What Does the Bible Say About the Shape of the Earth? Part 6
In this final installment of the series, we'll be looking at the cosmologies of other cultures at the time the Old Testament, aka Torah, was written. Neighboring Egypt assumed a flat Earth covered by some sort of canopy, within which the stars were fixed or suspended:
Babylon also had a cosmology featuring a flat, disc shaped Earth covered by a dome which held out water. This dome and abyssal ocean outside of it would be adopted by the ancient Israelites for their own cosmological model.
The Norse religion of Asatru also included a flat Earth, though held up by the world tree "Yggdrasil" and encircled by a huge snake (presumably to explain why nobody had been to the edge).
The Israelites absorbed their ideas about cosmology from their neighbors, Egypt and Babylon, not the Scandinavians. But it shows how common the assumption of a flat Earth was when the Torah was being written.
So, are all of these other cosmologies "metaphorically correct", as Christian apologists argue of the ancient Hebrew cosmology? Are they all in fact describing a spherical Earth? No, none of the Christian apologists defend these other flat Earth cosmologies because they are part of religions other than Christianity.
They make their elaborate, convoluted excuses only for the Hebrew model of cosmology found in scripture. Is that reasonable? When the Biblical model bears such a close resemblance to Egyptian, Babylonian and Norse cosmology, is it realistic to suppose that only the Biblical version was metaphorically describing what science has since discovered about the shape of the Earth and structure of the solar system?
All of the arguments apologists use in defense of Biblical cosmology could also be used just as easily in defense of Egyptian, Babylonian or Norse cosmology. They just don't care to because they aren't invested in those religions.
The simpler explanation is that ancient Hebrew cosmology as described in the Old Testament was assumed to be true because it's what every other civilization thought at the time, so the authors included it believing it was true. This is why it's so similar to the cosmologies of Egypt and Babylon.
It is a huge, ridiculous and indefensible stretch to say that despite being nearly identical to those cosmologies, only the Biblical model is actually an allegorical description of a spherical Earth with a gaseous atmosphere, orbiting the sun rather than vice versa.
More info on this can be found in the video below:
Stay Cozy!
it's interesting series of article about flat or round earth, but base on my senses of observations I believe the earth is flat like plane, and it's up to everyone to make their own observations
Can you see how standing on a large enough sphere, the surface would appear flat? In that case using your senses alone would mislead you.
Well, is a great way to close your argument, i people who didn't really know the earth was sperical or had different ideas such as flat earth will rethink their knowledge now
Turns out lots of religions were in line with the flat earth theory huh, does that make religion and misdirection or just a misinterpretation?
I don't think they could all be misinterpreted in the exact same way.
If there really is an abyssal ocean, then eventually I think voyager 1 is going to smash into the dome and flood us. We didn't think that through.
I have no idea of bibel , but this is a christan bibel book . It is a great way to you close your argument completly well .
Thanks for sharing @alexbeyman
Upvote you .
You are talking about geographical thing.i have this subject it will help me a lot
You should visit the place yourself to discover a lot of things
Flat-earth ... Spherical earth what does it change?
Calculations for GPS and other satellite services, how manned spaceflight is carried out, how astronomy is done, how ballistic trajectories are calculated by the military, airliner navigation and a couple other things.
Once again you your title doesn't cover what the BIBLE says about the earth.
From Bibleevidences.com
Though the Bible is not a science book, when it touches on scientific matters it is either completely accurate or non-contradictory, and often demonstrates remarkable fore-knowledge. There are many scientific facts mentioned in the Bible that were not understood by man until centuries after the Bible was written. Following are a few examples of the overwhelming scientific evidence for the Bible:
The Earth and Space
God-CreationThe earth’s shape is perhaps the most important to deal with first since many critics claim that the Bible portrays the earth as flat. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and in my opinion is one of the most vaporous arguments used by skeptics against the Bible. There is not a single passage that plainly states that the earth is flat1. The groundswell of this criticism gets its roots from the inaccurate but common belief among many that the ancients on up through the middle ages believed that the earth was flat. The truth is, virtually all learned people have known for the last 2500 years that the earth is spherical [please see footnote 2].
Before the learned ancients surmised that the earth was spherical, the divinely inspired Isaiah wrote “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth…(Isaiah 40:22)”. In addition, from the Book of Job we have “He stretches out the north over empty space; he hangs the earth on nothing (Job 26:7)”. It should be noted that just last century scientists believed space consisted of a hypothetical substance called Ether (not the chemical), which was the medium between the celestial bodies. Also, the pagans of that time believed in such things as a mythical Atlas character who supported the pillars that held heaven and earth apart, and later carried the earth around on his shoulders. Another interesting tidbit that illuminates the divine nature of Job 26:7 is the recent discovery of a huge hole in space in the direction of the northern hemisphere3.
In numerous instances the Bible contains medical information that far predates man’s actual discoveries of related principles in the field of medicine. The medical instructions given by Moses to the Israelites some 3500 years ago were not only far superior to the practices of contemporary cultures, they also exceeded medical standards practiced as recently as 100 years ago. Where did Moses get this advanced information? Following are some examples of the medical knowledge afforded the Israelites in biblical times:
Sanitary Practices
For centuries doctors denied the possibility that disease could be transmitted by invisible agents. However, in the late 19th century Louis Pasteur demonstrated in his Germ Theory of Disease that most infectious diseases were caused by microorganisms originating from outside the body. This new understanding of germs and their means of transmission led to improved sanitary standards that resulted in an enormous drop in the mortality rate. Yet these core principles of sanitation were being practiced by the Israelites thousands of years earlier.
The Israelites were instructed to wash themselves and their clothes in running water if they had a bodily discharge, if they came in contact with another person’s discharge, or if they had touched a dead human or animal carcass. They were also instructed to wash any uncovered vessels that were in the vicinity of a dead body, and if a dead carcass touched a vessel it was to be destroyed. Items recovered during war were also to be purified through either fire or running water. In addition, the Israelites were instructed to bury their human waste outside of camp, and to burn the waste of their animals (See Numbers 19:3-22, Lev. 11:1-47; 15:1-33, Deut 23:12).
These sanitary practices without question saved countless lives in the Israelite camps by protecting them against infection caused by unseen germs. Meanwhile, their Egyptian peers were dying by the thousands due to “remedies” that almost always consisted of some amount of human or animal dung1. As mentioned earlier, the sound sanitary practices that we take for granted today only began to flourish about a 100 years ago.
Bacteria
Some time after I wrote these web pages, a Bible skeptic unwittingly showed me yet another example of advanced scientific/medical knowledge in the Bible. He posted a message on a discussion board that ridiculed some verses in Leviticus 13 and 14 that mention leprosy on walls and on garments. He felt this was silly and an error since leprosy is a human disease. What this skeptic was unaware of is the fact that leprosy is a bacteria, a living organism, that certainly can survive on walls and garments! In fact, the Medic-Planet.com encyclopedia noted that leprosy “can survive three weeks or longer outside the human body, such as in dust or on clothing“2. It is no wonder that God commanded the Levitical priests to burn the garments of leprosy victims! (Leviticus 13:52)
Yes it does, in the video. I've also cited the relevant verses at length in prior articles.
You have no arguments of your own, you just deny that I've said anything relevant, then copy and paste from an apologetics website. That isn't how argument is supposed to work. It's lazy, disingenuous and a waste of my time. If somebody did that to you, what would you think of them?
If I can't help you, that sucks. You'll remain deceived for the rest of your life. But you can still help yourself by reading over what I've posted on your own time, and doing research from sites other than apologetics ministries.