According to the peerless Ed Babinski:
So the earth was what the ancients knew and for millennia in Egypt and Mesopotamian and for centuries in ancient Israel (a much younger civilization than either Egypt or Mesopotamia) the ancients were concerned with the earth being the flat firm foundation of creation. The horizon itself was viewed as a place of mystery where heaven and earth somehow met or were nearer one another. The earliest portions of The Book Enoch (a book written in Palestine between the Old and New Testaments) contain the view that heaven and earth met at the horizon, while elsewhere in the same book it seems to be implied that heaven was held above the earth mysteriously by four angels located at the far ends of the earth in the four cardinal directions).
http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2010/10/evidence-of-belief-in-three-tier-cosmos.html?showComment=1286466419944#c7359798473592310161
Imagine you were living on the flat earth. Life can be pretty precarious. Every time there’s an earthquake, towns and cities slide off the tilted surface of the earth. Survivors must cling to trees as they watch hills and mountains roll over the edge like marbles on a checkerboard. Everything not nailed down is at risk. In fact, flat-earthlings have learned from sorry experience to work outside with safety-ropes tied to trees.
However, life on the flat-earth has its compensations. If you live on the coast, you can have boiled fish for dinner every day. You don’t have to catch it or cook it. Every time the sun sinks into the ocean, it serves up a wide variety of poached fish and steamed shellfish.
(There is, of course, the nagging question of who reignites the sopping wet sun every morning.)
Adventurous flat-earthlings often walk to the horizon to peer over the edge of the earth. On the other hand, sailors have to steer clear the waterfall at the rim of sea.
Adolescent boys have a rite of passage. They play a game of chicken by drag-racing their camels to the horizon, to see who blinks first. Unfortunately, a certain percentage of daredevils hurtle over the edge each year when their camels don’t stop in time.
Homeowners living on corner lots erect fences to keep their sheep, goats, and toddlers from falling off the edge.
It takes a certain amount of forethought and ingenuity to function on a wobbly square tile. Indeed, there are geoplanar engineers to help you navigate the challenges of life on the flat, tumultuous earth.
Steve, Nobody says that an earthquake on a flat earth is the same as tiling a pizza. The earth in the Bible is "shaken" not "tilted" like a pizza.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the Bible says the earth is founded firmly by God, it will not be moved, but it also says that God sometimes shakes the earth, even the heavens and the earth together.
So these are both great acts of God perpetrated directly by God, displays of His power.
The very fact that the earth does not move is a display of God's power to the ancient mind.
So was the fact that the same God who could keep the earth steady, also had the power to shake it at will.
That kind of language is suited to both flat earth and geocentric cosmic views, as today's Christian geocentrists also point out.
All stellar objects are also spoken of in the Bible as not only being placed above the earth after its creation but also as moving above the earth--all moved and/or directed by God, who also has the power to stop them, as in the book of Joshua, or like in Job where it says God can stop the sun, and that God directs the constellations in their movements.
Taken together with the verses about the earth's immobility, it's plainly a flat earth and/or a geocentric cosmos in the eyes of the ancients.
But if the earth is constantly spinning like a top and also rushing round the sun in a huge hyperbolic ring each year, and if earthquakes are the natural consequence of continental drift, and if the sun and constellations are not being directed, nor even moving at all through the sky, then how is God's power demonstrated? Geocentrists point out it's putting the lie to all the Bible verses about such direct demonstrations of God's power.
Instead your reply is to assume that earthquake in the Bible means the earth was tilted like a pizza?
Edward Babinski said:
ReplyDelete---
All stellar objects are also spoken of in the Bible as not only being placed above the earth after its creation but also as moving above the earth...
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Um, Relativity 101: movement is defined by a frame of reference. It is equally valid to say *NOW* that the moon is moving above the Earth. From our perspective, it is. If we were on the moon, we'd say the *EARTH* was moving. If we were outside of the solar system, we'd say *BOTH* were moving. Etc.
Since the Bible clearly has a frame of reference in mind (people on Earth), the fact that it references movement according to that frame of reference is...what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yes: EXPECTED.