Philip just exhibited his ignorance by saying those who wrote the Bible believed the earth was flat.?

Question

Can ANYBODY show me the scripture that indicates that its writer beleived the earth was flat?

Isa 40:22 refers to "the circle of the earth". Evidently Phil isn't alluding to Isaiah.

Answer 1

They also knew it was in space...dog gone it I can't remember the book or verse,but it's "God formed the Earth and hung it on nothing"
Nobody thought the Earth was flat.The Egyptians encorporated the scaled down earth at the base of the Great Pyramid.If you are in a plane and look straight down,you'll see the base curves in.If you take those four curved pieces and linked them ,they'd be a scaled down version of the earth in inches. Most all the ancient cultures knew the earth was round.

Answer 2

There is plenty of holy writ, recorded here by others, to show that the Bible texts presuppose a flat earth. In fact the Hebrew people of the Old Testament and the Hellenic Greeks for whom the New Testament is intended all believed in what is called the "Three-Story Universe," in which they believed that we live in the middle of a sort of layer cake, with the Underworld (Hades, Hell, Gehinnum, and other names) underneath us, the World (where we are) in the middle, and the Heavens (where God and his angels hang out) on top.

In this, the Earth is a flat circle surrounded by high mountains called the Pillars of the Heavens, which hold up a thin metal dome called the Firmament, which in turn supports the Heavens. You have to remember that the people for whom the Bible is written rarely travelled more than a few miles away from the place they were born in their lives, and they had no way of imagining what the earth is really like.

The Roman Catholic Church placed Galileo Galilei under house arrest because he refused to recant his scientific discoveries that showed that the earth revolves around the sun, which contradicts Joshua vss10-11. The RCs did not put Galileo to death.

The ancient Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian astronomers had worked out the basic nature of the solar system hundreds of years before the Hebrew people became organized as tribes. Egyptian frescoes showing the sun as the center of the known universe can be traced back more than 7,000 years. The Jews rejected that knowledge in favor of the closed system of the Old Testament that made them the most important people in the universe.

So, as shown above, there are many instances of scripture that indicate a belief that the earth is flat.

You can be healed, though. You can be at peace. All you need to do is stop believing what simpleminded people tell you the Bible says, and read it for yourself. Do some serious learning. Take a college course in Old Testament. The truth may scare you a little at first, but it is the only thing that will set you free.

Answer 3

There is a passage in the New Testament where the sory of Jesus being tempted by the Devil is told. The Devil takes Jesus to the top of a mountain so high that they can see ALL of the kingdoms of the earth. The only way that could happen is if the earth were flat.

The Bible is full of examples of the ignorance of the men who wrote it. It is no more the work of God than any other book. Obviously the men who wrote the Bible were ignorant of science and mathematics and had no idea that the world was round or that the sun didn't move around the earth.

They also had no high moral perspective either as the Bible condones slavery, second class citizenship for women, brutality, genocide, authoritarianism, and despotism.

Humanity's spiritual development didn't end with the last book of the Bible. If we cannot improve on this book filled with the ideas of ignorant men, you have nothing but a dead religion. Only an open faith that is capable of writing its own Bible has any meaning in our world.

Answer 4

I don't know if those who wrote the bible thought the world was flat, but there are a few quotes from the bible that do not indicate a spherical world.

One eludes to the four corners of the earth. I often hear this is representative of the four cardinal directions, but the compass poles were not know until hundreds of years after the bible was written.

Another mentions how an angel was atop the highest hill and could see all of the lands of the earth. Obviously you can't see the entire earth if it is a sphere, only if it is flat.

But these bible scriptures could have been merely symbolical or metaphorical.

Btw, "circle of the earth" does not imply spherical, no more then a frisbee is a bowling ball.

Answer 5

I dont think Philip exhibited his ignorance at all, he applied logical thought to what he was taught in his history lessons. It is a good point you raised however. Maybe that verse you quoted was Christopher Columbus inspiration to go sailing around the world to prove the world was round. He was a pioneer of that time because everyone thought the world was flat and that is the reason sailors didnt venture too far for fear of falling off the edge of the earth. So I wouldnt be too harsh on Phillip, because if we are to believe what we are told in our History Books, then it stands to reason the people of Jesus's time would have thought the world was flat too. He is thinking logically not ignorantly and actually he is talking fact if you want to believe the historians. People did believe the world was flat until Christopher Columbus showed them it was not...it is in every history book I have read. But you do make a good point, except I dont believe it was ignorance on Philip's behalf. It would seem quite a logical comment to make actually..because not all people know every verse of the Bible.

Answer 6

And everyone who says to his brother, "Thou fool" shall be in jeopardy of hellfire.

The essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. Likewise, in describing the temptation of Jesus by Satan, Matthew 4:8 says, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory.” Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat. The same is true of Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...”

And for Iconoclast: Galileo was placed under house arrest and threatened with execution, not executed. The council which tried him for heresy for his second book wrote in response to Galileo:

"The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world and immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically, and theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."

In fact their opinion that the earth is immovable is scriptural:

1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”
Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”
Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”
Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”
Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”

These passages are only significant for those blithering silly people who embarass themselves as the church then did by treating the Bible as a science text as opposed to a spiritual work, and a large number of those silly people are posting on this site.

Answer 7

It says 'circle', not sphere. A circle is two-dimensional. Of course, looking at it (not rotating), it may look like a circle, but you should notice the edges are sloping.

There was also a passage about someone showing someone else all the nations of the Earth from the top of a high mountain, which is of course only possible if the Earth is flat. I can't remember the passage.

Answer 8

in the process the Renaissance Years most of the persons have been uneducated and rather some did no longer examine the Bible basically a number of the Clerical people particularly examine it. maximum of them basically recopied it without understanding what it particularly suggested, so the belief of a flat earth replaced into born have faith it or no longer Catholics weren't allowed to verify the Bible untill approximately 10 to 12 years in the past So this is comprehensible that many have faith the earth is flat.

Answer 9

It says circle, not sphere. Ancient cosmology attests to the fact that these cultures believed the earth was flat. Additionally, the Hebrew people also believed that a firmament existed. This does not mean 'sky' as we understand it. The firmament was understood as a hard dome that separated heaven and earth. They also believed that water existed just above the firmament, and when the gates of the firmament opened, rain fell. Just a few other foibles of ancient intellect in the Biblical text.

Answer 10

Before Columbus sailed to the new world, and Magellan circumnavigated the earth, everyone believed the earth was flat. So if the bible was put together before 1492, yes, they believed the earth was flat. You owe Philip an apology!