Re: flat earth

Arthur V. Chadwick (chadwicka@swac.edu)
Mon, 21 Aug 1995 16:35:00 -0700

>I've been wondering something about the supposedly flat earth cosmology of
>the old testament. Do we have hard extra-biblical evidence that the Jews
>really believed in such a cosmology, or rather, does the evidence for it
>merely come from wooden interpretations of the figures of speech used in the
>Bible itself?

I discussed this with an archeologist a few years back. He assured me that
the imagery of a flat earth was imposed on scripture by a nineteenth century
scholar who espoused the view that the ancients can't have known anything so
sophisticated as the nature of the earth. It was, according to my friend,
he that popularized the dome and pillar model of the earth, etc. that had
been a feature of ancient extrabiblical mythology. I will try to
substantiate this though.
Art
WWW: http//chadwicka.swac.edu/chadwick.html