The "Circle of the Earth"

or a UFO. the way i see it, the horizon is the place the dome of the heavens meets the eart. the object that encompasses, circles, the earth is the dome. i think it might be referring to that.

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yes and no. at the point where it meets the earth, it is. it is a hemi-spherical dome. technically, the word implies encircling something. "horizon" might work. it's just that in the hebrew cosmology, the horizon is made by the pillars of heaven. and the verse strongly implies imagery of god being above looking down, and imagery of tents and such. it's not... very clear. i admit. and this is just my best educated guess in the matter. i could be wrong.(but it's not a UFO! lol)Edited by arachnophilia, : formatting

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hello heraldys, welcome to evc. i do not disagree with the majority of this statement, but interpretation of the 7 days of creation is not the topic for this thread. there is a problem with this point, however. genesis 1 is primarily about the creation of time, and the separation and organization thereof. that is why things are phrased as "days" leading to a week, ending with shabat. the days are necessarily standard days, because genesis 1 is the model (or rather, etiology) for the week. well, yes and no. it is part and parcel with the description of the hebrew cosmology. the "circle" of the earth is it's boundary -- the horizon.

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yes. the earth is finite, god is infinite. that's basically isaiah's point. not fall off, run into the sky.

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not sure what that's supposed to mean. isaiah's point is, specifically, that god is much larger than we mortals who populate his creaton. he can look over the whole of it, and has created the boundaries of it as protection."basically" was an ironic understatement. and there's nothing wrong with being a literalist. the literal needs to be the basis for anything else. i do not strictly confine myself to the literal, either. there are very many places that figures of speech, euphemisms, or even outright extended metaphors are used. ezekiel in particular was fond of extended metaphor, as was jesus. the earth is circular (flat) and the heavens are hemispherical (domed). i posted a cross-section back in message 198. you can find more information around the internet, if you do a search for "hebrew cosmology."

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sort of. the imagery on the hebrew cosmology is actually quite an important part of the how isaiah constructs his point. isaiah specifically likens the heavens (shaped like a dome, covering the earth) to a tent (recalling imagery of the tabernacle). i would call that very important, a visual metaphor if you will. that's aside from the obvious connotations of scale, and looking down from above on all creation.today, we can appreciate these messages strictly on their symbolic level. but we also have to recognize that the symbolism comes from a very literal (and very wrong) picture of what the universe looks like. to ignore the roots of the meaning entirely is rod the verse of a lot of its power and impact.

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"the point" is not actually the point here, but the way the prophet arrives at justifies the point. the conclusion is important, but so is the argument. err, no, BY different people. it was, of course, meant to be taught to generations afterward, but we should not view the text as if god sat down and told the prophets specifically what words to write. such points of view are common, but clearly indicate a poor understanding and at best a passing familiarity with the bible. this particular verse is in praise of god, written by a man. much of the bible is like this -- read literally, the only parts that can be claimed to be the "word of god" are the parts where god is speaking. and even then, rationality would dictate that these words have necessarily been fed through the human brain including all of its shortcomings -- or worse, simply invented when it suits an authors purpose.all we can look for is what the authors meant to say, and how they meant to say it. the "how" is still important, even if the technical details are now known to be in error. because the foundation for all other levels of meaning is what the text actually says. we cannot simply ignore what the text says. this is actually the case in many instances. translation in particular -- some are better than others, and most lack the flavor and connotations of the original. which is why i decided to take a few hebrew classes. but this does not mean that we can known nothing about the bible. such cases can be studied in their own right, and much about the bible can be learned from them.

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yes, so you keep saying. but the point is that the meaning of the verse is derived from the contents. the conclusion comes from the arguments. discard the arguments, and you've got no basis for the conclusions. if we just cut the bible down to "what it meant to say" we've watered down the text, neutered it, and trivialived it.what is poetry without the poetry?

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so i see:

quote:

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Edited by trossthree, 11-01-2007 12:11 AM: err

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Edited by trossthree, 11-01-2007 12:13 AM: err

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Edited by trossthree, 11-01-2007 12:14 AM: err

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Edited by trossthree, 11-01-2007 12:16 AM: err

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Edited by trossthree, 11-01-2007 12:17 AM: err

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yes, and if you look at my old posts, you'll find many opinions of mine that have changed over the years. but the thing is, i still made those arguments. and the conclusions i came to were still based on the arguments that supported them. even if i might regret it now. this is still a non-issue until you can actually show that there is a difference. until then, all we have are the words on the page. and the general sign of an edit, a change to the original wording, is when an argument doesn't follow. this one does. but the metaphor he uses draws from the (inaccurate) hebrew cosmology. that's sort of the point here -- that isaiah had limited knowledge of the universe, consistent with every other ancient near eastern civilization.

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yes, i am well aware of them. in fact, i could point out some rather interesting instances myself.but the conclusion that "therefore, we can disregard the details of what the bible says while interpretting it" does not follow. it's like saying that because i make typos, i don't actually mean what i write.

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meaning is sometimes changed by edits or transmission errors. there's a prominent instance in deuteronomy, actually, which seems to have been changed because the meaning it implied was too polytheistic.however, in that case, the new meaning is nonsensical.the alternative is that it does make sense. and if that's the case -- how are we to know any different? in other words, why would such an argument make a difference? we can't pretend to know something we don't know about the text, what it "originally" said. if there is a specific instance relating to this verse from other manuscripts, please do share. i would be very interested, actually. otherwise, your point is really just a broad appeal to fudge the details.Edited by arachnophilia, : left out a whole phrase!

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this is actually quite wrong.the word being rendered "circle" in most translations reflects the idea of encompassing something, and we can verify that both by its grammatical origin and by its other uses in the bible. the point here is that it is literally the boundaries, that god sees over everything. any other way of thinking about this verse (ie: a god over a planet in geosynchronous orbit) deprives the verse of this meaning.it is also consistent with what we know of the hebrew cosmology of the time (from elsewhere in the bible) and the cosmologies of every other culture from that region of the world at that time. the rest of the verse, relying on the imagery of a tent, is also consistent. you probably should do that. a good recommendation when joining a board is to read the discussion that has already occurred. thought, admittedly, some of it is some pretty wacky space-filling nonsense regarding UFOs.welcome to evc.

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this can be understood one of two ways.

1. the object that encompasses the earth at its boundaries, in the hebrew cosmology, is heaven. god looks down from heaven.
2. the hebrew word al can mean either "on" or "above," though the first is more common. it reflects the idea of being on top of something.

thus, you will see translations that render the verse as "he sits above the circle of the earth" or "he sits upon the vault of the earth." in my post #54 i translate it the second way. this places undue restriction on god, which is precisely the opposite of the intention of the verse. it also limits god's perceptual ability, also not exactly what isaiah is trying to do. by attempting to justify the verse with modern scientific thought, you are essentially betraying the meaning it was supposed to have. it is far better to understand the verse in context of its time and origin. the meaning is still as salient and powerful as it ever was, even if we now know that isaiah's picture of the universe was innaccurate.i realize this is hard for a lot of people who read the bible. but i would rather not sacrifice the intention of the verse in favor of maintaining the factuality of the details.

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