Peg and I recently came to a disagreement in
Which Version of the Bible is the Word of God? over whether or not the Bible portrays a flat Earth. 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.
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.
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. Here are some of the most revealing quotes;
1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”
Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”
Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”
Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”
Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”
Peg has claimed that these passages refer to the Earth as being fixed
in its orbit. There are several problems with this. Firstly, the idea of a geocentric Earth was part of Christian thought until the time of Galileo. Also, “immovable and firm” seems an odd way to describe something that is hurtling through space at thousands of km per hour. Further, the Earth’s orbit is not fixed. It varies over time, most notably in the process known as precession. As for never being shaken, it is quite conceivable that the Earth might be knocked out of its orbit by a massive enough collision with some comet or other huge celestial body.
These passages mean exactly what they say; the Earth is fixed and immobile.
In Daniel 4:10-11., the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.”. Clearly this makes little sense if the Earth were spherical, but it makes perfect sense on a flat Earth, where a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to all.
In "Job 38:14, “The earth takes shape like clay under a seal." This is reference to the ancient practice of stamping out clay tablets. This passage makes no sense at all if it is about a sphere, but it does make sense for a flat Earth.
Matthew 4:1-12 has the Devil taking Jesus atop a high mountain, to show him the world. "the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them". This would only be possible on a flat Earth. I have heard it suggested that the Devil showed Jesus a vision, rather than a physical view, but if so, why bother going to the mountain?
Robert J. Shcadewald writes, in his excellent essay
“The Flat Earth Bible”;
The vault of heaven is a crucial concept. The word “firmament” appears in the King James version of the Old Testament 17 times, and in each case it is translated from the Hebrew word raqiya, which meant the visible vault of the sky. The word raqiya comes from riqqua, meaning “beaten out.” In ancient times, brass objects were either cast in the form required or beaten into shape on an anvil. A good craftsman could beat a lump of cast brass into a thin bowl. Thus, Elihu asks Job, “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal (Job 37:18)?”
This concept of the “firmament” as a solid dome makes sense of a great many Bible passages, such as these;
Isaiah 40:22 (NIV) writes:
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
This clearly implies a solid, domed sky.
Job 22:14 writes:
(God) walks to and fro on the vault of heaven.
The dome of the firmament is apparently solid.
Genesis 1:6 writes:
And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky."
With this, some waters are beneath the firmament (oceans and rivers) whilst others are above (rain, hail and so on).
There are a number of other passages, but I shan’t attempt a comprehensive list here.
One final item of note is that whilst the canonical books of the bible never explicitly state that the Earth is flat (why would they?), the apocryphal book 1 Enoch is much clearer. In this work, Enoch is described as journeying with the angel Uriel. He is witness to the ends of the Earth, where the dome of heaven meets the ground. He travels beyond this dome and sees the storerooms of the Sun and Moon. He sees the gates of heaven, through which rain and hail come. He travels to the extreme East and West of the earth, a concept that makes absolutely no sense on a spherical Earth.
The cosmos of 1 Enoch is explicitly flat. This is important, because the book dates back to 300-100 BCE and was highly regarded enough to be quoted in the New Testament (Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9). 1 Enoch’s depiction of a flat earth is in close agreement with the Bible’s Earth. If the Earth had been understood as being spherical, how could 1 Enoch have enjoyed any kind of popularity when it explicitly describes a flat Earth?
Doubtless there will be many objections to this. Every point I have raised will have an apologetic lined up in answer. My view is that these apologetics miss the point. One simple, parsimonious answer explains all of the problematic Bible passages at a stroke; the Bible authors thought the Earth was flat. Does this matter for the modern Christian? Not really. There are many errors in the Bible and this is just one of them. This is only an problem for extreme literalists, including the many kooks out there who still believe in a flat Earth.
Mutate and Survive
"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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