The Bible's Flat Earth

Buz - just a quick question. Why do people say 'the four corners of the earth'? Where did this usage of the word 'corner' come from? I suggest it might be because of the Bible. Just a thought. Is it Bibliphobic to point out that certain phrases that are in the Bible can make it into our common idiomatic speech patterns? After all 'the four corners of the earth' would just be a drop in the bucket. Then again, perhaps the Bibliphobes (people afraid of books?) are sucking down on sour grapes.Meh - how the mighty have fallen. Fare well - eat, drink and be merry!

Yes - I appreciate your argument is that it is idiomatic. The question remains: was it an idiom? Well - there is evidence that it wasn't, that many people in that region of the world in that period of time did in fact think of the world as a flat square, or sometimes a flat disk with a solid dome over the top.Is there any reason to believe that the 'four corners of the world' was an idiomatic expression rather than an expression of the cosmological understanding of the authors (above and beyond the problems that it not being idiomatic causes certain religious believers)?

Or maybe the circle text was idiomatic. Or maybe different authors held differing views about whether it was square or circular? Why give one reading more credence than the other?We know many people in that area believed the earth was flat. The authors of the Bible used language that implied at least some of them also thought it was flat. There is evidence that people that read these works thought that it meant the world was flat.Other than "But the Bible is true.", is there any other reason to think that the authors in question believed the earth was not flat?

A single paragraph is insufficient, you'd need to read the whole book, and study what kind of world the authors lived in, the events that surrounded them, the beliefs and attitudes of the people they lived around and so on and so forth.Unfortunately, this is often seen as 'too much' context, because all of these other things aren't the inspired word of Ba'al the Lord.

Why?

quote:

---

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

---

I appreciate that this is not English (and its from Isaiah isn't it?) but every translation I've seen renders this as a simile. That's just not true at all is it? Do you really need proof that the Hebrews were influenced by the beliefs of the nations around them? I thought that being influenced by the beliefs of the nations around them was largely the point of a great deal of the OT!Edited by Modulous, : subtitle