Isaiah 40:22 ''He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its peoples are but mere grasshoppers.'' I think you are wrong. :deal: http://images.google.com/images?cli...ceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And finally.......................... http://www.mb-soft.com/public/precess.html Three rings - ring equals a circle. I would say this problem is solved.
Are you mixing ancient Hebrew up with modern Hebrew by any chance? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I don't know. I don't speak Hebrew... But if the writers knew it was circular, why would they not think three-dimensionally... i mean... its just not logical.
The earth has to be flat for "sitting above" the "circle" of it to make any sense. As a spinning globe, there is no "above" the whole thing. A circle is not a sphere. So are we dealing with a botched translation, or did the writers of the Bible agree with all their neighbors that the world was flat and circular, with the heavens pitched over it like a tent? The Old Testament folks were not a seafaring people, mind you. Even a simple version of a flat earth would have served them just fine. Side point: back in the 70s a couple of adventurers went crocodile shooting in the Turkana region of Africa, adn one wrote a book - the Turkana would be similar to Abraham's folks. Camping with them, he discovered that not only did they think of the earth as flat, but they thought of all the stars as being embedded in some kind of tent-like dome - and the passage of a satellite was a source of much speculation, including bets and exclamations at the near misses.
Hmm.... You think the Bible means a gyroscope. Hard to imagine you are serious, so I guess it's some sort of joke. Iasion
Because they thought it was a round TWO dimensional disk. A circular DISK. Not a sphere. That's why. Perfectly logical. Iasion
How about this one. Gods words to Job. Job 38 31“Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,Or loose the belt of Orion? Interestingly enough scientists have discovered that indeed at time goes on the length of the belt of Orion is lengthening as it appears from earth. This is happening so slowly that it could never have been observed at the time this was put down in the OT. Also it has been discovered that the cluster of Pleiades is a group of stars travelling together in a tight bunch. Just as God Said to Job they are bound together as a group. lol All Praise The Ancient Of Days
So if a sci-fi novel had in it "the explosion shook the four corners of the earth" would you be able to understand that it meant the whole planet? The Bible writers wrote about the earth using terms that they understood at the time. Do you think God would spend eons explaining scientific theories that would have no practical purpose at all at the time just so I could say in 2007, look He explained relativity! See above. So what? Do you remember what sub-forum this is? While you ponder on this would you care to explain other apparent scientific errors in the Bible?
That might be more impressive if the Bible didn't get much more important details wrong, like the shape of the earth. You want people to believe that they didn't know the earth was a sphere, but they did know about stellar motion?
************* M*W: I found this to be quite interesting, since Job is thought to be the oldest text of the bible. I also realize that astronomy has been around 5,000 to 10,000 years, maybe longer. It's amazing how the ancients could see things so far away. They may have used crued telescopes, and I believe there is some evidence of that--where I don't know at this moment. One of the myths that came out of studying Orion's belt is that of the three wise men who traveled afar to see the newborn 'sun' (and/or 'star') in the East. Thanks for the quote. It really is something to ponder on.
Erm what makes you think Job knew about Stellar motion? I mean would modern science use terms like "bind the cluster of the Pleiades" or "loose the belt of Orion"? The ancients did map out the sky, as they could actually observe it.
If you were aware of the history and the creation you may be thinking gyroscope and use circle for simplicity. We are talking about writings supposedly divinely inspired, i doubt they would explain heart surgery to the people of the time but that does not mean they did not know all about it. Any you cannot have a sphere without a circle.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The belt of Orion has been called a belt - something you can loose, like any belt, without lenghening it - by hundreds of different peoples over the years, without reference to the book of Job. That's probably because it looks like a belt. The Pleides are referred to as a group of stars together, sisters or whatever, by everyone from the ancient Greeks to the modern Navajo. That's probably because they look like a group of stars held together somehow. Either that, or everyone on the planet except our own immediate ancestors knew all about stellar motions and such, and we alone needed science to make up for our deafness toward divine revelation. A flat, circular Earth with great seas all around its rim is just as complicated as a spherical one with oceans and continents. Stars that are distant suns in space are jsut as simple - even simpler - than the complicated mess of tents and domes and omens and motives for planets that we get from the old texts. I think the ancient Israelites were perfectly capable of understanding such terms as "ball" and "space" and "far away". They just didn't apply them to the earth and the stars.
Circle IsaIAH 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
The point is they didn't use terms such as "ball", "space" etc. language does evolve you know? This debate seems to be going around in circles.
I find extraordinary, the scale of the universe, with a radius of something like 10^26m. Matter covers only a mere 1% of all spacetime. So, there is a massive amount of spacetime 99% around all the matter that exists. There are something like 10^80 particles in this universe, there might be more. But the Bible says, ''I will stretch the heavens out like a garment,'' and you think, is it refering to the expansion of spacetime? And then, as the author of this thread noted, the Bible knew that mountains where to be found on the ocean floor. Now how would they know that? Why wouldn't it be smooth like the sand you find on the seashore? It was also known by the writers that the center of the earth was made of fire and brimestone (which it is), and this is where they associated Sheol and Hades. They also suspiciously talk about balls of fire coming from space. These sound very much like meteorites. The Bible is very scientific. It even says that the snake once had limbs... and scientific evidence recently shows that the skeletol structure of the snake had evolutionary marks of it once having limbs.
Some islands resemble, well actually are, mountains on the 'sea floor'. Maybe they just assumed there might be smaller mountain under water. They could have easily acquired that knowledge from experience. As volcanoes spit out fire and brimstone it is reasonably to assume the inside of the earth is made from it, no ? Well, don't you think nobody ever saw a meteorite in those days ? Come on, they saw meteorites. Not surprisingly, as most animals have limbs the snake is an outsider in that respect. Also, some members of Pythonidae still have visible remnants of limbs (I am not suggesting these were found in the middle east in biblical times though, although it's not unthinkable).
