Do Scriptures such as Isaiah 40:22 really teach a flat earth?
Bible doubters, even ones who claim to be Christians, often make the accusation that the Bible of teaches a flat Earth. They do this in order to undermine the authority of the Scriptures concerning origins and thereby insert a wedge of doubt by which they can introduce millions of years of microbes-to-man evolution into the Scriptures. In other words, they use a wedge of doubt to subvert Biblical authority and supplant it with the authority of modern man. In the end, it really does come down to what we hold as our ultimate authority: God’s revealed Word or the word of fallible, finite men who weren’t there and suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.
For example, Bible doubters often cite Isaiah 40:22 as proof of a flat earth. The passage reads:
“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth…”
Bible doubters immediately seize upon the word “circle,” noting that a circle is a flat 2-dimensional shape and certainly not a 3-dimensional sphere. Of course, their entire analysis is based on a modern understanding of the word circle. When interpreting the Bible, it is important to note the context of the passage as it was originally intended to be understood.
For example, James Patrick Holding of Tecktonics.org comments on the word rendered “circle” here in this passage:
“Apologists dealing with this issue often cite Isaiah 40:22 with the explanation that Hebrew, having no specific word for sphere, may here indicate a spherical earth. Of course we may also read into the text a flat circle, as Seely does. Interestingly, Seely attempts to confirm his own interpretation by making an error exactly like that of a skeptic I once confronted on this issue:
“If Isaiah had intended to speak of the earth as a globe, he would probably have used the word he used in 22:18 (dur), meaning “ball”.”
Dur, however, no-more indicates sphericity than the word used in Isaiah 40:22, for it is used by Isaiah elsewhere thus (Isaiah 29:3):
‘And I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee.’
Obviously, unless they were professional gymnasts as well as tacticians, the soldiers could not camp in the shape of a sphere around the city! Based on this, this word appears to be making a statement about a circular pattern rather than specifying a given shape.
Seely offers two citations in support of a ‘flat earth’ view that we need not spend much time on: Daniel 4:10, 11 and 20, and Job 37:3. The Daniel passage is actually a statement by a pagan king, which doesn’t mean that the Bible endorses that view. And it is a vision, and is therefore not intended to be a picture of reality any more than Pharaoh’s dream of cannibalistic cows and even cannibalistic ears of wheat (Genesis 41). And Job 37:3 hardly requires a flat-earth reading — it merely states that lightning occurs all over the earth. Even if it did teach a flat-earth reading, it would prove only that Elihu believed such a thing — not everything reported in the Bible is endorsed in the Bible.
As is standard to note in such cases, the statements of characters in the Bible are not automatically granted inerrancy unless the speaker is either God or indicated to be inspired of God.”
One website tries to make its case for the Bible teaching a flat earth by making the following statement and then quoting commentaries by liberal teologians. [We remind our readers as always that neither the notes in your Bible nor commentaries upon the Bible are inspired, only the Bible itself is inspired]:
“Ancient Israel imagined the earth to be a flat disk (Isa 42.5) resting on a foundation or pillars (Job 9.6). It is surrounded by the ocean (Pss 24.2; 136.6). It has four corners (Isa 11.12; Ezek 7.2; job 37.3; 38.13) and an edge (Isa 24.36) or ends (Isa 40.8; Job 28.4; Ps 48.11; Jer 6.22; 25.32). It also has a center or navel (Ezek 38.12). Except for the implication that Jerusalem is the earth’s center, ancient Israel’s view of the world did not differ from that of other ancient Near Eastern peoples.”
Of course, in order to make the Bible appear to support a flat earth, Bible doubters must insist that we interpret it in a woodenly literal fashion without consideration of allegory, figure of speech or the passage’s reference frame. For example, weathermen will tell you that the sunrise and sunset will occur at such-and-such time. This does not mean our meteorologists believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but rather indicates that they using the reference frame of the earth for making their observations.
Take for example, Isaiah 42:5 says:
“Thus says God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which comes out of it; he that gives breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk in it:”
The bone of contention is that spreading out the earth allegedly implies a flat earth, but this is reading too much into the text. Do we say that geologists who affirm sea floor spreading must also affirm a flat earth? No, because use of the term “spreading” does not necessarily imply flatness. This is a classic non sequitur; the conclusion does not follow the proposed evidence. This is also a classic example of trying to find prooftexts for a preconceived notion.
What about Job 9:6, which speaks of a God “Which shaketh the earth out of her place and the pillars thereof tremble.” This verse clearly describes an earthquake. Does this mean that the Bible affirms literally pillars of the earth? Not really. For example, in Job 26:11, we read a similar passage, this time stating “The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof.” The pillars were astonished at his reproof? Clearly we’re dealing with a figure of speech here. The image of the pillars of earth [or heaven, for that matter] trembling are simply a useful image for depicting the instability of an earthquake. Only a woodenly literal interpretation would have it otherwise.
Psalm 24:1-2 says:
“The earth is the LORD’S and the fulness thereof the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods”
Far from saying that the earth is surrounded by the seas, neither this verse nor Psalm 136:6 ["To him that stretched out the earth above the waters for his mercy endureth for ever"] state rather that the earth rests above the waters or floods, which is true enough from a reference frame of someone looking at islands and continents jutting out of the sea. We do caution the reader that the Psalms contain a lot of poetic language, a fact our critics should be well aware of; nevertheless it is intellectually painful to relate how often Bible doubters quote the Psalms and insist that they be interpreted in a woodenly literal fashion in order to make their “case.”
Likewise, when the Bible refers to the ends of the Earth or corners of the world, this is a figure of speech derived from the use of maps. We say today that we intend to take the Gospel message to the ends of the earth, but we do not infer a flat earth; likewise, we refer to the four corners of the globe but we never imagine it to be flat any more than we imagine that a standard map of USAmerica requires a country devoid of the Rockies, Cascades and the Appalachians.
The final reference from our quote is misleading. The verse can be rendered the “navel of the land” or “center of the land” [translations rendering the word "land" as "world" or "earth" make nonsense of a figure of speech that was intended to denote Jerusalem, which is situated in the midst of the land of Israel. This is simply a matter of correct context.
As we've seen [and we could easily demonstrate this with other verses commonly used by Bible doubters as well], in every case our critics have either misunderstood the context of the passage or tried to force a woodenly literal interpretation on the text, refusing to consider either normal figures of speech or the frame of reference.
Again, we must ask ourselves why they do this, especially those who do so in the name of Christendom? The answer is simple: they believe that science has proven an old earth and/or microbes-to-man evolution and thus they use a wedge of doubt, the erroneous claim taht the Bible teaches a flat earth, to subvert Biblical authority and supplant it with the authority of modern man. The irony for the compromising Christians is that they accept the ultimate authority of the modern scientific consensus inconsistently and arbitrarily, for the very scientific consensus which affirms millions of years of microbes-to-man evolution, having chained itself to pure naturalism, equally denies he physical bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the existence of the soul and the reality of a personal God who is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him – things they would unequivocably affirm as true Christians. Jesus truly spoke when he said in John 3:12, “If I tell you of earthly things and you believe not, how shall you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” In other words, if we deny the earthly claims of Scripture [the Creation, Fall, world-covering Fall and dispersal at Babel, and other historical claims of the Bible], how can we believe the heavenly things it asserts [like the resurrection, salvation and eternal rewards].
I do think that many of these compromising Christians are well-meaning; they wish to make the Bible more palatable to an unbelieving world. Yet in attempting to make the Bible more scientifically palatable, they are undermining its very authority and supplanting the ultimate authority of Scripture for the authority of the current scientific consensus. This is not only inconsistent and arbitrary, as noted, it is also ultimately self-defeating. How do we defend a thing by undermining it?
Again, in the end, it really does come down to what we hold as our ultimate authority: God’s revealed Word or the word of fallible, finite men who weren’t there and suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.
Rev Tony Breeden
For those interested in further information apologetics regarding this subject, I also recommend the article, Does the Bible teach that the earth is flat?, available from Tekton Education and Apologetics Ministry at the following link:
http://www.tektonics.org/af/earthshape.html
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Hey man, how have you been lately?
I get your frustration about critics being woodenly literal in poetic passages in Psalms. Since assigning genre is something we do with our fallible mental faculties as we interpret Scripture, determining whether a passage is poetic or not is a human distinction rather than a Divinely-revealed fact. I wonder if you would be willing to acknowledge that there’s reasonable debate concerning the genre of Genesis 1. Its repetition, its language, and unique style have led even conservative evangelical scholars to conclude that the chapter may not be a literal, historic explanation of nature. You make that conclusion here about Psalms and Job, and I’m sure you understand that many Old-Earth creationists and ID/TE proponents apply the very same decision-making process to conclude that the days of Genesis and even the sequence and specifics were not meant to be interpreted in a wooden, literalistic way. If you get too literal, you run into problems with Gen. 2, so there’s got to be some interpreting which once again uses our brains and is therefore subject to the same charge of employing “man’s wisdom”. It’s inescapable. It’s not God’s word against man’s word, it’s man’s interpretation of God’s word against man’s interpretation of scientific data. When the scientific data achieves a certain burden of proof (which varies for different individuals), then the effort goes to interpreting the Bible and seeing if it can reconcile to the data.
Some passages do seem to suggest, at least at first glance, an ancient and unscientific cosmology. You are trying to debate that conclusion here, but it would seem that your reason for doing so is that you have become convinced that the earth is a spheroid and that it revolves around the sun. You are likely convinced of that model. If one only used Scripture, such a conclusion would never be reached. Calvin (hardly a theological liberal) and many others have come to accept that the ancient cosmology of the writers’ times are reflected in certain parts of the Bible (accommodation). They apparently do not feel the need to try to explain this away or reinterpret things.
Some Early Church figures accepted a round earth but debated the solid firmament. As you know, there are many verses which describe a firmament in a way which seems incompatible with modern conclusions of the sky and atmosphere. There was an old argument about it which also put God’s word against man’s. I know that the popular Augustine quote bugs you, so I won’t bother repeating it, but that’s the kind of situation he was addressing as that debate played out in his time. Christians were claiming that the sky was solid when observers were beginning to conclude that it wasn’t. Observation won, and reinterpretation began. The argument was a waste of time that distracted from and even discredited the sharing of the Gospel. Now solid-firmamentists are more rare than flat-earthists, and even the geocentrists have accepted the existence of antipodes against Augustine’s denial. There comes a point where you and all the other round-earth, heliocentrists become convinced by observation, and then reread scripture and find a way to reconcile. If that were not so, you wouldn’t bother with this long post and would just accept the simpler interpretation.
I don’t see a vastly different approach among Young-Earth and Old-Earth creationists, just a difference in degrees and how the methodology is described. The conclusions are obviously different, but I think that’s due to how you classify the genre of Genesis 1 and the conclusion that when Paul said “death” he meant physical death of not only humans but animals and therefore ruled out the possibility that trilobites and dinosaurs lived and died long before humans sinned. YEC is based on these interpretations. Some people find the evidence against them from geology and cosmology to be convincing, so they reexamine those texts and employ the same type of interpretation that you have done to the flat-earth sections.
Modsynth,
We’re not assigning genre, so much as recognizing it.
You claim that “It’s not God’s word against man’s word, it’s man’s interpretation of God’s word against man’s interpretation of scientific data,” but you’re only partially correct. It’s which word we hold as our ultimate authority. I have no problem with man’s interpretation of scientific data if he hold the supernatural revealtion of Scripture as his ultimate authority, but I do object when someone takes man’s naturalistic interpretation of scientific data and then says we need to re-interpret supernatural revelatiuon accordingly.
-revfTony
Well, lots of people “recognize” the genre as poetic. They’ve done so using internal evidence alone long before geology, Darwin, and modern discoveries of Ancient Near Eastern parallels. Whether you “recognize” or “classify/assign”, there’s a human element to the effort and both sides need to come to terms with that simple and inescapable reality.
modsynth,
This is an interesting assertion you make, but I am not sure it is actually borne out by history. If Genesis has been deemed poetic based on iternal evidence, why do we have statements from opponents of Biblical creationism who admit otherwise:
Your response also betrays the fact that you do not believe that the Holy Spirit has any hand in guiding people into all truth John 16:13, for you view interpretation as a purely human endeavor; furthermore, you seem to suppose that there are not things that are spiritually discerned [1 Cor. 2:14], so that all interpretation is equal. These are great whopping flaws in your thinking and are evidence that you have not yet fully surrendered your thinking to Christ.
-revTony
I said “human element” and made no suggestion that the Spirit doesn’t guide or inform us. I do believe we should ask for wisdom from God and let the Spirit of Truth guide us.
We read in human languages, so there’s always something going on in the physical world in our physical brains to some degree, right? I really don’t see how you can continue to deny this and make it seem as though God is on your side and you are merely “recognizing” plain facts and not using some context and interpretation with your physical brain.
I still want to know how you can apply your methodology and accept an orbiting earth and a gaseous atmosphere. If you consistently use a straight-forward interpretation as voiced by the quote you pasted, you should also believe that the earth cannot move, the firmament is solid, stars are small enough to fall to earth, and so on. My point is that you eventually accept some of “man’s naturalistic interpretation(s)” when given enough evidence and then reexamine the text. This is exactly what you’ve done in this blog post.
On the other thing, you know Augustine and others believed creation was instantaneous, not spread over 6 days. I’m not saying they are right or wrong, merely that they interpreted it differently over a millennium before the scientific revolution.
modsynth,
Sadly, your accomodationist view does negate the possibility of the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the writing and later interpretation of the Scriptures. The accomodationist view comes with the inherent suggestion that God was simply not omnipotent or maniscient enough to reveal His Word in a manner that would be comprehensible to humans and therefore, in order to accomodate pre-scientific ignorance, was forced to deliver fictional histories to relate truth. In short, the accomodationist view accuses God of a willful lie and casts doubt on His power and wisdom. Likewise, the accomodationist view denies the Biblical revelation of 2 Peter 1:21, for you imply that some Scripture did indeed come by the will of man in that the will of man imposed his untrue and unscientific cosmology upon the revealtion of God and God was powerless to prevent it!
I find it noteworthy that you believe you ought to pray for wisdom when studying the Scriptures. In this, I applaud you, though I note your inconsistency when it comes to the conclusions of men of science who suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. The Scriptures affirm that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. This is an important concept to keep in mind when accepting the conclusions of modern science. While the foundational disciplines of science were laid down by Bible-affirming men who wanted to “think God’s thoughts after Him,” the present consensus of science is predominantly agnostic and atheist and they seek to “prevent a Divine foot from entering the door.” As noted elsewhere, the modern consensus of science has chained itself to pure naturalism, which of necessity excludes the consideration of the supernatural; if God is excluded, how can these conclusions be said to have their beginning in the fear of the Lord? Let me put it another way: when men of science deny the efficacy of prayer, the possibility of miracles, the notion that men rise from the dead, or that virgins conceive by the Holy Ghost, do you accept the modern consensus of science? Not if you are an authentic Christian! Instead you judge the conclusions of fallible men by the infallible rule of Scripture. By accepting the conclusions of antisupernaturalistic science where they concern origins, you are being arbitrary and inconsistent.
I should also note that your points concerning language exclude the fact that men can recognize metaphor from experience. Likewise you points concerning stars small enough to fall to earth, the fixity of the planet, etc, all ignore my points that a literal [historical/grammatical] interpretation does not require a woodenly literal interpretation. To underscore my point, a plainsense literal interpretation of Scripture does not require wooden literalism.
Having said that, I need to make a comment on something you seem not to comprehend. You stated that I “eventually accept some of “man’s naturalistic interpretation(s)” when given enough evidence and then reexamine the text.” You’re comparing apples to oranges. What I object to is pure naturalism not naturalism tempered by supernatural revelation. The uniformitarian’s millions of years and the evolutionist’s goo-to-you biology are the inevitable result of science which plays by an arbitrary set of rules that refuses to consider supernatural agency [creation]. It is utter nonsense to suggest that God created by a process which was imagined to make Him entirely unnecessary!
And only the Biblical Creationist has a consistently rational basis for the uniformity we find in nature. Dr. Jason Lisle, author of The Ultimate Proof of Creation, has given this line of reasoning quite a bit of thought in a post called Evolution: The Anti-Science:
So the Biblical Creationists has a rational basis for trusting in the uniformity of nature and past experience. The evolutionist has no rational basis for the uniformity we find in nature. If the universe is the result of chance, random events, we have no way to know whether the uniformity we have experienced extends to the entire universe or will continue in the future; furthermore, if our brains are the result of chance, chemical processes, we have no way to know whether we can trust our experiences. Thus, Lisle correctly concludes:
And as for theistic evolutionists, well, the inconsistencies we’ve mentioned already are their ultimate downfall:
In short, Biblical creationists affirm the uniformity of nature and thus methodological naturalism, except where supernatural revelation indicates otherwise, precisely because the Bible claims we should expect the uniform processes of nature to rule excpt where supernatural agency or any other nonuniformity [such as the mechanisms behind Noah's Flood] was involved, as revealed in Scripture. Our worldview is consistent with the observation that there are things that exist outside the natural material world [such as laws of logic, the uniformity of natural law and morality] so that we should reject any insistence on pure naturalism, and is also consistent with a God who upholds the uniformity of nature, yet rewards those who diligently seek Him [so that He acts personally] and has revealed Himself in His Son, Scripture and, to a lesser extent Nature.
Let me qualify that latter statement for you to further demonstrate how you arbitrarily accept the ultimate authority of science in some matters and Scripture over science in others. If you only have Nature to tell you about God, you come to some obvious conclusions: He has used death, mutation, pain and suffering to bring about His Will; the unexplainable existence of pain and suffering makes Him a somewhat detached possibly ogrish deity; He cares more about the Big Picture than the little details or the process in that He created man via microbes-to-man evolution. Yet most Christians would object to these observations by appealing to supernatural revelation over natural revelation. We would note that God originally created the world perfect but that death, pain and suffering entered the world by man’s sin and that Nature reveals the glory, power and existence of God but it no longer reveals His nature and character as the original state [and promised future state] of creation does; that God is good and a rewarder them that diligently seek Him; and that He cares enough about the small details of creation to note the number of our hairs and when each sparrow falls. In doing this, we appeal to the superior [ultimate] revelation of Scripture over any philosophy or idea of fallible man.
Since you bring up Augustine as a justification for interpreting the days of Genesis in a non-literal fashion, I will note that Augustine believed creation in 6 days was a slap in the face of God’s omnipotence, so he figured by his mundane human “omniscience” that God must’ve done it instantaneously. In fact, he concluded falsely, God didn’t speak anything into existence either; why would God deign to do that?
Augustine made a very human error, assuming that because God is all-powerful that He wouldn’t need to take six days or that He wouldn’t need to create by divine fiat; therefore He didn’t, right? No. Augustine assumed that because He didn’t need to He wouldn’t choose to. This ignores the special revelation that we have [the Bible] that states that He did in fact create in 6 literal days, underscored by the 4th commandment [based upon the Creation Week].
I like what Martin Luther said on the matter:
Now, you should know that the useage of the word yom [day] as used in Genesis 1 and 2 is consistent with a literal day. Outside of Genesis 1, any time yom is used with the terms evening or morning or night or a number, it means an ordinary day. In Genesis 1, it’s overkill. God’s intended meaning is made quite clear. Modern old-earthers know this, but they choose to try to make it say something otherwise… why? Well, NOT for the same reasons Augustine thought they weren’t ordinary days.
You’re again comparing apples to oranges, but let me walk you through it anyway.
Augustine had notions of omnipotence that he couldn’t square with the text. He thought God should’ve done things instantaneously and without effort [forgetting God could choose to do so even if He was capable of doing so without all the fuss]. So he imposed his extrabiblical ideas of omnipotence on the text and allegorized the Creation Week.
Likewise, evolutionists and old earth proponents have notions of the age of the universe that they can’t square with the text. They think scientists who try to explain the world as if God did not exist and special revelation had to square with their feeble atheistic graspings are right about the age of the earth. So they have tried to impose this extrabiblical timescale on the text and allegorize the Creation week.
Both Augustine and old earthers have the same problem: They’ve found themselves echoing the Serpent’s question: “Did God really say?”
I like how Jonathan Sarfati sums up the issue:
I’m sorry, sir, but there can only be one orthodox position. It could not come from Augustine or anyone else who strays from the traditional reading of the text to allegorize it to suit their extraBiblical expectations.
Think about it,
revTony
“They do this in order to undermine the authority of the Scriptures concerning origins and thereby insert a wedge of doubt. . .”
Isn’t this what they call “ad hominem,” implying illegitimate motives to people just because you disagree with their opinion.
Lindberg,
No, it’s not an ad hominem if I am correctly describing their motives. Have you examined your own?
-Sirius Knott
It is an ad hominem because their motives are irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of any statement they may make
My principal motive is to defend science, since it appears to me that without science, we are unlikely to solve many of the problems facing us. I suppose another is that seeing untruths promoted so boldly disturbs my sense of morality – particularly when promoted by those who set themselves up as paragons of morality.
It’s interesting to see that you have the chutzpah to judge the motives of millions of people, most of whom you don’t even know.
Lindberg,
Your principle motive is to defend science, but what you’re actually defending is science chained to pure naturalism. The founders of modern science, men like Kepler, Newton, mendel and Boyle, had a different view: they were “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” Today’s scientists, having arbitrarily chained themselves to pure naturalism do not consider the supernatural as a possibility. This means that in cases where supernatural agency was actually responsible [or where supernatural revealtion would serve as a witness that events transpired differently than all-natural uniformitarian theories woulkd insist], scientists end up concocting all-natural Just-so stories to account for things according to methodological naturalism. This further means that science is no longer the search for truth so much as the search for all-natural answers which may or may not be true and are most certainly false where supernatural agency was actually responsible or where uniformitarian assumptions should have been corrected by supernatural revelation.
It should be noted that my principle motive is to defend both the ultimate authority of the Bible and true science. If I am promoting an untruth, you have yet to prove thus.
It should also be noted that, in context, I impugned the motives of those who claim to be Christians yet undermine the Bible’s ultimate authority in order to supplant it with man’s authority. In doing so, I’m simply restating the Bible’s position on such men in modern terms.
-SK
It’s not supplanting the bible’s (or God’s) authority with man’s authority. It’s supplanting (ancient) man’s authority with more modern man’s authority.
Havok,
You’re simply begging the question of whether God exists. Nothing more.
revTony
Actually Tony, I’m not begging the question of God’s existence. You’re assuming, without adequate justification, the divine providence of the Christian bible.
Again, Havok, fulfilled prophecy and the resurrection itself divinely authenticate the Word of God.
Since Easter is coming up, why don’t you take a look at the Resurrection? Maybe then you’d have more than a passing understanding of what it is you so vehemently object to.