The Bible's Flat Earth

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It is my contention that there are many Biblical verses that imply a flat Earth and that the writers of much of the Old and New Testaments considered the Earth to be flat.

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Flat Earth cosmology was common in the ancient world. The Babylonians, Egyptians and pre-Classical Greeks all believed the earth to be flat. The Babylonians in particular viewed the Earth as a flat disc floating on a great ocean. I believe that this kind of cosmology was, at the very least, a profound influence on the Bible.

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It seems that the Bible authors viewed the world as being flat, probably disc-like, with a dome above it and resting upon it, which was the sky. They viewed the earth as fixed and immobile, resting upon pillars or foundations.

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I just skimmed all 17 pages of posts, and would like to present a "middle position" which will probably upset everyone here :-)I believe that Granny (and Chiroptera) make a strong case, and I agree with their data. The neighboring cultures beleived that the earth was flat with a solid dome above it, and the Hebrews probably shared this perspective.However, this doesn't mean that the Bible is "wrong" or that it is teaching error. 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. 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.Some Evangelical scholars have done good work on this topic. For those of you who have access to scholarly theological journals, check out these papers by Paul Seely:Paul H. Seely, "The Firmament and the Water Above: Part I: The Meaning of raqia' in Gen 1:6-8," Westminster Theological Journal 53(1991):227-240.Paul H. Seely, "The Firmament and the Water Above: Part II: The Meaning of 'The Water above the Firmament' in Gen 1:6-8," Westminster Theological Journal 54 (1992):31-46.Paul H. Seely, "The Geographical Meaning of `Earth' and `Seas' in Genesis 1:10," Westminster Theological Journal 59(1997):231-55.and there's a new book that looks very good (I haven't read it yet):
John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Baker, 2006).

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You forgot the part where the almighty judeo-christian god is the author of the bible. It's suppose to be perfect... or so I've been led to believe.

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Yes, according to orthodox Christian theology, the Bible is perfect, as Jesus is perfect. Jesus is both fully God and fully man. The Bible's origin is both fully divine and fully human. The Bible does not TEACH error; in this sense it is "perfect". But the Bible expresses divine truth in fallible, human, culturally limited language. In our cultural context, some of these expressions and assumptions may seem to be "wrong". But they are not being TAUGHT; they are just the cultural backdrop through which God revealed theological truth.I haven't read it, but I like the title of a recent book by Kenton L. Sparks, "God's Word in Human Words". That's the idea.

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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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I generally agree with your statements, but to proclaim the Bible as "wrong" without qualifying this statement strikes me an unnecessarily provocative. There is a big difference between the Bible TEACHING error and the biblical authors having an erroneous view of the world.

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An error mentioned in passing may not be the most serious of errors, but it is still a deathblow to Biblical inerrancy.

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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.For example: (from Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy)

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This clearly amounts to a claim that the earth is fixed (thanks to God). How is this not a claim?

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Yes, this is a claim of something. But a claim of what? Here are some questions that need to be asked before we decide:
1) What did the words "firmly established" and "cannot be moved" mean to the author? E.g. are they speaking spatially or temporally?
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.I haven't studied the passage, but I suspect it refers to the earth being solid and trustworthy. True, the author probably believed that the earth was fixed in space (except that he had no concept of "space"), but it doesn't seem that this is the point he's trying to teach here.

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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.

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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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Besides, that is not how inerrancy has been defined down the centuries

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Are you sure? Can you provide some support for this claim?I believe the term "inerrancy" is fairly recent, from around the turn of the 20th century. But the concept goes back many centuries, in a form fairly similar to that expressed by the ICBI in their Chicago Statement. For example, John Calvin held to this concept, but also taught that God had "accommodated" His message to the limited understanding of the people at the time.

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nor is it the way that most practising fundamentalists seem to mean it.

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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,

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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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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.

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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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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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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.

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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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OK, let's take a more detailed look at the passage in question: This is a poetic passage, part of an extended quotation from Psalm 96: A similar statement is found in Psalm 93: 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.The best way to figure this out is to become a scholar of biblical Hebrew. Failing this, we can do a few things:
1) read the passage in context, noting how the passages fits into the broader context
2) study the Hebrew meanings of the key words
3) read the passage in a number of different translations
4) check a number of different textual commentariesSo let's try these steps:
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.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 an exclusively poetic word used of idols and of general disorder.3) Various translations of the phrase from 1 Chron 16:30: 4) Commentaries (many comment on the passage in Ps 96 rather than in 1 Chron 16): So let's put all of this together, the context, the word meanings, the translations, and the commentaries. What does it mean that "The world is established, it cannot be moved."?"The world is established" most probably refers to the creation of the world. As Granny pointed out, the context refers to God's "deeds"; this probaby refers to His acts of creation. "Cannot be moved" probably means that the world will not break out into utter chaos, because God reigns and is in control. Thus the claim that "the world is established, it cannot be moved" provides assurance that God has been in control since the beginning and that He will continue to be in control forever.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. 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). Galileo had the right idea; "The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."I believe there ARE biblical passages that have passing references to ancient near eastern cosmology, but 1 Chron 16:30 (and Ps 96:10 and Ps 93:1) does not seem to be one of them. Edited by kbertsche, : No reason given.

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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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The first word, "tevel", is either exclusively poetic, or almost exclusively so. The synonymous word "'eretz" is used in non-poetic contexts. The third word, "timmot", is exclusively poetic.I'm getting this information, including poetic implications, from BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), the standard biblical Hebrew lexicon. Are you using a different lexicon or some other objective criterion? Or do you just dislike the implications of the words that the author chose?

Granny Magda claimed that the historic view of "biblical inerrancy" was different (less nuanced) from that expressed by the Chicago Statement, and provided this quote from Augustine as support: But this quote cannot be read in isolation of the rest of Augustine's writings. Augustine elsewhere said this: Together, these statements sound very similar to the approach of the ICBI in their Chicago Statement. It appears to me that Augustine and the Chicago Statement have similar perspectives.

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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.

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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.

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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."Be it science or theology, this is how academic disciplines are done. Early ideas are often too simplistic, and become more sophisticated and more nuanced with further study. (And yes, sometimes these layers of sophistication become too much of an overbearing patchwork and the idea must be abandoned, e.g. geocentrism.)

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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).

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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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But books (including the Bible) are "real" in some sense, aren't they? Science is the study of nature. Theology is the study of Scripture. Whether or not nature or Scripture are "reality" is a philosophical question. (As you are probably aware, there is a view that science is only concerned with developing models, and that these models may have nothing to do with reality.)You also seem to be restricting "reality" to merely "physical reality." Perhaps you are a philosophical naturalist, and deny that there is such a thing as "spiritual reality"? Not all of us share this worldview.

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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".

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Science does not claim inerrancy, of any kind. Religion does.

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You seem to take the view of Dawkins, who thinks that theology is not an academic discipline and does not deserve to be taught in universities. But the academic study of theology in universities long predates the study of science. Augustine called theology "the Queen of the sciences" (Note that he was using the term "science" quite broadly, as synonymous with "knowledge").Any responsible theologian will hold his biblical interpretations somewhat tentatively, just as the responsible scientist will hold his interpretations of nature somewhat tentatively.

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This whole conversation is interesting, but we have diverged too far from the original topic. If you would like to pick up these themes again, I think you should propose a thread.

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You're right--we should let the thread get back to the original topic.

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I came across this Forum and found it interesting because of a book I recently read, called The Biblical Cosmos Versus Modern Cosmology: Why the Bible is not the Word of God, by David Presutta.

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What he shows is that Job 26:7 is actually a restatement of the creation of heaven and the earth. He shows that the *nothing* in the passage reiterates the *empty place* of the first part of the passage. The *north* of the first part of the passage actually was a figure of speech meaning *heaven* (the NAB concurs in that, and Presutta presents considerable evidence in support of that interpretation), so the first part of the passage refers to the creation of vault of heaven over the abyss (actually the watery chaos of the deep), and the second part of the passage refers to the creation of the earth also over the abyss. So the passage means that God first created the heaven and then the earth under the heaven.

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Presutta also presents a considerable amount of evidence showing that the biblical earth is a flat disk and that the firmament of heaven is a solid vault. He shows that there are numerous passages that make sense only in this view of the biblical cosmos.

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In message #245 I provided references to evangelical Christian scholars who have been saying essentially the same thing. But of course they do not see this as evidence of "Why the Bible is not the Word of God." They see this as consistent with a divinely-inspired text written to communicate theological truth in a specific cultural context.

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The problem with your explanation is that if God cannot be trusted concerning what he says about the cosmos, why should he be trusted in anything else he says?

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Good question. If this imagery is seen as telling how things actually ARE, it would indeed be a cause for mistrust. But if it is simply a cultural vehicle, like a metaphor or a parable, why should it engender any mistrust?

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If he used the cultural imagery of the day concerning the cosmos, who can say he didn't use the cultural imagery in other matters. Was the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall--or anything else in the Bible for that matter--simply an example of cultural imagery?

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More good questions. As you probably are aware, evangelical scholars are divided on the answers to these. But all are agreed that whether it is literal or metaphorical is not the main point; these stories are meant to teach spiritual truth. It seems to me that the spiritual truth comes through fairly well no matter which position scholars take on this.

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And then, if the Bible was written for all time, why would God use only the imagery of the time in which it was written and not imagery that would apply to all time.

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I can see three main approaches that would have been possible:
1) use cultural imagery of the day to convey spiritual truth (the position I've been presenting)
2) teach them the truth about cosmology (big bang, etc), before conveying spiritual truth. This would have been a huge distraction from the spiritual message.
3) use some sort of "culturally neutral" imagery, as you suggest.I see no fundamental problem with your suggestion. But it would probably have been harder for them to remember. This is a culture based on memory and storytelling. Using imagery with which the ancient near east was aware would have made it easier to memorize the story. And if it were given a unique theological message, distinct from all the other accounts, this would serve to focus attention on the theological message rather than on the common cultural elements.

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It is because of that imagery that science and the Bible have been in conflict over the centuries and remain in conflict. Did God not know that this imagery would cause such conflict?

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I don't believe it is the imagery per se which causes these conflicts. I believe it is overly-literal interpretations of the imagery which cause the problems, as with geocentric imagery in Galileo's day. (And in Galileo's day this was just an excuse, of course. The fundamental problem was with the scientific/philosophical establishment of the day, not with the church. The establishment had invested their careers in Aristotelian idealism, and Galileo threatened perspective by removing the earth from the center of the universe.)