consistent with most technical formulations of biblical inerrancy.

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I mentioned the immobility of the earth as an example of an error. Take another look at 1 Chronicles; And what acts are these? This clearly amounts to a claim that the earth is fixed (thanks to God). How is this not a claim?"Go forth! Spread word of the great deeds of the Lord! Of course we're not claiming that he actually did any of these deeds, they're just a sort of window dressing..."Not terribly inspiring is it? Why glory God for deeds that never happened? The passage is very clearly a claim about God being made to glorify him. This amounts to a Biblical claim. Your re-defined inerrancy is compromised.I am familiar with the Chicago Statement. The bible is inerrant, except where it errs. Only a believer could find this kind of double-think satisfying. It doesn't matter anyway. There are many claims within the Bible that simply wrong. Trying to refine the standards of inerrancy as the Chicago authors did is pointless.Besides, that is not how inerrancy has been defined down the centuries nor is it the way that most practising fundamentalists seem to mean it. Look at this statement made only today, by new member Kelly; This is, in my opinion, what most believers have in mind when they say that the Bible is inerrant. They really mean it. They mean that the Bible contains no errors. It is all or nothing for such people. It may be poor theology, but at least it is honest in its terminology. Calling oneself an "inerrantist" whilst accepting that the Bible contains errors is misleading and frankly, bullshit.That's not an attempt to provoke you, it's just how I see it.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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1) What did the words "firmly established" and "cannot be moved" mean to the author? E.g. are they speaking spatially or temporally?

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Well call me crazy, but I'd say that it means that the earth cannot be moved. Do you have any specific reason to claim otherwise? Other than a general desire to explain away an error that is.

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2) How literally did the author intend this to be taken? It is clearly a poetic passage; a few verses later he has the sea, the fish, and the trees shouting for joy.

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I haven't studied the passage, but I suspect it refers to the earth being solid and trustworthy.

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It makes little sense if it is not a claim of God's deeds. The claim is very clearly that God has fixed the earth. It explicitly says "It (the earth) cannot be moved". The only reason to read this statement in any way other than "it cannot be moved" is in a desperate attempt to explain away a false claim. If the author had intended to say "made the earth safe" he could have done so. He did not.A claim is being made. It is false. That is contrary even to the version of inerrancy that you describe. It is no use taking an errant claim and saying "Ah well, that's not really a claim.". That is just dishonest. It's a wasted effort anyway. The Bible is littered with erroneous claims. You can't explain them all away, no matter how tenuously you define inerrancy.

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Whether you like it or not, that's the way theology, philosophy, and many other fields of study are done. People are very careful to define terms and boundaries. Yes, to an outsider it may sound like double-speak, but it is necessary for the field of study.

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The only thing it is necessary for is to cling on to an outdated attitude of uncritically believing what is written in the Bible. Inerrancy of any kind is a hollow claim. It is not honest to make such claims. In my opinion, claiming the kind of definition for inerrancy would be like my redefining Lamarckism until it matches modern evolutionary theory and then claiming "Lamarckism lives!". There is no point in using a term like inerrant when you acknowledge that there are errors. It is misleading and deliberately so in my view.

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Are you sure? Can you provide some support for this claim?

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Sure. Source Source

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I agree with you here, especially regarding the folks who tend to post at online forums. Few have any theological training. Most are amateurs who do not use terms in the technically correct sense.

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That's the problem isn't it though? To use the term inerrancy is to give a false impression. This is the impression that most fundamentalists have of inerrancy. To talk in these terms is to encourage this misunderstanding and to also encourage far too great a confidence in the Bible's authority. This is part of the widespread disconnect between what theologians say and what the laity believe.Do you not worry that in using the term inerrant you are promoting a naive and literal inerrancy of a rather extreme kind? Shouldn't you at least be using the somewhat clearer term "limited inerrancy"?

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Not so. "Biblical inerrancy" is a technical, theological term. You can define the term differently from the theologians if you wish, but then you are no longer talking about the same thing, and confusion ensues. The same thing would happen if you allowed the non-scientists on this board to define evolution, big bang, etc. any way they wish. You would soon be talking past each other and not communicating. It's better to allow the experts in each field to define their terms, and to use these definitions.

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These particular "experts" have chosen to define their terminology in such a way as to make the term a dishonest one. That is what I consider to be bullshit. They are welcome to chose to define their terms however they wish, but it has not filtered down to the majority of fundamentalists, many of whom would find such an idea to be a compromise too far. I suspect that this is part of the appeal in such a definition; it allows fundamentalists to have their cake and eat it.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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So what does it mean that "The world is established, it cannot be moved."? The question is not what you or I would LIKE it to mean, but what it actually DID mean to the author.

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A question that, as I think we can both agree, can never be answered with absolute confidence. Let's go through your analysis though.

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1) The immediate context is given above. In the broader context, the main topic of Ps 96 is God's reign, and how all people should praise Him and rejoice due to this.

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Exactly, and i have already addressed this point. The passage is telling us to worship God because of his greatness, which is evidenced by his achievements. This is entirely consistent with my reading. Further, if you like context, how about reading it in the context of all the passages I have been quoting? Those passages add up to a cosmology in which statements about a fixed earth would have made obvious literal sense. They would have been wrong, but they still made sense.

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2) word meanings:
a) "world" is the Hebrew "tevel", which is a poetic word for "'eretz", the normal term for "earth" or "land".
b) "established" is "tikkon", the niphal imperfect of "khwn", meaning "be set up, established, fixed". It is used literally of houses, and figuratively of thrones, kings, and kingdoms.
c) "be moved" is "timmot", the niphal imperfect of "mwt", meaning "be shaken, moved, overthrown". It is a poetic word used of idols and of general disorder.

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In each case you seem very keen to emphasise the poetic implications. This seems a bit of a stretch. The author of 1 Chr. has just metioned that "the LORD made the heavens. ", is this meant to be poetic? You are picking out secondary potential meanings for every word here. Occam's Razor suggests that you are wrong. The most obvious meaning of each of these terms is the literal one.

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3) Various translations of the phrase from 1 Chron 16:30:

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All of which use terminology explicitely connected with movement or the lack thereof. No translation mentions security or dependability. I rather fancy that the author could have used clear terminology to express this idea if he had so wished. He did not.

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4) Commentaries (many comment on the passage in Ps 96 rather than in 1 Chron 16):

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Commentaries are merely commentaries. they are opinions, nothing more. Plus, from what I have seen of theology, I have little trust in the motivations of such comments. They are too often an attempt to do what you are doing; explaining why a mistake is not really a mistake in a misguided effort to maintain Biblical authority.

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"The world is established" most probably refers to the creation of the world.

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So the beginning bit is literal? Yet it suddenly changes tack halfway through a sentence? Forgive me if I find that unlikely.

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"Cannot be moved" probably means that the world will not break out into utter chaos, because God reigns and is in control.

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Now it is poetic. That was a sharp turnabout.You have still not provided any reason why we should take this interpretation. It is just about possible, but you have done nothing to support it except to say that it is possible. The only other reason to take your reading is because we don't want the bible to be in error.Anyway, it's still wrong. The world has broken out into chaos. A couple of things known as "World Wars" would fall neatly under that category. Nations are not stable, anything but in fact. A thousand have fallen since this passage was written, so it is still just wrong.Also, it says "cannot" not "will not". It is perfectly possible for the Earth to be destroyed entirely by a sufficiently large comet or something of that ilk. The passage is wrong, even if we take your translation. The Earth is not stable or fixed. It is precarious, as recent concerns over climate change demonstrate. It is a temporary feature and one day, it will be swallowed by the sun. That is not my idea of stability.In a world that understood the earth to be literally fixed, immobile and at the centre of things, verse 30 is an extremely silly way to pass on the message "God has brought stability to the nations". The verse would have seemed obvious in meaning to someone who already believed in a fixed earth. If I said "He has made the Earth move", you would not suppose that I meant to say that he has made the earth an exciting place. That is because you know that the Earth actually does move. The plain meaning of the phrase would have found instant recognition in a fixed earth culture. It's literal meaning would have been so plain as to completely obscure the somewhat tenuous interpretation you have provided. It seems like a big mistake to phrase it this way and the problem would have been immediately obvious to the author. If you're reading is correct, it is a terrible attempt at getting a point across. I do not think that the Bible authors were that stupid.

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I see no reason from the text to infer anything about cosmology. The text is not directed at cosmology, but at God's reign. The author does not seem to have cosmology in mind at all.

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Patently wrong. I am not inferring anything. I am simply reading the text. You are the one who is engaged in inference.

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I believe that Galileo's critics tried to use these or similar passages to argue against heliocentrism, but they were doing eisegesis instead of exegesis (reading their own ideas INTO the text, not reading the writer's ideas OUT of the text).

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They were merely doing what Augustine suggested; interpreting the Bible as true until proven otherwise. Of course, the Bible must still be true, right? So when we find that it is wrong, we must find another truth that we can shoehorn the passage into. If sucj people were engaged in reading whatever they wanted into the text, perhaps you can provide an example of someone taking your interpretation before Galileo's day...

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Galileo had the right idea; "The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."

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I'm sorry, but whilst he has a point, Galileo was wrong. The Bible does make cosmological claims that defy what we would now call science. The whole of Genesis 1 does just this. Implying that the Bible does not make dogmatic claims about the universe we live in is simply dishonest.The truth is that when we find out new knowledge, we must reject former mistakes, not try to re-analyse them into truth. Science does this admirably. One of religion's greatest failings is its refusal to do this.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

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depends how you read the word 'immovable'

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I'm taking it to mean "immovable". I'm eccentric like that. Still wrong though. The Earth is not immpossible to alter. It has changed enormously during its history and it will continue to do so long after it becomes uninhabitable. So it might mean that the Earth is a sentient being, capable of having moral principles? I think not. The authors did not think the earth to be sentient. the stars on the other hand... The earth is certainly incapable of this. So is a rock. Normally, one does not need to point this out. Boasting about how God has made the earth incapable of emotion just seems a little unimpressive to me. Also a bit mental. Again, the Earth is not permanent. I would have thought that God might know that. The human author might have thought the earth to be permanent, but if he did, he was wrong.All of those meanings would still leave the passage in error.

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there is more to the meaning of the word then the way you've chosen to interpret it. In a sense, i can say that you are 'immovable' in your position in this instance

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unless you want to accept that the word 'immovable' has more then one meaning.

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I never said that it had only one meaning. I'm just of the opinion that it is the literal and obvious meaning that is meant, for reasons outlined above. It is no use claiming that it could mean something different; you have not provided any argument that it does.The obvious interpretation is the one that fits with the large number of passages that I have quoted. they thought that the earth was immovable and they would continue to do so for centuries.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

For the record, I do not have any knowledge of Hebrew. All I can do is use the lexicon on Biblos.com, which simply has tebel as "the earth (as moist and therefore inhabited); by extension, the globe; by implication, its inhabitants; specifically, a partic. Land, as Babylonia, Palestine -- habitable part, world.". It makes no mention of timmot, simply using mowtHaving done some reading up though, I must concede that you may have a point. Tebel is associated with a poetic usage. However;-Most of the references I can find simply translate tebel as "the inhabited earth", which does not substantially change the meaning of 1 Chr 16:30.-The use of tebel to follow the previous use of eretz may simply be a poetic convention. It may not be changing the meaning. The two words are used together in this way (eretz followed by tebel) several times in the OT. Look at this use in Jeremiah 51:15; -The passage is still in error, even if we are talking about the inhabited earth. The Earth will not remain habitable for ever. Its habitability will indeed, one day, be shaken, notably when it is swallowed by the sun. This is no defence of inerrancy. Interestingly, the Genesis flood account uses eretz. -There are still plenty of other verses that support the wider theme of this thread, including ones which use eretz.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Yes, it's exactly the same.The Bible is literally true, until some pest comes along and proves that it's not. That is when we must find a new interpretation that proves it is true after all.The possibility that the old interpretation was the one intended, even though it was wrong seems not to occur to either Augustine or the Chicago inerrantists.Mutate and Survive

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If i said to you that "the earth has been an immovable part of the universe for a long long time", im sure you wouldnt assume i was trying to tell you that it was sitting motionless and idle or non rotating.

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I'm afraid I'm with Coragyps on that one, I would assume that you meant what you said. You have chosen an extremely odd way to phrase that statement, indeed, you have deliberately made it as misleading as possible.Eccl 1:4 is pretty clear. The earth (eretz by the way) is being described as permanent. That is quite absurd for an astrology-savvy author, but a reasonable mistake for a bronze age spiritualist.I have no idea why you mention Psalm 119. Look at the KJV translation; It clearly describes the earth as abiding, yet it seems to be using the present tense. That's true. The Earth does abide, at least, so far, so good! The psalm does not seem to be making a prediction about the earth's future status. It is certainly not making any reference of any kind to that earth's stability (in the sense of not being physically shaken). Even I would not push for that one to be considered as an error! If it said that the earth will always abide, that might be different, but it doesn't.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

You've written some good posts over the past few days, but this strikes me as breathtakingly asinine.

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I can imagine a non-scientist saying, "Light is actually a wave, until some pest comes along and shows that it is a particle. That is when we must find a new interpretation that explains how it can be both at the same time."

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What?! Science studies a thing called "REALITY". Reality has a funny habit of being in agreement with itself. Now this may come as a shock to you, but the Bible is not reality. It is (and I can't believe that you need this pointing out to you) a book. That's all it is. Just a book, written by men (and to steal Bill Maher's gag, by "men" I mean people with penises).Reality is reality. It is not in disagreement with reality.
A book is not reality. It may be in disagreement with reality. Got it?

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Be it science or theology, this is how academic disciplines are done.

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Except in science, all knowledge is held tentatively. In religion (which is not an academic discipline) this is not the case. Theologians may claim that their understanding of God is tentative, but the last time I went to a funeral, the officiating cleric was quite happy to claim "sure and certain hope of the resurrection".Science does not claim inerrancy, of any kind. Religion does.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade