The firmament of Genesis 1 assumes flat earth

What I want to know is -
Why do not the oceans and seas drain off over the edges of our flat Earth?
I saw this is a Sinbad movie where Sinbad's ship had to sail past the edge of the
world to get to another realm where the goddess of bad things dwelt.
The waters were pouring out over the edge into space.

So what keeps the oceans and seas "together" on a flat Earth?

Looking down from the Hubble telescope towards Earth we see the truth
of it all ...

Deadworm said:

Jesus: "Why do I never hear people mention the flat earth assumption of Genesis 1?"

For the same reason that you never hear people mention the creation of the earth's vegetation on the 3rd day before the creation of the sun on the 4th day.(see Genesis 1:11-16)!

Don't you know that photos of the Earth as a round ball are CGI fakes and that the Apollo moon landing was faked in a New Mexico hangar? But hey, if you doubt the biblical flat earth model, just sign up for the exiting cruise ships that take tourists to the Earth's edge, where you can see the mother of all water falls, as the ocean plunges into the abyss of outer space.

Isaiah needs to bring his creation rhetoric in line with Genesis 1:
"It is He who sits above the circle of the earth (Isaiah 30:22)." The Hebrew word translated "circle" also means "ball." Can you say "progressive revelation?

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These are 2 long debunked challenges to the book of Genesis. The two articles below might be helpful. Tim Keller is a proponent of the first, and Denis Lamoureux the other. Both of these guys have been harmful to the Church IMO.


Plant Creation Contradiction in Genesis?


Does Genesis teach solid-dome cosmology?

Devin P said:

Absolutely. If we believe we're on a ball, and that there's infinite solar systems and galaxies and all of that

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We know all the other heavenly bodies are 'balls' why would we assume ours is flat? What does earth being a 'ball' have bearing on an infinite universe?

Devin P said:

and that statistically there's inevitably another planet with life, and that evolution exists, then pretty soon God seems like the less likely scenario.

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This does not logically follow at all. If the earth is a 'ball' like all the other balls out there, it shows there is a Designer.

Devin P said:

Darwinian evolution has never been proven,

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True.

Devin P said:

neither has space travel

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Not true. My uncle still has an invention of his design which remains on the surface of the moon to this day.

Devin P said:

when you look into nasa and their operations and experiments and technological research and problems they dealt with after supposedly going to the moon.

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We did go to the moon several times. We also have hundreds of satellites in orbit. I've seen them, their comms feeds and the information from them.

Devin P said:

There's too many inconsistencies, and coincidences for it to be true.

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It is true. The earth is a 'ball' sphere etc. If it were not true, I would not be able to fire a missile from 150 kilometers from a rocket launcher to a target and achieve effects. All of our mapping both military and civilian and aviation are based on ellipsoid. If the earth were truly flat with a dome none of my artillery, rockets and missiles would reach their intended target. A flight from Lisbon would never make it to Tokyo. You in effect are telling me, someone who has used and actually saw satellite technology over a 25 year period was fooled by some conspiracy. That's quite a stretch. You would have to say I'm part of this vast satellite conspiracy.

Ellipsoid - Wikipedia

Reference ellipsoid - Wikipedia

Devin P said:

I, among many others believe this is part of the "great delusion" God was going to send on us before the end times.

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Well no it is not. Too many things you take for granted like satellite radio, TV, commercial airline flights etc. are based on the earth mapped as an ellipsoid.

Now I find it interesting that one of the New Atheist memes include Christians who promote a flat earth. What's interesting is the atheist skeptic sites all quote the same verses as the flat earth Christians do. Hmm, very interesting.

The grand deception is some are falling for atheist flat earth memes or we have atheists who pose as Christians promoting flat earth.

jesus316 said:

The firmament of Genesis 1 describes a flat earth having a bowl shaped firmament resting on it, and holding up water above. The firmament creates a safe livable zone of air for us to live in. The sun, moon, and stars are inside.

Why do I never hear people mention the flat earth assumption of Genesis 1?

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That's merely a way to imagine one possible configuration, out of very many that would fit the words.

Just one of dozens.

But!....this particular imagined version is popular and lately widely shown in graphics because it's very useful for anti-Christians.

They use it to try to make belief look impossibly unrealistic to those who might otherwise seek to learn about God and Christ.

Waggles said:

What I want to know is -
Why do not the oceans and seas drain off over the edges of our flat Earth?...

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Mainly because you don't know what the word earth means in Scripture. Erets is not equivalent to earth in modern english. And you don't read Scripture carefully. You don't need to know hebrew nor be a scholar.

"And God called the dry land, earth." Gen. 1:10

Earth is defined as land in the first chapter of the Bible.

drjean said:

Since when did modern science prove evolution? No, I am speaking about truth.
I believe it was Darwin himself that said his whole concept would fail if at any time in the future science found any element of the process needing another element at the same time to evolve... contingent upon another element and unable to "evolve" without it.

Also, science has proven that we are not "evolving" but 'devolving'... things deteriorate, even in our short lifetime--not even in millions of years--but short time...

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The thing is, we need to be aware that basing in a part of our faith, even partly, even partly, on one version of creation instead of another version is not the foundation Christ said to use in Matthew 7:24-27.

If we follow His instructions there, we can be assured.

Halbhh said:

The thing is, we need to be aware that basing in a part of our faith, even partly, even partly, on one version of creation instead of another version is not the foundation Christ said to use in Matthew 7:24-27.

If we follow His instructions there, we can be assured.

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Actually Jesus did assert a particular version of creation. He believed Adam and Eve were created at the beginning of the creation.

Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation, God “made them male and female.’

Views the incorporate millions of years argue against this.

Peacemaking is noble, but God's word must be put first. The only version of creation we should tolerate is Christ's.

Calminian said:

Actually Jesus did assert a particular version of creation. He believed Adam and Eve were created at the beginning of the creation.

Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation, God “made them male and female.’

Views the incorporate millions of years argue against this.

Peacemaking is noble, but God's word must be put first. The only version of creation we should tolerate is Christ's.

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Yes! I love that so much, and it's a jewel, but it's not about the particular way of imagining the firmament and the configuration of the waters in earlier verses we are talking about.... We are discussing (or at least I am discussing, even if just to myself) about how we interpret and guess what those earlier verses would look like in geometry. As in the graphics above, for instance. Our individual ideas about geometry are not the same as "male and female" He made them, Praise God!

Sorry...had to return... you want geometry, a science GOD created?

SeventyOne said:

I've seen pictures too. I have a whole flock of these things...

View attachment 211869

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And this one as well.....

Waggles said:

What I want to know is -
Why do not the oceans and seas drain off over the edges of our flat Earth?
I saw this is an Aladdin movie where Aladdin's ship had to sail past the edge of the
world to get to another realm where the goddess of bad things dwelt.
The waters were pouring out over the edge into space.

So what keeps the oceans and seas "together" on a flat Earth?

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one of these keeps the water circulating....

elliott95 said:

Many people did see that in that text centuries before now, and even centuries after the Greeks understanding of the spherical earth were leading to more comprehensive understandings.

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Show me.

elliott95 said:

Most people don't see that in the text now.

Many people did see that in that text centuries before now, and even centuries after the Greeks understanding of the spherical earth were leading to more comprehensive understandings.

People who are non-serious do tend to mock the Bible, and this is one of the points that gets their lips curled up in a derisive sneer.

That is a great loss for them. Of course, believing in the Flat Earth today is trivial.
But there is absolutely nothing trivial about the Bible. Single verses of the Bible have been discussed and contemplated for thousands of years now and have generated volumes of writing that still do not have the wisdom packed into that single verse.

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If you do not read ancient Hebrew at an expert level, you are not reading the Old Testament.
If you do not read ancient Greek, Latin or Aramaic at an expert level, you are not reading the New Testament.
If you're reading it in English, you are not reading the Bible. You are reading an echo of the Bible, an interpretation.

Now, when it comes down to the essentials: what Jesus said to do - that is pretty clear and easy to translate, because Jesus was not subtle or nuanced - really quite straightforward.

But when it comes to the mysteries of creation itself, in Genesis 1 in particular, the ancient Hebrew is quite hard to understand, in part because of its simplicity. Realizing that it does not answer, nor even address, many of the things that Christians have been fighting about for 100 years, can be distressing to those who think they've found answers by reading English. What they are reading is not what the text says, however. The verbs are wrong. The nouns are wrong. It's quite a mess.

In general, people are not willing to hear this, because somebody in the 16th Century said (without any discernible authority) that the mere plowboy would be able to pick up the Scriptures and understand them. If speaking of Jesus, that's true. If speaking of the Torah, it is not true, at all.

mmksparbud said:

Good grief---there have been countless threads on here by flat earthers. Ever look up at the moon---how flat is that? Ever look at the sun, the other planets---telescopes are available. Not a flat one in sight. Don't confuse "bible speak" with actual information.

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Nothing in the flat earth theory makes it impossible for the moon, sun and other bodies to be round.

Calminian said:

Earth is defined as land in the first chapter of the Bible.

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Maybe so, but jesus316 and fellow flat earthers are not talking about a continent
or two but rather the totally of "the Earth" that land, seas and sky.
[and somehow the Sun, Moon and Stars are also part of this flat earth construction]

Vicomte13 said:

If you do not read ancient Hebrew at an expert level, you are not reading the Old Testament.
If you do not read ancient Greek, Latin or Aramaic at an expert level, you are not reading the New Testament.
If you're reading it in English, you are not reading the Bible. You are reading an echo of the Bible, an interpretation.

Now, when it comes down to the essentials: what Jesus said to do - that is pretty clear and easy to translate, because Jesus was not subtle or nuanced - really quite straightforward.

But when it comes to the mysteries of creation itself, in Genesis 1 in particular, the ancient Hebrew is quite hard to understand, in part because of its simplicity. Realizing that it does not answer, nor even address, many of the things that Christians have been fighting about for 100 years, can be distressing to those who think they've found answers by reading English. What they are reading is not what the text says, however. The verbs are wrong. The nouns are wrong. It's quite a mess.

In general, people are not willing to hear this, because somebody in the 16th Century said (without any discernible authority) that the mere plowboy would be able to pick up the Scriptures and understand them. If speaking of Jesus, that's true. If speaking of the Torah, it is not true, at all.

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Why would anyone believe that God would shut understanding to those who don't speak fluent Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek?

Vicomte13 said:

If you do not read ancient Hebrew at an expert level, you are not reading the Old Testament.
If you do not read ancient Greek, Latin or Aramaic at an expert level, you are not reading the New Testament.
If you're reading it in English, you are not reading the Bible. You are reading an echo of the Bible, an interpretation.

Now, when it comes down to the essentials: what Jesus said to do - that is pretty clear and easy to translate, because Jesus was not subtle or nuanced - really quite straightforward.

But when it comes to the mysteries of creation itself, in Genesis 1 in particular, the ancient Hebrew is quite hard to understand, in part because of its simplicity. Realizing that it does not answer, nor even address, many of the things that Christians have been fighting about for 100 years, can be distressing to those who think they've found answers by reading English. What they are reading is not what the text says, however. The verbs are wrong. The nouns are wrong. It's quite a mess.

In general, people are not willing to hear this, because somebody in the 16th Century said (without any discernible authority) that the mere plowboy would be able to pick up the Scriptures and understand them. If speaking of Jesus, that's true. If speaking of the Torah, it is not true, at all.

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Actually it has nothing to do with understanding Hebrew. It has everything to do with understanding the history of ideas.
What I am saying as that most people even 2000 years ago did not read a spherical earth from the Biblical text. Even the best of Hebrew scholars did not. And at the time when it was written, nobody would have even imagined that the world being considered in Genesis was spherical.

Shea Rodriguez said:

Nothing in the flat earth theory makes it impossible for the moon, sun and other bodies to be round.

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That’s true! A plate is round and flat. When I look at the moon, I see something round and flat. That it is spherical also - well, THAT takes imagination to see, because the eye does not see that.

Waggles said:

Maybe so, but jesus316 and fellow flat earthers are not talking about a continent
or two but rather the totally of "the Earth" that land, seas and sky.
[and somehow the Sun, Moon and Stars are also part of this flat earth construction]

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There are very few flat earthers in existence today. Most flat-earth arguments are not intended to advocate for a flat earth, but rather to discredit the scientific accuracy of the Bible.