The Bible's Flat Earth

Gday, Peg - it's already been cited above.
Are you actually READING this thread ?There IS a word for "sphere" or "ball" in Hebrew (dwr), and it is used in Isaiah 22:18 -
"He will surely turn violently and toss you like a ball into a large country;"But the word used for circle is "chuwg" - it means a flat circle, NOT a sphere.
And the OT uses the word for "flat circle" for the earth when it COULD have used the word for "sphere".Clear and present evidence that the OT writers thought the earth was flat, NOT a sphere.Round, yes.
Round and flat like a disk.
But not a sphere.Coupled with the numerous other references which imply the earth as flat, this shows conclusively that the OT writers thought the world was flat.Kapyong

and this is the dilema, One Hebrew word for generation is dohr, corresponding to the Aramaic dar.Dohr comes from a root verb meaning 'stack in a circle' or 'move around' and thus has a basic underlying meaning of 'circle.'
and the related word dur means 'ball.'So some languages have muliple words for the same thing and others have multiple meanings for the same wordAnd just because today 'circle' means a 2d object, does not mean that it was the same thing in ancient timesEG, what is a compass today? Most people know a compass to be a navigational instrumentbut in ancient times is was an instrument used by a carpenter or another craftsman to mark or inscribe a circle or an arc on wood or some other material. The only Biblical reference to a compass is at Isaiah 44:13 where it says 'with a compass he keeps tracing it out...'Is it right for the translators to apply 'compass' to this verse when the thing that we know as a compass is completely different to what is being used as a compass back then?
.Or perhaps we should do what is being done in regard to the word 'circle' and interpret that the ancients had a navigational device making them much more technologically advanced then we give them credit for? Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

So Isaiah can't decide whether the earth is a sphere and rotates or whether it is flat and the sun does the moving?

I am sure this was just a metaphor. Oh unless it is something that needs to be taken literally in order for the book to be inerrant.Peg,Just give me a primer so I know what parts of this book should be taken literal and which parts should be taken metaphorical.Must be easy. You and buzz seem to have no problem determining what the distinction is. Once you can do this I am sure all of this misunderstanding will go away.Thanks. Once I get this lesson maybe your arguments won't seem so random and senseless.

Kuresu, Did you read this paragraph in my message 64, stating the reasons circle would likely be used by Isaiah in the context of his message if he knew the earth was a sphere? Likely he was writing of the circular shape of the earth, i.e. the curvature. I neglected to state also that there is not only no Hebrew sphere/spherical but also no Hebrew curve/curvature. Thus in order to describe the curvature of the earth, the best choice of words would have been circle to depict the curvature of the earth. One would not refer to the earth as ballular, but it would be referred to as circular, depicting the curvature of a sphere since there was not sphere word.Admittedly, this does not necessarily prove that he thought the earth was a sphere, but it does refute the argument that his usage of circle had to mean it was flat or a dome and not a sphere.Buzsaw said in 64:

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Gday, Yes, it means 'ball' or sphere.But now you are trying to redefine the word for 'sphere' to mean 'circle',
after you redefined the word for 'circle' to mean 'sphere'.But the facts are clear :
* there is a word for 'sphere'
* there is a word for 'circle'
* the OT uses the word for circle, NOT sphereBecause the writers thought the earth was flat.Kapyong

Hi all, So, whereas in Peg's world :
'sphere' means circle, and
'circle' means sphere.In Buzsaw's world,
'sphere' doesn't even exist.Even after numerous posts discussing the word, it's meaning, it's translation, and even it's usage in the bible - even then, Buzsaw can claim with a straight face there is no such word.How can one possibly answer that?KapyongEdited by Kapyong, : Minor fixes.

Hi,Maybe Isaiah was right all along he did know what a ball was and he did not use that in 40:22.Isaiah said, "he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth".If I am not mistaken there is only one place on earth that there is a perfect circle and that is at the equator.thing

And you'd be wrong as the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but rather is an oblate spheriod, and thus the equator is not a perfect circle.

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soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
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Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
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how do get 'flat' from that verse???seriously, all it says is that the sun stood still.From an earthly perspective, it is the sun that appears to move across the sky... so the writers were simply explaining the things they saw from the perspective that they saw themits called Perspective

(Isaiah 38:8) 'Here I am making the shadow of the steps that had gone down on the steps [of the stairs] of A′haz by the sun retrace backward ten steps.’ And the sun gradually went back ten steps on the steps [of the stairs] that it had gone down.'translations can be murcky, What happened here, simply a sign was given to Ahaz by God. The sign appears to be the reversing of the shadow on the steps.says nothing about a flat earth a round earth a spherical earth...it simply says the shadow will reverse itself by 10 steps. A miracle by God.How is this scripture an evidence of a flat earth or of a writer confused about the motion of the planets???

No, its not always easy and there are still pieces of the puzzle that i am trying to figure out. In saying that though, there is a general rule that is the key to bible understanding....Context.You have to consider the immediate context of the scripture in question. Without it the scripture can mean anything.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

We seem to be arguing for the same thing then, put the books of the bible into context of the times in which they were written. Stop ascribing knowledge to people who didn't have it.In Joshua the sun stood still. So the earth by your argument stopped spinning? Allowing this miracle and an extension of it to include oceans, atmosphere, and no sense of deceleration, etc, we come to the moon next which also stopped moving. Of course if the earth is stopped spinning then for the moon to not be moving relative to the earth it is now in free fall.

and thats what a miracle issomething that goes contrary to nature...something that would normally be impossiblecertainly its impossible for any man to do, but can we say that it is impossible for God to do?

And even the term oblate spheroid is an approximation. The actual mean gravitational shape of the earth is a Geoid due to harmonics and regional gravitational variations.Strange that whatever version of the Bible the anti-science crowd takes as being superior to all science forever and ever can't even get the shape of the earth properly described.Perhaps just like the shape of the earth is very roughly approximate if one uses a lot of gyrations with their apologetics, the words in the Bible are likewise very roughly approximate with a lot of gyrations of apologetics in regard to the actual intent of any purported divinity.Either that or it's a circle dammit, observation just has to fit in with what the perfect and infallible Bible says just like as in our perfect and infallible disease-ridden, witch-burning, ignorant Dark Ages in Europe.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza