Isaiah 40:22 -- "Globe of the Earth"

FEZZILLA said:

Examining the 4 English Words Used to Describe Chuwg,

So both Hebrew lexicons use 4 English words to describe the Hebrew word chûwg.

1. circle.

In old English the word circle, whenever applied to the earth, means globe. This is because the English word circle derived from the Latin circulus which also meant globe whenever applied to the earth, as circle even today is a synonym for globe. And since our English Bibles all came from old English translations, it is only wise we should consider the old English usage of the word and how it was applied in the Bible.

2. Compass.

This word is used to describe a circle that surrounds, environs, encompasses from all sides. Here is your latitude and longitude, where horizontal and vertical lines intersect. Job 26:10.

3. circuit.

While the word circuit shares much in common with a circle, it does not mean circle. It means the earth moves in a circle. This accounts for both the rotation of the earth and its circuit around the sun. Many times in the OT the word H8398 תֵּבֵל têbêl is used to describe "the habitable globe." In Latin this word translates to orbis and an orb moves and orbits.

Webster's Dictionary 1828 Definition of Circuit
Websters Dictionary 1828 - Webster's Dictionary 1828 - Circuit

That which applies to Isa.40:22

"CIRCUIT, noun

1. The act of moving or passing round; as the periodical circuit of the earth round the sun, or of the moon round the earth.

2. The space inclosed in a circle, or within certain limits.

3. Any space or extent measured by traveling round.

4. That which encircles; a ring; a diadem.

CIRCUIT, verb intransitive To move in a circle; to go round.

CIRCUIT, verb transitive To move or go round."

4. Sphere

If you understand the first three words you now see how the 4th carries the meaning sphere.

When all four English words that are used to define chuwg are examined, we understand that chuwg, when applied to Isaiah 40:22, means an earth that is an encompassing circle that circuits in space (suspended in space, Job 26:7).

Isaiah chose chuwg because it best captured how the word of the Lord described the earth to Isaiah in his own Hebrew language. It means the circle, compass, circuit, sphere of the earth -- the chuwg of the earth.

Where do we see flat earth?
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You have gone full circle and are merely repeating errors. You are still relying far to heavily on an equivocation fallacy. I wish you could come up with something new.

FEZZILLA said:

I can see why you're an atheist. You have a very bad attitude towards education as seen in your inability to accept word definitions. You call a dictionary a "equivocation fallacy" as you call everything. To the atheist, every fact that don't support atheism is a fallacy.

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Wrong, I call abusing a dictionary an equivocation fallacy. The word we are discussing has a specific definition that you keep trying to change.

And the reason that I am an atheist is partially due to a superior understanding of the Bible.

FEZZILLA said:

Subduction Zone So do you also believed that king Solomon contradicted himself by using chuwg (Proverbs 8:27) which atheists say means flat earth, and tebel (Proverbs 8:31) which means "the habitable globe"?

Did Isaiah contradict himself by using chuwg in Isa.40:22 and tebel in Isa.18:3 & 31:1?

What I find most hard to believe is that Solomon would say flat earth in Proverbs 8:27 and then say globe earth in Proverbs 8:31. That's just 4 verses apart and nobody is that stupid to contradict like that.

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What makes you think that Solomon said that?

And he never claimed that the Earth was a sphere in the verses that you linked. Are you sure that you quoted the right ones?

Subduction Zone said:

Another topic for another thread. But a quick explanation is that extreme events would leave extreme evidence. There is no evidence of the flood but there are floods that were both older and much much smaller. A worldwide flood should have overwritten that evidence.

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Hey hey

Is it likely the flood was local? If not, why not?

Cheers

FEZZILLA said:

Well now we are getting somewhere. Both γῦρος and γῦρον are variants of the same word, just as the Latin gyrum and gyrus are the same word. The only link I found so far in support of γῦρον = gyron is google translate which is not always trusted. I do not have a Greek lexicon to dive deeper. I have a store house of Hebrew lexicons and Greek lexicons containing words from the NT. But no lexicons for Septuagint. So thus I am forced to spend time digging through countless links looking for this gyron variant and all sources lead me to gyros.

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I am absolutely amazed, baffled and stunned by this.

What you are telling us here is that you have absolutely NO knowledge of the language, the alphabet it uses or the grammatical structure... and that you are just looking through lexica until you find an optical correspondence.

Say... how do you even try to read this lexica, when you are unable to identify the different letters?

You don't need special lexica for Septuagint to be able to read and identify the few dozen signs that make up the Greek alphabet. Such a list should be the absolute basic stuff for learning a foreign language that uses a different alphabet.
I gave you several links. You didn't trust wikipedia. You obviously don't trust the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here is a link to some kind of Bible-stuff website that talks about Greek: THE GREEK ALPHABET. It gives this same list.
Because that is all it is: a list of the letters of the greek alphabet.
And you cannot do this basic and simple stuff... heck, we are right now debating if "M" and "K" are different letters and what they mean.

Come on.

But I am talking to an good old friend from Greece who's lived there for about 11 years now and says he understands about 5% of Greek.

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That's bovine excrement! If your friend is from Greece, and understand just one in twenty words of his own language... he's not the kind of source I would go to. He would be a kind of imbecile.

This is because Greek isn't some easy language you can just learn from google translate or wikipedia.

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Hah, you didn't present an academic source for that claim!
And even if you are correct here - that's nonsense. We are not talking about learning a language here, or how hard or easy it is.
We are talking about some very very very basic concepts of how a specific language works, how it is structured, how it is presented. That's not academic level. That is not even high school level... that is kindergarden level.
I also have a good old friend, who has lived here (Germany) now for seven years. She's fluent in both German (the language everyone around her speaks) and Russian (the language of her parents). She's perfectly capable of reading and speaking both languages.
Ok, writing is still a little problem... but, hey... she's EIGHT! And she is capable of reading in two different alphabets, in two different languages that are very different, and both "not some easy language you learn from google translate".

He does know that the words I sent him have punctuations that have not been used in 100 years, and how in Greece, ancient Greek is an upper College level course. I also have other people I know who have a much better grasp on Greek than any of us do and I will consult them. I know a great deal about how atheists lie and distort everything in the Bible.

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Ancient Greek is a different language from modern Greek. Derived from it, with a lot of similarities, but different. No surprise, because as any serious scholar of linguistics will tell you, languages are not static. None of them. Old English is a lot different from modern English, and different from medieval English, and different from Early Modern Times English.

But that is why it is important to understand how a language works in order to understand what it says. Again, we are talking about that absolute basics here. Baby stuff.

Each time I investigate an issue the scam is revealed. This has been the case of 100% of all my investigations. But now I investigate Greek and bust the scam on that one. In the meantime, I can override all modern analysis by going to ancient readers of the Septuagint to see how they understood Scripture.

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Hey, this here atheist tells you right now that the Earth is a more or less spherical object and that the sky is blue when you look at it. Oh, and you need to breath in order to survive.
100% scam.

Oh, as I am writing this I realize I have another friend who's native to Greece who is also a Greek scholar. So I'll contact him.

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Again, what you are showing us here is that you have absolutely no clue about what these funny signs mean that you post and need a "Greek scholar" to tell you an "A" from a "B".
But you tell us that you are a "master in translation", and go into page long (copypasted) essays about what different words really mean.

You are a guy who is trying to do deep analytical work into the meaning of a language that you can't even read, much less understand.
But you know better than any scholar in this field, or even than any normal person with a little understanding of foreign languages... because they don't believe in your personal deity.

It's highly amusing.

the iconoclast said:

Hey hey

Is it likely the flood was local? If not, why not?

Cheers

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Then mankind was not threatened by it. A local flood makes the Ark superfluous.

FEZZILLA said:

Gyron vs. Gyros Conclusion

Ok. I did contact a Greek scholar from Greece who is a Greek with all the knowledge of the Greek language. So far his reply to me scores points for both sides of this argument.

He said "Gyron, Gyros, Γύρος, means "round" not circle. And it can well mean the shape of a sphere, not necessarily a circle."

So my opposition here is right about gyron and I was wrong. Sorry but I found no links online explaining it. But gyron does not mean flat earth.

He further went on to say, "Concerning Gyros...it is actually the same word used to say "circumnavigate the earth". It can mean to go around in circles too. For instance, the Hebrews went GYRO of Jericho 7 times and then it fell.
Ιt's because words in Greek change according to the use they are in. For instance: O gyros Tou gyrou - of the gyros (possessive) Ton Gyron - third person O gyre - calling out to gyros like saying Hey Mark! Come over here. It's the same word. The verse says "the one who possesses the circumference of the earth". I.e. "The whole earth".
the first O in O gyros is O (omicron). The last one in O gyre is Ω omega. The last one shows exclamation. O! gyre!
Gyros is also (and this is useful for our purposes here) rotation. You can find this meaning on this page in Greek, in the first sentence.
Γύρος (αποσαφήνιση) - Βικιπαίδεια
So when the earth rotates.....it is the same word in a noun γυρίζει/gyrizi
I think the guy on the page shot himself in the leg using gyros to make his case..."

So I asked to confirm: "So gyron and gyros are the same words that apply to the verse?"

His reply: "yes, but proper grammar demands gyros here...elsewhere it could be gyros depending on the use. Same word though."

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One huge problem, you relied on a speaker of modern Greek. What does he know of ancient Greek? We still have to go with the one real expert.

Subduction Zone said:

Then mankind was not threatened by it. A local flood makes the Ark superfluous.

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Hey hey and thank you for your kind response.

Im pretty easy, global flood or local flood. I put my trust in God, iam His and He is mine.

The local flood theory has always interested me as it takes into account the tower of babel and the scattering of ppls. What do you think about that?

Cheers.

i think we could be friends and please excuse me if i offended you.

Heads up soon i will be creating a thread to continue on with our discussion about random process and evolution. Sfs, speedwell will also be invited.

the iconoclast said:

Hey hey and thank you for your kind response.

Im pretty easy, global flood or local flood. I put my trust in God, iam His and He is mine.

The local flood theory has always interested me as it takes into account the tower of babel and the scattering of ppls. What do you think about that?

Cheers.

i think we could be friends and please excuse me if i offended you.

Heads up soon i will be creating a thread to continue on with our discussion about random process and evolution. Sfs, speedwell will also be invited.

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But you are not putting your trust in God. You are at best abusing the Bible. The flood story is a myth that the Hebrews copied from the Babylonians. If you believe that God made the Earth then you have to be very conflicted since it tells us quite clearly that there never was a flood. The Bible was written by man. At best Genesis is allegory and morality tales. If God can't lie there was no flood.

FEZZILLA said:

He's a Greek who lives in Greece who is a Greek scholar. I made friends with him in our Muslim-Christian debate group on FB. I have many well known scholars in my FB and most of them know Greek. But they all go to the true Greek for genuine Greek scholarship. He says Isaiah 40:22 in the Septuagint translated into English is:

"the one who possesses the circumference of the earth". I.e. "The whole earth".

Now my other friend in Greece I know very well. He's far from stupid but has learned how hard Greek is to learn. He took courses on it and still only knows 5% of it. This is because (a) he's honest and real about it (b) He's a foreigner in Greece who has spoke only English for over 30 years of his life and then moves to Greece and discovers the reality of learning Greek. When you are used to English, Greek is going to blow you mind. This is why I went to a top Greek scholar to learn the truth about gyron/gyros.

As for the Flood, I don't want to deviate from the topic. I did agree with your comment about the local flood not being much of a big deal. I have no problem accepting the Global Flood.

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A scholar. So what peer reviewed work has he had published?

FEZZILLA said:

Gyron vs. Gyros Conclusion

Ok. I did contact a Greek scholar from Greece who is a Greek with all the knowledge of the Greek language. So far his reply to me scores points for both sides of this argument.

He said "Gyron, Gyros, Γύρος, means "round" not circle. And it can well mean the shape of a sphere, not necessarily a circle."

So my opposition here is right about gyron and I was wrong. Sorry but I found no links online explaining it. But gyron does not mean flat earth.

He further went on to say, "Concerning Gyros...it is actually the same word used to say "circumnavigate the earth". It can mean to go around in circles too. For instance, the Hebrews went GYRO of Jericho 7 times and then it fell.
Ιt's because words in Greek change according to the use they are in. For instance: O gyros Tou gyrou - of the gyros (possessive) Ton Gyron - third person O gyre - calling out to gyros like saying Hey Mark! Come over here. It's the same word. The verse says "the one who possesses the circumference of the earth". I.e. "The whole earth".
the first O in O gyros is O (omicron). The last one in O gyre is Ω omega. The last one shows exclamation. O! gyre!
Gyros is also (and this is useful for our purposes here) rotation. You can find this meaning on this page in Greek, in the first sentence.
Γύρος (αποσαφήνιση) - Βικιπαίδεια
So when the earth rotates.....it is the same word in a noun γυρίζει/gyrizi
I think the guy on the page shot himself in the leg using gyros to make his case..."

So I asked to confirm: "So gyron and gyros are the same words that apply to the verse?"

His reply: "yes, but proper grammar demands gyros here...elsewhere it could be gyros depending on the use. Same word though."

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I hope there's a typo in the last line? "The "proper grammar demands gyros here" should read "gyron"?

Else your whole pityful admittance of having been wrong the whole time makes no sense. Not only would your "scholar" have said: "Here it should be S based on grammar, but elsewhere it could be that same S." You still would have shown no clue that the very verse you repeatedly quoted does indeed say N.

But I am willing to assume that you made a mistake here.

So my opposition here is right about gyron and I was wrong. Sorry but I found no links online explaining it. But gyron does not mean flat earth.

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So, to conclude: after several posts, where you repeatedly declared that what you were told by the "atheists" was definitly wrong, that there wasn't such a word, that the letters didn't say what we told you, that "atheists" made that up in order to discredit the Bible... after repeated posts where you demonstrated that you personally do not have the necessary skills to read a word with five letters... now you simply drop all that posture and declare: "Oh, I was wrong. But I am still right".

Let's see. I responded to you on your claim that a) the LXX version of Isa 40:22 does not include the word "gyron" and b) that "gyron" is not a word in Greek.
I repeatedly showed you, with several sources, including your own posts, and your own links that you were wrong. I explained to you why and how that would be, including that part with "Ιt's because words in Greek change according to the use they are in. [...] Ton Gyron - third person [accusativ]"

You didn't accept a single word of what I said - not even so far as to go and check the sources, because "it's all an atheist scam." That is not a scholarly approach.

So that was the first part. That was all that my post was about. A simple claim of yours that was wrong, and that you now hopefully admit was wrong.

But there is more. This whole exchange demonstrates that you don't have the necessary basic skills to translate or analyse another language. All you do it cherry-pick stuff that you agree with, without understanding it, and declare yourself the winner.

You are wrong here also.
Your friend is correct. "Gyros" does not mean "circle"... not exclusively. It basically just means "something that turns".
But there is more: derived from that it can have all sorts of meaning. Something round. Something that goes around. Something that is around something else. It can mean "circle" or "disk". As well as "sphere" or "globe".

And that is the point that I did make earlier in one of my responses to you: you always concentrate on the "globe" part, be it in hebrew, greek, latin, or english. But you constantly ignore, deliberately and willingly, that your own sources - sources you even quote - also say that it can mean "circle".

The Bible does not teach or declare that the Earth is a disk or circle.

But the Bible also does not teach or declare that the Earth is a sphere or globe.

What a blessing it is to be KJVO.

Subduction Zone said:

Then mankind was not threatened by it. A local flood makes the Ark superfluous.

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This is another error of overly literal interpretation. Noah's culture and environment were wiped out. The actual size and contents of the ark were probably exaggerated in the telling, but that doesn't change the point of the story.

"A circle is no more a sphere in Scripture than it is in geometry.


Looking at these usages together, I am hard put to see how anyone could justify rendering chûgh in Isa. 40:22a as "sphericity."22 The earliest translations of these Scriptures bear this out. In the Septuagint (LXX), the translators render the nominal and verbal forms of chûgh in every case with the Greek gýros (noun), "circle" or "ring," which they use in Isa. 40:22a, or gyróo (verb), "to make or inscribe a circle."23 Gýros does not mean "sphere,"24 and in fact nowhere in any Greek recension of the Hebrew Scriptures will one find the proper word sphaíra used in this context at all.25 The history of the formation of the LXX is largely lost, and we do not know if the Prophets were translated in Alexandria as the Torah was in the third century BC.26 But if they were and if the translators were familiar with the concept of a spherical earth taught at the Museon of Alexandria, then the center of Greek science, they give no hint of it in their translation of chûgh.

Greek gýros turns up in its transliterated form gyrus--present in Roman literature as early as Lucretius (mid-first century BC)--in the Latin versions of the Bible as well.27 St. Jerome (c. 340-420), the early Latin Church's master linguist and Bible translator, began his work on the Old Testament by creating a standard version from the several unreliable Old Latin recensions then in existence, using as a valuable aid Origen's fair copy of the Hexapla which he consulted in the library at Caesarea around 386 AD.28 The Old Latin recensions were based on the LXX and commonly rendered this same portion of Isa. 40:22a as "qui tenet gyrum terrae."29 Later, when he prepared a new version from the Hebrew that would become part of the Vulgate, he kept the Old Latin reading, changing only the verb tenet, "dwells," to sedet, "sits."30 And in his Commentary on Isaiah, Jerome, who is regarded by critics today as a competent and careful scholar,31 specifically rejected the notion that in this verse the prophet is referring to a spherical earth.32

When we come to English versions, both early and recent, we find chûgh interpreted in two different ways. The translators of the Authorized Version of 1611 were guided by the Geneva Bible, the version produced by English exiles in 1560, and adopted the latter's reading verbatim: "... sitteth upon the circle of the earth ..."33 Many late twentieth-century versions follow them (NKJV, NJB, NIV, NRSV), but some others render chûgh as "vault" (JPSV, NAB), "vaulted roof" (REB) or "dome" (J. McKenzie34), interpreting the word to refer to the "vaulted dome of the heaven" (suggesting the raqí'a of Gen. 1:6-7), upon which God "sits" or "dwells" or "sits enthroned."35 Seybold, however, rejects this interpretation and points to Isa. 40:22b in support of "circle." The image of God sitting above the vaulted dome rather than the horizon circle would not change the divine perspective in any significant way, but I agree with Seybold that these renderings depart from the contextual meaning of chûgh.36

The prophet who uttered the words of 40:22 is the same prophet who proclaimed that Yahweh is the Creator who "spread out the earth" (42:5; 44:24). The Hebrew verb in both passages is raqa', which means "to stretch out, spread out or abroad, cover over" and, according to Theodore Gaster, "to flatten out."37 Among his people in the exile community in Babylon,38 looking out over the enormous desert expanse that reached from horizon to horizon, it is not surprising that this prophet would describe God as "flattening out" the land. These other expressions also militate against the notion that the prophet was implying a spherical earth in 40:22a, and they act as a check against focusing upon one verse and reading it outside the larger context of this prophet's other inspired oracles of creation and salvation.

If creationists had sought any support among biblical philologists, they might have found a nod given to them in the article on chûgh by Edwin Yamauchi in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. "Some have held," he states, "that Isa 40:22 implies the sphericity of the earth. It may, but it may refer only to the Lord enthroned above the earth with its obviously circular horizon."39 Yamauchi offers no supporting evidence for this concession to opinion, and in fact there is none that he or anyone else could give: a circle is no more a sphere in Scripture than it is in geometry. The preponderance of philological evidence and the translations of ancient scholars and modern experts alike provide overwhelming testimony that Isa 40:22a does not refer to a spherical earth. There is simply no warrant for Eastman, Sarfati, and Morris to declare, contrary to its plain sense and in violation of its semantic domain, that chûgh literally means sphericity. They have read the earth's sphericity into the text, not out of it. And this is the conclusion to which I would lead my students."

Dr. Robert J. Schneider

Does the Bible Teach a Spherical Earth