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Look, if the Bible meant to say flat earth there would be tradition traced back to the 1st century of such a tradition. The shape of the earth is not some prophecy about the end times that the early church fathers didn't understand. Its a basic doctrine and one understood by the ancients who needed no lexicons to interpret anything. These ancient people are what modern scholars study. In order to get a better understanding of what Christians believed and their practices scholars today lack to the earliest centuries of Christ to learn more about the faith. Bringing you the beliefs held by the early church is what I did. Notice how real Bible scholars support the beliefs of the early church. Only an apostate scholar like Paul H.Seely would make up his own model and pawn it off to the public as something the Bible teaches. He has no basis in which to build his model upon. He gives you commentary but quotes nothing that means anything. I have quoted directly from documents that matter. You should not be angry with me but with those hollow philosophers who have deceived you and manipulated your mind. I know what its like to be deceived. I was a Seventh Day Adventist for 20 years. What changed all that, besides their evil doctrine claiming the mark of the beast is Sunday observance, was a reading of Ignatius of Antioch. I knew the document was early 2nd century and long before Constantine. I knew right then and there that the SDA church had deceived me. But they first deceived themselves. So I left the misery and lies behind me and eventually began an Anglican Catholic which is an ancient church that has no special doctrines. Its just straight up Gospel and worship services for those who seek the Lord without distractions and sensational doctrines. With you its a matter of accepting the ancient testimony which is consistent with conservative scholarship of today. For indeed, what good does it do to trust liberal scholars when there is no consistency with the ancient Christians and Jews? What good does it do to believe a lie that is only there to cause antisemitism against Jews fueled by a Nazi ideology that came from socialists in Germany, found its way here to America? I am referring to the progressive party and all their hateful ideologies that come with it. When you repent and give your life to Christ you lose the hate and bitterness and embrace the love of your Creator and Redeemer who died for you so that you could have eternal life. Walking in the footsteps of Christ requires a humble heart which is willing to give up on heresies at the blink of an eye. God rewards this greatly.
Please break up your posts into paragraphs but otherwise I agree.
It's spherical. That's the meaning of the word. And viewed from space, it does look like a circle.
A sphere is not a circle. Your bible describes the Earth as a circle. Be so kind as to describe, in your own words, what a circle looks like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Yes. It was believed by many. And I agree--it does not suggest the Bible teaches that, nor did I say that.
Define "science". It may not be as you believe it should be done, but primitive man certainly believed the earth was flat. They used all their deductive skills to come to that conclusion.
You have no evidence to back up your claim that a flat Earth was accepted by science...EVER. You are 'lying for Jesus'...but then, you're pretty good at that!
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
Yes. And from space, that sphere looks to be a circle. In a 2D picture, it appears to be a circle.
No it doesn't. It appears to be a sphere.
Quote:
And without a word for "sphere", the Hebrew text used the word "circle".
They have a word for 'ball'. One can be pretty certain they would have used that, rather than describing it as a circle - which it isn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BaptistFundie
whatever. Honestly...I don't care. It's not worth arguing over.
Suffice it to say the Bible does NOT teach a flat earth. I'll leave it at that, and call it good.
You can leave it as your dishonesty being exposed if you like but it doesn't change the fact that your bible describes the Earth as a circle and a circle has two flat sides hence, your bible DOES describe the Earth as FLAT.
A sphere is not a circle. Your bible describes the Earth as a circle. Be so kind as to describe, in your own words, what a circle looks like.
Have you not been reading anything? I mean, what you are doing? On what authority do you speak in? Your own? I have 2000+ years of round/globe/sphere earth readings from Scripture from the early church and the best scholarly lexicons and commentaries of today that disagree with your personal bias. Here is one small tiny little example of what a Hebrew word means when understood in modern English.
Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon (coded with the Strong's number system),
H2329: "חוּג m. a circle, sphere, used of the arch or vault of the sky, Pro.8:27; Job 22:14; of the world, Isa.40:22."
And this doesn't even get into all the "round world" verses using the Hebrew תֵּבֵל têbêl
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rafius
They have a word for 'ball'. One can be pretty certain they would have used that, rather than describing it as a circle - which it isn't.
You can leave it as your dishonesty being exposed if you like but it doesn't change the fact that your bible describes the Earth as a circle and a circle has two flat sides hence, your bible DOES describe the Earth as FLAT.
No, TWOT does not provide a single small tiny hint that dur would be used to describe the shape of the earth. There is a very long write-up on that word in TWOT and there is nothing to lead me to believe that dur would be used for the earth. But there are two Hebrew words that could easily fit this flat plate model atheists have assigned for the Biblical earth. So here is my counter-challenge for flat earthers: Why didn’t Isaiah use the Hebrew word “machabath” (Strong’s H4227)?
The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible,
"4227. machabath, makh-ab-ath'; from the same as 2281; a pan for baking in:--pan [5x]. See TWOT -- 600b; BDB -- 292b, 561d”
Why can’t FE find the right word which better describes their flat plate model of the earth they designed for the Biblical view of the earth? Surely this word would have been better than chuwg? It could have been translated “...the pan of the earth” or “the griddle of the earth.” But there is another word which means flat.
Strong’s H8478 is found in Joshua 6:5, 20; which is the Hebrew word tachath which was used to describe the walls of Jericho “that the wall fell down flat “ (Joshua 6:20). The word translated flat is tachath.
So why wasn’t the Hebrew words machabath or tachath used in Isaiah 40:22? Why couldn’t the verse just literally translate “the flatness of the earth”? Surely if the earth was flat and plate shaped Isaiah would have used the right word to communicate that message. Flat earthers always say the Bible teaches a flat plate shaped earth. Well, machabath is the perfect word!
There is no Christian tradition of flat earth which means the Bible doesn't teach it. If the Bible taught flat earth there would definitely be a tradition of it.
Last edited by Ploughboy; 06-14-2018 at 05:52 AM..
Good grief. Prior to the 6th century B.C., knowledge of a spherical earth seems to have been unknown. Even the Greeks prior to the 6th century B.C. seem to have held a flat earth belief.
The ancient Hebrews were no different. They held the same cosmological beliefs as their ANE neighbors such as the Babylonians and the Egyptians.
In early Egyptian[⁸] and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."[⁹]
The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water; an arched firmament separated the Earth from the heavens.[¹⁰] Like most ancient peoples, the Hebrews believed the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it.[¹¹]
The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography; Nun (the Ocean) encircled nbwt ("dry lands" or "Islands").[¹²][¹³][¹⁴][full citation needed]
The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) has language which reflects a flat earth belief and which has already been posted in earlier posts on this thread.
The OP, in his attempts to defend the Bible, which doesn't need to be defended, is resorting to all kinds of twists and contortions to try to prove that it presents the earth as a sphere. It doesn't.
And that's completely fine. As I stated on an earlier post, God met the Hebrews where they were at in terms of their understanding of the cosmos. They didn't need to be corrected concerning their understanding of the physical Universe in order for God to communicate to them what was actually important for them to know. Things pertaining to their relationship with God. Scientific knowledge changes and increases over time. It wasn't God's intent to provide the Hebrews with a correct view of the Universe. The fact that the Bible reflects the ANE understanding of the cosmos has no bearing on the theological truths that God wanted the Hebrews to know.
The OP, in his attempts to defend the Bible, which doesn't need to be defended, is resorting to all kinds of twists and contortions to try to prove that it presents the earth as a sphere. It doesn't.
Quite so!
06-14-2018, 08:13 AM
2K5Gx2km
n/a posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ploughboy
Look, if the Bible meant to say flat earth there would be tradition traced back to the 1st century of such a tradition.
You don't seem to get Hellenization do you? By the time the 1st century came around when the new sect of Christians were formed and the whole OT already complete the Greeks had influenced everyone in their conquered lands including the Jews and Romans even to the point that the OT had been translated into Greek. By that time they had already believed the earth was round. This in turn affected how Christians, many Greek and Roman themselves, interpreted and translated the OT writings. So of course there was not tradition from that point on of a flat or disc shaped earth. And we are not even really discussing redaction of texts by Christians. Frankly we don't need to because the Hebrew texts show that the earth was described as a sphere or globe.
People really should make the effort to read this well documented paper by scholar Paul H. Seely, titled THE FIRMAMENT AND THE WATER ABOVE, Part I: The Meaning of raqiac in Gen 1:6-8. I posted it on an earlier post, but people frequently don't take the time to even go into a link. But really, you should.
Seely documents that in the ancient world, people through out the world believed that the sky was a solid dome, and the Hebrews were no different. The OP attempted to dismiss it, probably without even reading it.
A sphere is not a circle. Your bible describes the Earth as a circle. Be so kind as to describe, in your own words, what a circle looks like.
You have no evidence to back up your claim that a flat Earth was accepted by science...EVER. You are 'lying for Jesus'...but then, you're pretty good at that!
No it doesn't. It appears to be a sphere.
They have a word for 'ball'. One can be pretty certain they would have used that, rather than describing it as a circle - which it isn't.
You can leave it as your dishonesty being exposed if you like but it doesn't change the fact that your bible describes the Earth as a circle and a circle has two flat sides hence, your bible DOES describe the Earth as FLAT.
And next you'll tell me that the Bible teaches us the sun revolves around the earth because it refers to "sunrise" and "sunset".
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