4 ms·

The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. That's not a nitpick either. They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. Regardless. Even if you were dumbly granted

The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. That's not a nitpick either. They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. Regardless. Even if you were dumbly granted that the Earth was a flat disk, how would that have any barring on the rest of the Bible's arguments? Plato was right about a lot of things, but does that mean he was also right about the elemental nature of the universe? (Everything being created from the base elements of fire, earth, wind and water) Your argument is bad even if it were correct.

meepmorp 12y ago
> The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. The earth is an oblate spheroid, not a sphere.
- grkvlt 12y ago
  > The earth is an oblate spheroid To a first order approximation, such as would be suitable for a discussion on an Internet forum, the earth is basically a sphere...
thaumasiotes 12y ago
> They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. What "they" are you talking about? Europeans haven't thought the earth was flat since the beginning of recorded history. It seems reasonably safe to extend that viewpoint to Mediterraneans.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. // Evidence? FWIW the word here used for "circle" (in the ancient Hebrew, chuwg, [1]) is that used for the arch or vault [a bi-concave ceiling] of the skies; they'd need to also consider the skies to be a disc for it to make sense that it should be interpreted as disc in the Isaiah 40:22 [2] reference. I think the most obstructive interpretation would still need to be something like "dome" - definitely not flat. So, why not a flat circle? Well there are other words used for that exact thing, as in 2 Chronicles 4 / or 1 Kings 7:23 [3]: >Now [Solomon] made the sea of cast metal [of the altar] ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. // This is the word for the plane shape "circle" ('agol) that matches the brim of a cup (or giant bowl-shaped altar!). Note that the figures leaves the brim at 5 - 30/2pi ~= a hands breadth under some interpretations, just as Kings 7:26 suggests. But that verse 7:26 also says that the brim was like that of a lily, not a hands-breadth at the brim but fine and dainty ... and here in lies a very interesting piece of gematria [use of letters for numbers] associated with the Kings passage [4] which in short form encodes in a variant word form qava (=111) for qav (=106) in the oldest Hebrew version of the passage [that in Kings] is the ratio 111/106; the implication being that the true figures should be 30/10 x 111/106 which gives an excellent approximation to pi. [1] http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H2329&t=NIV http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Stro... [2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+40%3A22&version=NIV;NASB;MSG http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+40%3A22&vers... [3] http://biblehub.com/niv/2_chronicles/4.htm http://biblehub.com/niv/2_chronicles/4.htm or http://biblehub.com/1_kings/7-23.htm http://biblehub.com/1_kings/7-23.htm [4] http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/08/biblical-and-gematria/ http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/08/biblical-and-gema...

meepmorp 12y ago

> The Earth is a sphere, not a circle. The earth is an oblate spheroid, not a sphere.

grkvlt 12y ago
> The earth is an oblate spheroid To a first order approximation, such as would be suitable for a discussion on an Internet forum, the earth is basically a sphere...

thaumasiotes 12y ago

> They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. What "they" are you talking about? Europeans haven't thought the earth was flat since the beginning of recorded history. It seems reasonably safe to extend that viewpoint to Mediterraneans.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>They thought the Earth was a flat disk back then. // Evidence? FWIW the word here used for "circle" (in the ancient Hebrew, chuwg, [1]) is that used for the arch or vault [a bi-concave ceiling] of the skies; they'd need to also consider the skies to be a disc for it to make sense that it should be interpreted as disc in the Isaiah 40:22 [2] reference. I think the most obstructive interpretation would still need to be something like "dome" - definitely not flat. So, why not a flat circle? Well there are other words used for that exact thing, as in 2 Chronicles 4 / or 1 Kings 7:23 [3]: >Now [Solomon] made the sea of cast metal [of the altar] ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference. // This is the word for the plane shape "circle" ('agol) that matches the brim of a cup (or giant bowl-shaped altar!). Note that the figures leaves the brim at 5 - 30/2pi ~= a hands breadth under some interpretations, just as Kings 7:26 suggests. But that verse 7:26 also says that the brim was like that of a lily, not a hands-breadth at the brim but fine and dainty ... and here in lies a very interesting piece of gematria [use of letters for numbers] associated with the Kings passage [4] which in short form encodes in a variant word form qava (=111) for qav (=106) in the oldest Hebrew version of the passage [that in Kings] is the ratio 111/106; the implication being that the true figures should be 30/10 x 111/106 which gives an excellent approximation to pi. [1] http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H2329&t=NIV http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Stro... [2] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+40%3A22&version=NIV;NASB;MSG http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+40%3A22&vers... [3] http://biblehub.com/niv/2_chronicles/4.htm http://biblehub.com/niv/2_chronicles/4.htm or http://biblehub.com/1_kings/7-23.htm http://biblehub.com/1_kings/7-23.htm [4] http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/08/biblical-and-gematria/ http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/08/biblical-and-gema...