Last January, Peter Enns posted a diagram of the triple-decker universe:
Many of us have seen diagrams like this. And according to Enns, that’s how Bible writers viewed the world. But let’s consider this diagram for a few minutes:
1. We’re told that Bible writers thought that heaven was literally up. However, if the firmament were truly a dome, then heaven would surround all sides of the hemispheric firmament, from the zenith to the horizon. In that case, heaven wouldn’t just be up. Heaven would be all around us. Sideways. Ahead and behind.
2. That being the case, it should also be possible to walk to heaven or sail to heaven if you went far enough. Did any ancient Near Easterners have that experience?
3. This diagram also presents the earth as a single landmass or supercontinent (like “Pangaea”), surrounded by the primeval sea. However, some ANE peoples were seafaring peoples. Surely there were some adventurous sailors who either accidentally or intentionally found out that the “known world” of the ANE was not the only land mass.
4. Likewise, if ancient Near Easterners really thought the Netherworld was under the earth, would they not have attempted to contact their departed loved ones by exploring caves?
5. In addition, notice that the primeval sea is cropped and squared off, like a picture frame. But that raises another question: if the primeval sea surrounded the earth, then what surrounded the primeval sea? What lay beyond the picture frame? Did the primeval sea float in empty space–like the final scene in Dark City?
Surely there were savvy ancient Near Easterners who would ask these questions.
if the primeval sea surrounded the earth, then what surrounded the primeval sea?
ReplyDelete"Here be dragons"
Those are all interesting questions, but don't they all presuppose the vast majority of ancient people thought things through? Or that the more savvy amongst them were able to make a great deal of headway in swaying the opinion of the general population? We can hardly do that even in the internet age.
ReplyDeleteBen
WAR_ON_ERROR SAID:
ReplyDelete"Those are all interesting questions, but don't they all presuppose the vast majority of ancient people thought things through? Or that the more savvy amongst them were able to make a great deal of headway in swaying the opinion of the general population?"
i) But you're admitting that we can't default to a cultural consensus. We can't assume what any particular individual believed. We can't make sweeping statements regarding what ancient Near Easterners generally believed.
ii) In addition, didn't you have to be a member of the educated class to be an ANE writer? Literacy was far from universal. To be able to read and write already put you among a fairly elite subset of the general population.
So is the issue what the common man thought, or what the gifted few may have thought? How much did the average Joe even think about cosmography, compared to, say, a Babylonian astronomer? And how did the views of a Babylonian astronomer compare with the views of a Babylonian priest?
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI see what you are saying, but I'm not sure if it really applies in the way you might prefer.
1) Obviously every historical claim can only work with the information we have. Any skeptic making use of that kind of information (if they are being responsible, of course), only uses it as *support* since any given individual can depart from the "apparent" consensus. A collective case (like the one Babinski lays out in chapter 5 of The Christian Delusion) from the Bible can show a preponderance of evidence that the Bible authors aren't departing from even the apparent consensus.
2) Being literate in the ancient world certainly puts you in a different tier than most, but I can't say that even the majority of that subset is necessarily going to think things through (or they might think things through in bizarre ways). That case rather seems to backfire since all we have is the "educated" who give us very primitive pictures of cosmology. Being able to write doesn't mean you are at the top of your game on every other issue *in any age.*
I don't know what can be said of the average ANE joes if even their elite aren't getting things right.
What do you think of the verses in Enoch 32:1-4 that seem to indicate that Enoch literally went to the extreme edge of the world (where the heavens stop) and saw the gates where the stars are allowed to come out? That seems to be the kind of disconfirmation you were looking for. Or no?
Ben
WAR_ON_ERROR,
ReplyDeleteWhen do you think 1 Enoch was written? The closer we get to the New Testament era, the more documentation we have for a wide diversity of views on issues like the shape of the earth. If you're going to give a late date to documents like Genesis and 1 Enoch, then you also have to take into account the other views that are extant in documents from those later generations.
An ancient consensus on issues like the shape of the earth would be relevant. But even if only a small minority of ancient sources was correct or agnostic on such an issue, the conclusion that a Biblical author was correct or agnostic might make the best sense of all of the evidence collectively. We wouldn't just look at a consensus among ancient sources. We would also take into account the evidence we have for the reliability of the Biblical authors. There's no way to avoid addressing issues like prophecy fulfillment and Jesus' resurrection. If a Biblical document is defensible without taking such factors into account, then a Christian may defend it in that manner. But if we have evidence for the Divine inspiration of a document, then critics of the document can't approach that document as if it's in the same category as any other piece of ancient literature we possess. If a scientist and a five-year-old both refer to a sunrise, we give the scientist a benefit of the doubt that we don't extend to the child. The child may think that the sun actually rises. Any Christian who thinks a Biblical author is like the scientist rather than the child would have to argue for the Divine inspiration of the Bible. He couldn't merely assert it. But Christians have argued for their view of Biblical inspiration, and we've done so many times here.
I agree that we should discuss what other ancient sources believed, the probable meaning of individual Biblical passages in their immediate context, etc. But we should also take the larger context into account, which includes evidence for the Divine inspiration of scripture.
WAR_ON_ERROR SAID:
ReplyDelete“1) Obviously every historical claim can only work with the information we have.”
Which includes the evidence that some ANE peoples were seafaring peoples. As such, they’d be in a position to know that their corner of the world wasn’t the only landmass on earth.
“Any skeptic making use of that kind of information (if they are being responsible, of course), only uses it as *support* since any given individual can depart from the "apparent" consensus.”
Why is it even reasonable to assume that official cosmologies (e.g. Enuma Elish) or sectarian cosmologies (e.g. Enoch) reflect popular belief? Wouldn’t it not be more reasonable to suspect that these reflect conflicting religious and/or political factions which vie for dominance? Each faction has its in-house version of events.
“A collective case (like the one Babinski lays out in chapter 5 of The Christian Delusion) from the Bible can show a preponderance of evidence that the Bible authors aren't departing from even the apparent consensus.”
i) Since the Bible uses mixed metaphors it is cosmography, I have no reason to think Bible writers were even attempting to present a physically realistic model of the universe.
ii) Moreover, it’s demonstrable that artifacts like Noah’s arc, the tabernacle, and Solomon’s temple symbolize the cosmos. As such, the conscious use of architectural metaphors is a two-way street.
“Being literate in the ancient world certainly puts you in a different tier than most, but I can't say that even the majority of that subset is necessarily going to think things through (or they might think things through in bizarre ways).”
i) You can’t say anything one way or the other.
ii) I’d add, though, that surviving in the ANE was quite a challenge. It had a way of weeding out the dummies.
“That case rather seems to backfire since all we have is the "educated" who give us very primitive pictures of cosmology.”
Are those “primitive” pictures? If, for instance, the purpose of the Enuma Elish is to legitimate the current regime, then that isn’t primitive. Rather, that’s politically astute. The cosmography and cosmogony are just so much window-dressing.
I’ll deal with Enoch separately.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteEnoch may not be ancient enough to exactly qualify, but it does appear to show that ancient people could take their "language of appearances" quite seriously. I just didn't have another example in mind. Maybe there are others, I don't know.
You're right though. Obviously the later we get, there could be Greek influence on NT conceptions. It seems pretty clear though (at least from Babinski's case in TCD), that the NT authors didn't go with those conceptions even if they took to other Hellenistic ideas that seemed more suitable to their sensibilities. I'm working on a post right now laying it all out.
But before that as far as the OT goes, from reading J. P. Holding's response to Paul Seely on the firmament, it seems they both agree (except for where it applies to the OT, of course): "all peoples in the ancient world thought of the sky as solid." Holding even goes on to say Seely offers, "...an impressive and informative list of citations that goes on to prove just that point: from American Indians to the neighbors of the Hebrews in the ancient East; from ancient times until the time of the Renaissance, there were almost no recorded dissenters..."
Granted both you and Steve are free to have your own position, but Genesis does seem to have more to say than superficial "sunrise" comments which might be ambiguous (like waters above the firmament, for example). It seems just about all of their cosmology concepts are at odds with real cosmology even if some of their statements might be blown off.
And I understand that if you think you have a good case for prophecy and a historical miracle, you may want to weigh the evidence on balance. But that can work both ways. And technically, God could inspire genuine prophecy and perform genuine miracles in history, but not necessarily provide an inerrant set of documents that specifically covers for cosmology. So at the very least, mainstream Christian theology would have to be modified, if a case like Babinski's is actually successful at demonstrating a preponderance of evidence that the Biblical authors embrace a false cosmology. It's not like there aren't plenty of liberal theologies that are already fine with that (even if you guys don't like those shades of gray).
Ben
WAR_ON_ERROR wrote:
ReplyDelete"And technically, God could inspire genuine prophecy and perform genuine miracles in history, but not necessarily provide an inerrant set of documents that specifically covers for cosmology. So at the very least, mainstream Christian theology would have to be modified, if a case like Babinski's is actually successful at demonstrating a preponderance of evidence that the Biblical authors embrace a false cosmology."
The question is what's likely, not what "could" be true. If you don't think the Biblical authors, Jesus, and other relevant figures taught the concept of inerrancy, then that fact would limit the significance of an argument against Biblical cosmology. On the other hand, if you think inerrancy was taught by the relevant sources, as I do, then an argument against Biblical cosmology becomes more significant, but, at the same time, evidence for the Divine inspiration of scripture becomes more relevant.
Most of my study, both in general and with regard to cosmology, has centered around the New Testament and early post-Biblical history. I don't know much about the details of the cosmology of Genesis or the views of Seely and Holding on such issues. I do know that there was a wide diversity of views on issues like the shape of the earth during the early generations of church history, including in the writings of the church fathers. The later you date Genesis, and the more you appeal to documents like 1 Enoch, the closer you're getting to that sort of diversity. It's not just that so many people in the ancient world referred to the earth as spherical or expressed agnosticism on such issues. We have specifically Christian sources doing so as early as the second century. Maybe that sort of diversity originated just after the New Testament was written. But I doubt it. When the early Christians are so uncommitted to the sort of cosmology we see in the diagram Steve referred to above, it's more difficult to argue that the New Testament should be read with that sort of cosmology in mind.
1. Regarding Paul Seely, I did a post a while back in which I quote extensively from Noel Weeks' critique of Seely's selective evidence:
ReplyDeletehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/05/gilgamishmash.html
2. In addition, Seely alleges that ancient people simply judged by appearances. Well, suppose they did.
To take one example, how would the earth appear to an ancient sailor? Would it appear to have one supercontinent? No.
Would it appear to be flat? What about ships "rising" above or "sinking" below the horizon? Wouldn't that imply the curvature of the earth?
Likewise, didn't the ancients ever climb mountains? Yes. And when they got to the summit, did they see the mountain supporting the sky? No.
I realize that this thread is focused on cosmology, but regarding the larger issue of how much ancient people "thought things through", Glenn Miller has a good article here. You can find similar material in our archives.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Gilgamishmash link. Clever title, too. I see that it at least muddies the waters a bit, but even Babinski's chapter didn't come down too hard on a unanimous consensus of ancient opinion. The argument isn't explicitly, "Everyone believed in primitive cosmology x, therefore the Bible authors did, too." As I see it, it is just one piece of an overall case that includes the ancient Hebrews' geographical/historical neighbors (what they seem to have believed in general), God himself, inspired authors, and inspired and uninspired human characters who were all singing a very similar primitive cosmology tune. The ancient consensus or even that piece of the puzzle doesn't seem to have to be that rigid to sufficiently warrant Babinski's conclusion.
I am curious though. I've been looking into a bunch of perspectives on how apologists deal with the issue (for the sake of my review of Babinski's chapter), and you appear to be the only one using a temple/metaphor model. Do you have a post laying out your case for this? I kinda see what you may be getting at, but I'd like to read it. I'd at least like to give it proper representation in my review.
Jason,
I don't think most people in most eras "think things through." It is just a non-sequiter to argue, "Bible author x can't mean y, because they would have thought things through." Steve's example of sailors knowing more about the landmasses or mountain climbers knowing about what you can or can't see is somewhat irrelevant. You just can't apply that to any given individual unless you know a lot about that individual. And even then you can still be mistaken since I'm sure there was some disagreement between sailors and mountain climbers in the ancient world. So nothing I'm saying here really depends on the ancients being more gullible than modern people.
Ben
WAR_ON_ERROR SAID:
ReplyDelete"I am curious though. I've been looking into a bunch of perspectives on how apologists deal with the issue (for the sake of my review of Babinski's chapter), and you appear to be the only one using a temple/metaphor model. Do you have a post laying out your case for this? I kinda see what you may be getting at, but I'd like to read it. I'd at least like to give it proper representation in my review."
One place to start:
G. K. Beale: The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism, chaps. 6-7.
WAR_ON_ERROR SAID:
ReplyDelete“Steve's example of sailors knowing more about the landmasses or mountain climbers knowing about what you can or can't see is somewhat irrelevant.”
Irrelevant? Hardly. The argument of Babinski et al. is that ancient writers, including Bible writers, constructed unscientific cosmographies because they didn’t know any better. They didn’t have the tools to know any better.
I’m citing examples germane to specific cosmographical details which show that ancient observers were certainly in a position to know better. Such knowledge was easily available. And would, in fact, be common knowledge depending on where you live, what you do for a living, &c.
“You just can't apply that to any given individual unless you know a lot about that individual.”
Of course, that objection cuts both ways. It undercuts Babinski’s facile claims as well.
WAR_ON_ERROR,
ReplyDeleteA person wouldn't have to have sailed or climbed a mountain himself in order to have been influenced by somebody who did. And one person who thinks through an issue can influence others who don't think as much. It's not as though the issues under consideration are highly complicated or difficult to understand. One of the points Steve has been making is that discerning problems with the cosmology in question wouldn't be difficult. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century A.D., comments that belief in a spherical earth was the common view of his day (The Natural History, 2:2). Whatever the accuracy of Pliny's assessment, I doubt that most of the people who held the view in his day had "thought it through" to reach that conclusion by themselves. Rather, they were largely influenced by others.
You write:
"It is just a non-sequiter to argue, 'Bible author x can't mean y, because they would have thought things through.'"
That's not my argument. There are other factors involved, like the ones Steve and I have referred to above.
Steve and Jason,
ReplyDeleteI'm open to whatever the ancient data happens to show. I'm trying to learn about whatever that is, and I appreciate the resources being pointed out to me that add levels of ambiguity to the debate-scape. Obviously there are means of figuring correct cosmological things out without rocket ships, and word eventually got around. That doesn't mean a lot if the issue in question is a particular set of books that don't seem to know anything about that advancement in knowledge.
WAR_ON_ERROR,
ReplyDeleteRevelation probably was the last book of the Bible to be written. It was composed at a time when knowledge of a spherical earth was widespread and Christianity had been expanding into the Gentile world and interacting with a wide variety of groups for several decades. Yet, it refers to the four corners of the earth (Revelation 7:1). The same sort of language was used by patristic Christians and is still used to this day. It would be helpful if the Biblical authors had explicitly referred to the earth as spherical and had made other such comments. But we don't need such comments in order for belief in a spherical earth or agnosticism on the part of the Biblical authors to be a reasonable option. When later Christian sources do refer to the earth as spherical or express agnosticism in an explicit way, it's often just one brief comment accompanied by dozens or hundreds or thousands of pages in which they make no explicit comments on the subject. Many post-Biblical authors don't comment on the subject at all. I wouldn't expect the Biblical authors to have much concern for explicitly referring to their awareness of a spherical earth or explicitly expressing their agnosticism on the subject. Some Biblical passages could reasonably be taken as references to something like a flat earth. But, as Steve has noted (here, for example), the Bible sometimes uses language that would more naturally suggest a sphere.
The argument you're defending does carry some weight. But there's contrary weight coming from other directions, like what Steve and I have outlined above. I don't think that extending the Bible's frequent use of poetic language to passages like Revelation 7:1 is so problematic that it outweighs the evidence for the Divine inspiration of scripture, the likelihood that the New Testament authors were familiar with other views of the shape of the earth in surrounding cultures, etc.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteYour argument might cover the NT, but ultimately you're still defending human wisdom. What does that have to do with anything? The skeptic is making a collective case for Biblical errancy (with this issue and many other issues) against the claim that *God* doesn't make mistakes in his revelations. For all we know, the NT writers *were* aware of the Greek science, and were *against* it because of what the OT said. There were plenty of opportunities in Genesis, Job, and Psalms to impress us with some divinely inspired realistic cosmology. Plenty of Christians think its there anyway.
So maybe the agnosticism claim works for some of the authors in the NT (though I doubt it, given some of the references), but that's only part of the story.
I understand the collective case thing works both ways and you guys have a lot of investment in other issues. Same goes for me on my end. I think we've hashed out the details well enough here unless you have something else to add.
Ben
WAR_ON_ERROR,
ReplyDeleteI don't know what your "human wisdom" comment is about. If you're asking why I would mention the beliefs of cultures outside of Israel, I explained why in my last post.
The concept that God could "impress us with some divinely inspired realistic cosmology", while true to some extent, should be qualified. Since there were multiple lines of evidence for a spherical earth available in antiquity, references to a spherical earth wouldn't do much to create an impression of "Divine inspiration". Additionally, since there are extant records of people discerning the earth's spherical nature even in the B.C. era, critics would likely yet again raise the charge of Biblical borrowing from pagan cultures. How many atheists or other critics would be "impressed" and think in terms of "Divine inspiration"? They'd probably argue for naturalistic means of discerning the earth's shape or accuse the Biblical authors of borrowing from paganism, if not both.
The Biblical view of God involves a holy sovereign who selectively reveals Himself however much is needed to accomplish His ends. He isn't trying to convince everybody or "impress" maximally. The same God who provides evidence and redeems His people also judges other people and leaves them with the consequences of their sin. Even most liberal scholars acknowledge that the apostle Paul thought he saw the risen Christ, yet nowhere in his writings does Paul try to "impress" his audiences with detailed descriptions of what he experienced. What he did say was sufficient for his purposes. In our everyday lives, we often give less evidence for something than we could, because we don't think more is needed. More evidence would be beneficial in some way, but we don't provide it for other reasons (to save time, because we don't think the potential recipients would be open to it, etc.).
(continued below)
(continued from above)
ReplyDeleteCosmological issues are sometimes mentioned in the Bible, but they aren't given much attention. They're largely just background material, often referred to vaguely and with a lot of poetic language. When the Biblical authors are trying to persuade people of Divine inspiration, they focus on other categories, like prophecy fulfillment and eyewitness testimony to other miracles that would be recognizable as such (as miracles) to both ancient and modern audiences. Referring to later discoveries about nature would be impressive to later audiences. It would add to the evidence for the Divine inspiration of scripture. But since other lines of evidence exist, you would have to argue that there should be more. Given God's sovereignty (Acts 17:26-27), His ability to persuade apart from something like historical or scientific evidence, and the absurd lengths to which critics have to go in order to dismiss what they've already been given, I don't think you can make a convincing case. What else should the Bible have referred to in advance of human discovery? You have to draw a line somewhere, and I don't know how you can argue that it should have been drawn somewhere other than where it was. There would be benefits to adding something like an explicit Biblical reference to a spherical earth, but there would be tradeoffs involved. You might be interested in an article I wrote here, which addresses this issue of tradeoffs in a different context, Biblical prophecy.
I've said that some Biblical passages do seem to have a false cosmology in mind if you isolate them from the larger context, which I consider to be favorable to Biblical inerrancy. I don't deny that your argument has some value. But you're overestimating it. I've discussed evidence for a spherical earth that would have been available in antiquity, Biblical passages that are more suggestive of a spherical earth, and the early church's openness to cosmological views other than the one in the diagram above (including Christians who lived just after the apostolic era). I'm not just appealing to evidence for the Bible's inspiration. There's a lot of textual and contextual evidence against the diagram at the beginning of this thread, even apart from a consideration of the inspiration of scripture.
Jason,
ReplyDeleteI think that if we go much further on this, we'll just end up having to debate everything under the sun. I understand your perspective in regards to how you frame the cosmological aspects that the books of the Bible touch on. I have some disagreements, but not quite worth getting into here and now.
ttyl,
Ben