The "Circle of the Earth"

There is a thread in the "Education" forum - one of the subtopics is Isaiah 40:22: (this is the New Revised Standard Version; the King James Version doesn't seem to be substantially different).I'll post this here, since this forum is perhaps more appropriate for this topic - the original thread is about how to teach creationism in school biology classes.The claim made is that the word "circle" proves that the author of Isaiah knew that the earth is a sphere. I claim that this does nothing of the sort. First, "circle" simply is not appropriate to describe a sphere - if the author of this passage wanted to indicate this unambiguously, he would have used a more appropriate word; someone suggested that there should have at least been a word for "ball" in ancient Hebrew. On the other hand, the boundary of a disk is a circle, and so a circle is an appropriate word for the boundaries of a disk shaped earth.Also note that the heavens are compared to a tent - which brings in the idea of a tent spread over a flat earth floor. An interpretation involving a spherical earth seems a bit strained to me.I also note that nothing precludes the authors of Isaiah from knowing that the earth is a sphere - they may have used the metaphor of a tent over a flat earth as a poetic metaphor.edited to add: The title of this topic is supposed to be "The circle of the earth", but somehow it didn't seem to come out that way.[This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 11-09-2003]{Title fixed - The system does not permit (") marks in the titles, although admin fixes can include them - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-09-2003]

Ah, yes, I tried to use the Blue Letter Bible also, but couldn't get a fix on the word for "circle". But I see that I wasn't using the reference correctly. The word in Isaiah 40:22 is listed as chuwg, which is listed as circle or compass (obviously related meanings that seem to preclude "sphere") or the "vault of heaven" which doesn't seem to fit this context.Thanks, sidelined.

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So these digs at the Bible are pretty petty desperado tactics.

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(Sigh) I hate to degenerate into a round of name-calling, but I get a sense of projection on your part, Mike. You probably don't even know what my point is in this discussion, do you?

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Ofcourse planets are more circular than flat

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No they are not. They are more sperical than flat. A circle is flat - it doesn't extend into the third dimension. Nobody with a vocabulary beyond the third grade is going to describe the earth as a circle. Or are you trying to say that the Hebrew word used here can sometimes mean "round, spherical, three-dimensional thingy?" I don't know modern Hebrew, much less ancient Hebrew, so is this an attested possibility?There is another possible word to use to describe a three dimensional ball, as already stated. Why not use the more accurate word to describe the spherical earth?

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The fact is, anyone can see what the circle means(in Isaiah) by looking at the earth today.

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But the authors of Isaiah weren't looking at the earth today - they were looking at the earth based on whatever was current belief back then. You can't say that "Of course, today we know that the earth is sphere, therefore this is what Isaiah must have meant over two and a half millenia ago."

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It is obvious to any reasonable person what 'circle' means in this case. The book is not modern.

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I agree. So why are you having so much trouble with this?

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This isn't the worst case of 'trash bashing'

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I don't see how I'm trashing or bashing anything.

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Infact I was severe, sorry.

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Did you edit it out? Because I didn't see anything needing an apology.

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Because 'sits above the circle of the earth' Be honest, what picture comes to your mind?

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To be honest, what comes to my mind is that of a flat disk shaped earth. That's why I posted the first message in the thread.Why is it so important to you that this be a description of the earth as a sphere? I mean, it's still a powerful poetic image - I use metaphors like this all the time. Why does anyone need to interpret this verse so literally? That is the intention of my original post on this: why is there such an investment in being able to interpret this verse literally? Why not just accept it as factually incorrect, but a poetic metaphor to add "oomph" to the book, just like we all often talk about the "ends of the earth" or the "rising and setting" of the sun? (Alright, I admit I still have trouble understanding why some people have to try to interpret the first two chapters of Genesis literally, too.)

Actually, Mike, at the time the Gospels were written the earth was known to be a sphere. However, the Americas (and Antarctica) had not yet been discovered. So it was believed that all the continents (Europe, what was know of Asia and Africa) were believed to be in one hemisphere, while the other hemisphere was all ocean.So, the Bible actually teaches us that the Americas don't exist. (No wonder my feet are wet all the time....)

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If you believe that, you will.

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I prefer to believe that this, too, is a metaphor and should not meant to be taken literally. (But then I don't believe in the literal existence of Satan, and I only grudgingly concede that Jesus himself may have existed, although what he taught, if he did exist, is currently unknowable to any real certainty).

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To educated Greeks, I would imagine, but I don't know about a bunch of folks off in the wilds of Asia Minor.

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But the writers of the Gospels, I believe, were educated types who would have been exposed to the Greek culture, that being the standard of education at that time. In other words, I think that most well-educated folks were, in some sense "Greek". Certainly, I think, "Luke" was, as was "Paul" (although "Paul" didn't actually write a Gospel). But I'm no scholar in this, and to be honest I've only read a pitifully poor number of books on the subject.

The comment about Greeks was in reference to the sub-topic of the significance of Jesus being taken to the mountain top during his temptation.And Luke was supposed to be a physician; I think that modern scholarship still accepts that the writer of Luke/Acts was well-educated, but I could be wrong here.

And what's interesting is that this word for ball is used in the very same Book of Isaiah that the Circle of the Earth Verse is found.Now, literalists tend to believe that Isaiah wrote the entire book of Isaiah. It seems to be a bit odd that Isaiah would use a word that has implications of a flat figure when he knew and used later on a word that unambiguously refers to a three-dimensional shape.

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I could tell you what I've read about evolution, the big-bang, super-universes, quantum foam, and all that stuff. Eventually you'd ask a question I can't answer, then I'd have to go look it up. Even If I had the time for that shit, in the end you'd ask a question science hasn't answered yet. So let's save time and skip ahead to "I don't know." -- jhuger

Hi, tr. The Blue Letter Bible is what I used to compose this post oh-so-long ago. I should point out that Strong is out of date by now (I used it mostly because I have no other resources, but am open to corrections), so use it with caution. I think the only one here who knows any Hebrew is arachnophilia (and he is more a student of modern Hebrew than Biblical Hebrew, I think) -- Brian's field is Biblical archaeology, so maybe he knows some Hebrew as well.That said, your post merely strengthens my point. Literalists claim that "the circle of the earth" shows that Isaiah knew that the earth was a sphere - I was trying to show that one cannot really reach such a conclusion from this verse. If the proper meaning is "the vault of the earth", then that merely underscores that this verse really gives no reason to suppose the Isaiah that wrote this verse knew that the earth was a sphere.And if we do use "vault" as the proper translation, then this seems (according to Strong, so be aware the the warning I just gave) to refer to the space above the solid earth as a "vault", an enclosed space consistent with the primitive cosmologies of the region at this time (and most other cosmologies) that assume that the sky is a solid material enclosing the air and the earth underneath. In that case, I suspect that "tent" rather than "home" would go better with "vault"At any rate, if we were to use this verse as an indication of what Isaiah believed about cosmology, then it would seem to be that Isaiah believed that the sky was a solid material enclosing the air and earth underneath -- which is opposite of what the literalists are trying to pull with this one.

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You can observe a lot by watching. -- Yogi Berra

Oh, god! I remember that one! (Although it seems to have started here.)And don't forget how Ezekiel describes DNA. (Which was continued here.)

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In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

You're right. That would be silly.

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In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)

Is anyone else reminded of that scene in The Life of Brian?

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In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)