The Shape of the EarthDisregarding the dome, 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.
That's a fallacious inference for two reasons:
i) Human distance acuity is limited.
ii) It fails to consider how the prooftext is introduced:
I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me (Dan 4:5).
But dreamscapes are notoriously surreal. Because dreams are imaginary, they aren't bound by what's physically realistic or possible.
I always wondered if the phrase "face of the earth/land" in the KJV, ESV and other translations implies the Hebrews thought the earth was round[ish].
ReplyDelete'Visible to the earth's farthest bounds' is clear hyperbolic language as soon as I saw it.
ReplyDeleteThese are the kind of interpretors who are like (as Michael Heiser put it) Drax the Destroyer - totally incapable of metaphor.
Like the atheist commentor who refused to allow Jesus to be speaking metaphorically about 'stars falling to earth' in the end times, mocking it as ridiculous when even one star would totally consume the earth.
I'm waiting for someone to argue that Mark 1:5 literally means that ALL the rocks, stone, buildings etc of Judea and Jerusalem came flying over to John the Baptist.