Seperating Metaphor from Literal Truth.

[busterdog]

A basic issue is whether the Bible comprehends the Copernican solar system or whether it is ignorant.

I think the easiest way to show that would be for theFijian to cite as many passages as he can in favour of flat-earth geocentrism, and for you to cite as many passages as you can in favour of round-earth heliocentrism.
Does it not strike you as a little odd that every biblical passage made in reference to the shape of the earth describes it as being flat or immobile?
Perhaps you, too, could explain (in a new thread?) what makes Job 38:13-14; Isaiah 40:22; Matthew 4:8; 1 Samuel 2:8; 1 Chronicles 16:30; Job 9:6, 38:4; Psalm 75:3, 96:10, 104:5; Genesis 7:11, 8:2; Deuteronomy 28:12; 2 Kings 7:2; Job 37:18; Malachi 3:10; Joshua 10:12; Psalm 19:4-6; Ecclesiastes 1:5 all so obviously metaphorical.
It strikes me that many YECs are quite embarassed about the pre-Enlightenment literal use of the Scriptures to support geocentrism -- so much so that they will simply deny it ever happened! (Or deny the involvement of the Holy Spirit.)

Job 38:12 ¶ Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; [and] caused the dayspring to know his place;

Job 38:13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

Job 38:14 It is turned as clay [to] the seal; and they stand as a garment.

I included verse 12, which you omitted. This is a series of questions by the Creator to the created. The question is whether the creature has any semblance of the power to shake the wicked out of the earth. The anthropomorphism is at least a demonstration of what it would look like for a creature to try to be like God. He would be like an idiot who thought you could grab the edge of the earth and shake it with your hands.

It could not be more obvious that these verses were not intended as a literal description of how the creator deals with sinners -- though in the latter days, he will in fact shake the earth and the sinners in it. Did the writer of Job think that sinners would be shaken loose and float off like fleas off a dog? Uhhh, no. No one thinks so.



Mat 4:8

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

First, we need perhaps someone with more experience in being physically transported by the devil. If that defies clear exposition, I am not sure whether surprise is the best reaction.

The issue here is obviously not geocentrism or a flat earth. The issues are 1. the mystical nature of the experience, which I just defer on; and 2. why does the entire Bible generally speak of the dominant empire as "the whole world."

The empires are represented in the statute from Daniel with the head of gold. Another example of the "whole world" is the registration commanded by Cesar Augustus. It requires some speculation on my part to get something more than mere metaphor out of this and the hermeneutical rules are not clear.

But that does not translate into a licence to read the obvious out of Gen. 1.

1Sa 2:8

He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, [and] lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set [them] among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth [are] the LORD'S, and he hath set the world upon them.

A frivolous example. We could get real technical about the context, voice, audience, etc. or we could look at the obvious. Must a beggar be on a dunghill to receive help? No. So, the pillars are equally unimportant as literal conditions.

I mean we could painstakingly break this down to make the case if need be.

This is not Gen. 3 in which the line between metaphor and literalism may have less obvious demarcation. This is also not Gen. 1 in which that definitional problem is not apparent in the surface text. The time will come to take Gen. 3 apart to make sense of it. But, it bears little comparison to this pattern in Samuel and you don't need a sophisticated hermeneutic to treat Samuel very differently and metaphorically.


1Ch 16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.

So what, like an orbiting earth is not "stable"?

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Much of the above is from poetry and prophecy, it is true.

And yes, I can see your argument that earth's orbit would be seen as stable.

But Joshua is historical narrative, and a heliocentric star system does not contain a sun that 'stops' (Joshua 10). Joshua 10 is written upon the assuming of geocentrism, or at the very least that the light of the day and the dark of the night has something to do with the movement of the sun.

 

[busterdog]

Job 9:6 Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.

THis is of course Job speaking, see verse 1. I don't really care whether Job was a flat earther or not. Nothing requires that the narrator be so mistaken simply because the words of another are reported here. What is actually implied to me is that the earth is moved in its very orbit, which is a quite a different level of sophistication. Does the earth sit on pillars? Job doesn't say it does. Does he think there are pillars under the mountains? Again, I don't really care.


Job 38:4 ¶ Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

First of all, you must recognize the irony of your implied question, no?

Second, does the earth have foundations? Maybe it does. There is no nebular hypothesis or any other fully cogent basis for planetary formation. There are some game tries, but all have many questions. So, what must a foundation for the earth look like? Must it look like something that makes scripture nonsense? Why can't the earth have a real foundation that is fully compatible with what even science recognizes. May a foundation is basement granit. Maybe its an iron core. There isn't enough specific informatoin in this passage to require any difficult decisions about whether it was metaphor or literal history. Perhaps that is the point. If it is too vague to matter, maybe that is by definition, metaphor. "Six days" by constrast, is not vague.

As for "corner stones" in the following verse, see the concordance for the hebrew. This is easily something like a key stone or the head of the corner, or perhaps a cap stone, as Jesus was.

Psa 75:3 The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it. Selah.

What is your point? That the psalmist thought the entire earth sat on a pillar? That the crust of the earth was born on columns? That any metaphorical use here gives license to use metaphor in Gen 1? I don't understand why you are bothering with this one.

 

[shernren]

So, whenever a passage has any metaphorical element to it, then the whole passage must necessarily be metaphorical, instead of a scientific description of the world as we know it?

 

[gluadys]

A basic issue is whether the Bible comprehends the Copernican solar system or whether it is ignorant.

Even if you can show that the geocentric passages are all found in figurative passages, that doesn't show that the Bible comprehends the Copernican solar system. Nor does it show that the figure was not intended to have a literal referent.

All it shows is that cosmology was not the focus of the passage.

The anthropomorphism is at least a demonstration of what it would look like for a creature to try to be like God. He would be like an idiot who thought you could grab the edge of the earth and shake it with your hands.

However, it does not show that he would be an idiot to think the earth had an edge.

But for your comfort, you might consider the NRSV translation which says "so that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it." I think that qualifies as a completely figurative metaphor under both cosmologies.

More problematical is the next line "It is turned like clay to the seal.." This simile suggests a likeness between the earth and a piece of clay that has been impressed by a seal. One such likeness would be a flattened shape.

It could not be more obvious that these verses were not intended as a literal description of how the creator deals with sinners -- though in the latter days, he will in fact shake the earth and the sinners in it. Did the writer of Job think that sinners would be shaken loose and float off like fleas off a dog? Uhhh, no. No one thinks so.

Indeed not, but that doesn't show that the writer envisaged a spherical earth. He is certainly suggesting that it takes the power of God to get rid of the wicked, a power great enough to shake the earth like a woman shaking out a rug. So while he certainly does not envisage God literally dealing with sinners in this way, the image he chooses to use is one that implies a flat earth that does not normally move. If that was not his image of the earth, and one he expected to be the image familiar to his readers, he would probably have used a different metaphor.

Mat 4:8

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

The issue here is obviously not geocentrism or a flat earth. The issues are 1. the mystical nature of the experience, which I just defer on; and 2. why does the entire Bible generally speak of the dominant empire as "the whole world."

No, the issue here, in terms of cosmology, is why does the devil show him all the kingdoms of the world from the top of a mountain. No matter how exceedingly high a mountain is, one cannot see all the kingdoms of the world from a mountain top if the earth is a sphere.

One way you can get around it is your option 2. The "whole world" in this case is not literally the whole world. It is, perhaps, the Roman Empire and does not include India, China or the Mayan or Incan empires. But then, that same reasoning can also apply to Noah's flood.

1Sa 2:8

He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, [and] lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set [them] among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth [are] the LORD'S, and he hath set the world upon them.

Must a beggar be on a dunghill to receive help? No. So, the pillars are equally unimportant as literal conditions.

Basically the metaphor is saying that the LORD can set a beggar on a throne, just as he has set the earth on its pillars. Now, if the LORD has not set the earth on pillars, what does that imply about the beggar? Again, if the writer did not envisage the earth set on pillars, he would probably have used a different metaphor. Why would he even think of this metaphor if his cosmology did not include pillars supporting the earth?

1Ch 16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.

So what, like an orbiting earth is not "stable"?

An orbiting earth may be stable, but it does move. If the point of stability is that it does not move, then the writer clearly thinks the earth does not move.

What we need to realize is that every writer uses the cultural context of his/her time and place even when writing metaphorically. For example, no where in the bible do you find the common medieval figure of "the music of the spheres". That is because this metaphor refers to the Ptolomaic cosmology which did not come into the popular imagination until after biblical times. It is equally rare today, because it doesn't fit into a Copernican cosmology either. We no longer think of the planets as being encased in crystal spheres which carry them around the earth. Instead our cosmological figures will encompass notions of immense space.

To go back to your first instance, had the writer of Job had a Copernican understanding of the cosmos, instead of using a metaphor that suggests shaking the earth by its edges, he might have used one that suggested bouncing the earth out of its orbit. The fact that the biblical writers use the cosmological metaphors they do suggests that these metaphors reflect their actual understanding of the structure of the cosmos.

Since this same understanding is also found in the serious astronomical works of the time, it makes sense that it was seriously held by the writers of the time. It is because they believed in the literal physical referents that they used these particular metaphors in their imagery.

 

[busterdog]

So, whenever a passage has any metaphorical element to it, then the whole passage must necessarily be metaphorical, instead of a scientific description of the world as we know it?

There are technical bases to break it down if you wish. Obviously this is not what I said or implied. There are technical reason why the Psalm is a song and Gen. is not. I have never seen a TE argument capable of distinguishing hymn from history. The rule you offering is a lousy rule for interpretation. However, it seems to be a rule that has been applied by TE.

 

[busterdog]

Much of the above is from poetry and prophecy, it is true.

And yes, I can see your argument that earth's orbit would be seen as stable.

But Joshua is historical narrative, and a heliocentric star system does not contain a sun that 'stops' (Joshua 10). Joshua 10 is written upon the assuming of geocentrism, or at the very least that the light of the day and the dark of the night has something to do with the movement of the sun.

Exd 14:22 And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry [ground]: and the waters [were] a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

Here, the writer of the BIble, the Holy Spirit, doesn't understand fluid dynamics or gravity (he says tongue in cheek).

Tell me what happened on Joshua's long day and I will tell you what the writer thought about celestial mechanics.

This is a frivolous example as an assault on inerrancy.

There are a number of mechanisms discussed as a basis for this miracle. None of them are entirely satisfying. Why we should need to be satisfied in the face of a miracle, is beyond me. Many TEs accept the idea of miracles such as the parting of the red sea.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i3/longday.asp

Lets also put it this way. Here are your suspects: the "WOrd of God" (a title of Jesus); the HOly Spirit (All scriptur is God breathed); and Moses as scribe for Genesis.

Here is your accusation: Error in understanding the way the world works.

What is your standard? Guilt until proven innocent? Presumed guilt on the basis of vague language? Are you seriously going to conclude guilt here when you have no idea what Joshua was talking about here, since you have a very spare description of an apparent miracle? The best you can do is and the best any TE can do is to say there is ambiguity here as to what the writer meant. There is no other intellectually honest position. I give a wide berth with some TE arguments. This one is prosecutorial misconduct.

Before you potentially insult the HOly Spirit, a word of advice: prove guilt beyond a resonable doubt. Anything else is presumption.

Did he mean when the sun appears to stop moving it must mean it stops revolving around the earth? To this day as with a sextant, a weather report or Broadway songs, we speak of the sun "Rising". Does it rise? Does anyone think the sun is moving? Why not assume so? Wouldn't that be just as fair?

If you want to say that YECs don't have a consistent basis to distinguish metaphor from literal expression, that is a more reasonable criticism.

 

[theFijian]

1Ch 16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.

So what, like an orbiting earth is not "stable"?

So what, like orbiting is "not moving"?

 

[The Lady Kate]

So what, like orbiting is "not moving"?

Apparantly, neither is rotating on its axis, nor is spirling along as part of the Milky Way.

 

[busterdog]

So, whenever a passage has any metaphorical element to it, then the whole passage must necessarily be metaphorical, instead of a scientific description of the world as we know it?

Well, that is precisely the only literary rule that is really on the table.

TE can add the rule as follows: if science allows it to be, it is not metaphor.

That is the alarming thing about TE hermeneutics: there is no basis for discrimination of intent based upon the text itself. You must use science since the text is incapable of telling us whether it means a real parting of the seas, literal days or real pillars under the earth. That is, it means whatever you want.

The YEC problem is trying to do something more than just say, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck. Which arguably takes us back to the TE view, which is, its metaphor where it disagrees with common sense as established by science. YEC struggles in trying to do more than just say, well, its (our) common sense, which does not always do successfully. Even then we often simply come the familiar point of cleavage: do we self-validate teh Bible on its own terms or must everything be validated by science as court of last resort.

The pattern of Hebrew power is rhyme in meaning, or complemnetary meaning. "He trains my hands for war, and my fingers for fighting." The latter phrase and idiom must agree with the conditions in the first.

In psalm 75, that God can cause the earth to crumble is the proposition. That is the only parameter in view: God's ability. That he upholds the pillars thereof agrees. No scientific literalism is required in the subsidiary phrase. All it must do is agree.

To require of the phrase that its narrator be speaking literally of pillars is nonsense and sophistry.

In Gen. 1, the point of every verse is 1. power and 2. time. It does not have the same pattern of agreement in a primary and complementary idiom.

In Gen. 1. we have this stuff. light, planets, beasts, etc. Their existence is not in contention and Gen. does not attempt to make that point. This is all about who made it all and on what schedule. What other communication is conveyed? Authorship and control of the schedule are the only concepts. The Schedule is an independent assertion. It is not an echo of another point, such as God's position as creator.


But, at times, yeah, there are some things that are just ducks. Some anti-inerrancy arguments are just not worthy of our time.

 

[busterdog]

So what, like orbiting is "not moving"?

[Editing out some annoyance.]

Please weigh the alternatives, including my obvious appeal to the meaning of stability. I am having a hard time not seeing this as baiting. I hope I am wrong. Not every argument needs to get posted. The standard is not every possible use of language a phraise can allow in isolation. This is about tryign to prove that the Bible is factually in error. You do see that you need a higher standard of proof?

 

[shernren]

Busterdog, I was quite confused by your multiple responses, and since they seem to contradict each other, I'm going with the latter. Is someone manipulating your account?

So, whenever a passage has any metaphorical element to it, then the whole passage must necessarily be metaphorical, instead of a scientific description of the world as we know it?

Well, that is precisely the only literary rule that is really on the table.

TE can add the rule as follows: if science allows it to be, it is not metaphor.

That is the alarming thing about TE hermeneutics: there is no basis for discrimination of intent based upon the text itself. You must use science since the text is incapable of telling us whether it means a real parting of the seas, literal days or real pillars under the earth. That is, it means whatever you want.

Let me reply from bottom up. Let's say the rule in operation is "if science allows it to be, it is not metaphor." I don't think the connection to "it means whatever you want" is clear at all.

Have you ever read Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera? I don't mean simply having watched the movie. The novel itself quite obviously pretends not to be a novel. It's a while since I read it myself, but if I recall correctly: The author begins not in narrative but with assertions that everything in it is true and has been alluded to and alleged in various newspaper articles, and ends again by saying how he has gotten all this information and further asserts that he has found no less than the skeleton of the Phantom with the score for his masterwork Don Juan Triumphant. In fact, when I read this novel for the first time in its entirety, I thought for a while that perhaps this Phantom was a real, historical figure!

Now, on text alone it is entirely obvious that the author wrote his work as history. If we went from there and said, however, that "The author wrote it as history, therefore it is history", we would be mistaken! The author may have wrote his work as history for every other reason: he wanted it to sound authentic, he wanted it to have dramatic power, he wanted to lend solemnity to veiled criticism of the powers of the day, he wanted to have fun. But he certainly would not intend for his work to be read as history, simply because he wrote it as history!

Not only that, the application of external evidence (in this case, we know the Phantom of the Opera simply didn't exist) does not allow it to "mean whatever you want"! The external evidence will not allow me to read it as if it is history if I want it to be history. Even if I want it to be history, the evidence will not allow it to be. In that way external evidence places even more stringent criteria upon the interpretations of the Bible than text alone does. Believe me, there are days when I want the Bible to be simply historical, to have a poor Adam and Eve tottering around the Middle East and biting the wrong fruit and landing us all in this mess. Life would be a lot simpler. But the evidence does not allow me to read the text any which way I want.

But alright. Let's say the rule is that "whenever a passage has any metaphorical element to it, then the whole passage must necessarily be metaphorical, instead of a scientific description of the world as we know it". Now, we will have to consider a lot of things in the Bible as metaphorical, for as Galileo said

Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error. Not only contradictions and propositions far from true might thus be made to appear in the Bible, but even grave heresies and follies. Thus it would be necessary to assign to God feet, hands ans eyes, as well as corporeal and human affections, such as anger, repentance, hatred, and sometimes even the forgetting of` things past and ignorance of those to come. These propositions uttered by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities, Of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. For the sake of those who deserve to be separated from the herd, it is necessary that wise expositors should produce the true senses of such passages, together with the special reasons for which they were set down in these words. This doctrine is so widespread and so definite with all theologians that it would be superfluous to adduce evidence for it.

I might ask, for example, did God literally speak? Does God have a literal larynx and lungs and literally expel sound from a literal mouth? If not, then every mention of "God said" in Genesis 1 is necessarily a metaphor.

Or was the Spirit of God literally hovering over the waters? God as Spirit cannot have a physical location, and so any mention of His hovering is a metaphor as well (not to mention the fact that the word is often translated "brooding" in more flexible translations, giving rise to a whole new dimension of metaphor).

Did the land literally produce vegetation? No less a literalist than mark kennedy argues that the plain, obvious meaning of the text must be amended here and that the land produced seeds, not vegetation.

Did God literally exhale into man's nostrils the breath of life? And did God literally wait until He had created and commanded Adam of everything he should do before realizing (as if God ever needed to realize anything!) that Adam had no helper?

Even with the one literary rule you put on the table, Genesis 1-3 are riddled through with metaphor for purely theological reasons, and hence deserved to be considered as metaphorical texts.

 

[The Lady Kate]

Well, that is precisely the only literary rule that is really on the table.

TE can add the rule as follows: if science allows it to be, it is not metaphor.

That is the alarming thing about TE hermeneutics: there is no basis for discrimination of intent based upon the text itself. You must use science since the text is incapable of telling us whether it means a real parting of the seas, literal days or real pillars under the earth. That is, it means whatever you want.

Except that the text itself often cannot be used to determine intent.

Have you ever read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift? Its an essay in which he seems to advocate cannibalism as a solution for poverty and overpopulation, and it is written in a completely deadpan, straightforward style.
If one did not know the situation in England at the time... where poverty and overpopulation were becoming so epidemic, than ideas only slightly less idiotic than cannibalism were being tossed about... then it's very possible to miss the point that A Modest Proposal was intended as parody.

The YEC problem is trying to do something more than just say, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its a duck. Which arguably takes us back to the TE view, which is, its metaphor where it disagrees with common sense as established by science. YEC struggles in trying to do more than just say, well, its (our) common sense, which does not always do successfully.

You're being kind... I've never seen YEC do this successfully... not with any degree of consistency.

Even then we often simply come the familiar point of cleavage: do we self-validate teh Bible on its own terms or must everything be validated by science as court of last resort.

I don't think it's quite that simple...

When the Bible's topics touch on scientific issues, then it should be validated by science to see if a literal reading is the correct one.

If the topic is a historical one, then it should be validated by historical facts, if it's mathematical, then get out the calculator, etc...

If Exodus said that while travelling to the Promised Land, Moses led his people to the Moon and back, no rational person would take that literally. If there were a passage in Luke's Gospel in which Jesus says, "Verily, I say unto you, that two plus two equals thirty-seven..." we'd be looking very hard for the metaphorical interpretation.

Our interpretation of Scripture should always match up with the reality of God's creation, as validated to the best of our abilities with whatever the appropriate tools are... science, history, mathematics, etc... And while our use of those tools is imperfect, it must never be forgotten that so is our understanding of Scripture.

 

[theFijian]

Please weigh the alternatives, including my obvious appeal to the meaning of stability.

Something can be stable and not moving, something can be stable and yet at the same time be moving. Stability and movement are not interdependant. Yet the verse you quoted stated the earth was stable with no possibility of moving. I'm not really sure what you were trying to show, apart from perhaps the overall inconsistencey of the Creationist hermeneutic.

I am having a hard time not seeing this as baiting. I hope I am wrong.

Please don't get melodramatic, it's quite boring.

Not every argument needs to get posted. The standard is not every possible use of language a phraise can allow in isolation. This is about tryign to prove that the Bible is factually in error. You do see that you need a higher standard of proof?

Remind me again what the point of this thread is. Is it to nitpick our way through verses or to establish the differences between the YEC and TE hermeneutic and/or epistimology?

 

[Mallon]

First, I want to thank busterdog for taking me up on my challege to address those Scriptures that, on their surface, seem to support to geocentrism. I've debated with other YECs about the correct interpretation of these verses before, and all I ever got for a response was something to the effect of "the Holy Spirit leads me to interpret these verses metaphorically." Nice to see someone using their God-given brain on the matter.
I noticed, though, that you only addressed a handful of the verses I quoted, and assume that you just didn't have the time to address them all. I think you've still got some work to do, though. Ecc 1:5, for example, states clearly that the sun revolves around the earth, and the scriptural context of the passage hints that there is nothing metaphorical about it. And what of the simile in Job 38:14? As gluadys noted, that is something that must be addressed on its own, for a simile is internally-consistent. Surely the consistent usage of flat-earth, geocentric metaphors in the Scripture must cause you to pause for a moment. Why would God chose to describe shaking a metaphorical flat earth by its ends when shaking a ball would just as easily (and more accurately) serve the purpose?
Like others here, I also think you're applying your hermeneutic inconsistently. If I understand you correctly, you are essentially arguing that if a passage was clearly written to make a point about some spiritual matter, then everything in that passage must necessarily be understood non-literally. That is how you deal with the Psalms, after all.
But what about Genesis? I think we can all agree that in the grand scheme, Genesis was written to address spritual matters about the relationship between God and His creation, the Fall, the Sabbath, God's righteous wrath, etc. Yet here you break your own hermeneutic when you insist that the opening chapters of Genesis must necessarily be read literally, even when juxtaposed with metaphorical allusions to crafty snakes and gates of heaven. Where's the consistency in that??? (If the story of Noah's Ark is entirely accurate, what of Genesis 7:11? Are there really gates in the sky, too?)
Your counter-argument to this amounts to fear-mongering: "If TEs had their way, they would have us appeal to observation of the outside world in order enlighten our interpretation of God and the Scriptures!" And yet I would point out that this approach is entirely biblical (Rom 1:20)!

Thanks for trying so far, busterdog. Really. But I'm far from convinced of your approach. Methinks it's too full of holes.

 

[mark kennedy]

Hyperbole would be the most likely explanation for this one:

Job 38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; [and] caused the dayspring to know his place;

Job 38:13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

Job 38:14 It is turned as clay [to] the seal; and they stand as a garment.​

This one gives us an indication that the Devil swoops Jesus up, opinions vary:

Mat 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

Mat 4:5 -
Then the devil taketh him up - This does not mean that he bore him through the air; or that he compelled him to go against his will, or that he performed a miracle in any way to place him there. There is no evidence that Satan had power to do any of these things, and the word translated taketh him Up does not imply any such thing. It means to conduct one; to lead one; to attend or accompany one; or to induce one to go. It is used in the following places in the same sense: Num_23:14; “And he (Balak) brought him (Balaam) into the field of Zophim,” etc. That is, he led him, or induced him to go there. Mat_17:1; “and after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James,” etc.; that is, led or conducted them - not by any means implying that he bore them by force. Mat_20:17; “Jesus, going to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart,” etc. See also Mat_26:37; Mat_27:27; Mar_5:40. From these passages, and many more, it appears that all that is meant here is, that Satan conducted Jesus, or accompanied him; but not that this was done against the will of Jesus. (Barnes esword)​

I'm still waiting to see what this has to do with Geocentricism.

1Ch 16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.​

I don't get it, what am I missing? Oh wait, the topic was geocentricism:

In 1613, just as Galileo published his Letters on the Solar Spots, an openly Copernican writing, the first attack came from a Dominican friar and professor of ecclesiastical history in Florence, Father Lorini. Preaching on All Soul's Day, Lorini said that Copernican doctrine violated Scripture, which clearly places Earth, and not the Sun at the center of the universe. What, if Copernicus were right, would be the sense of Joshua 10:13 which says "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven" or Isaiah 40:22 that speaks of "the heavens stretched out as a curtain" above "the circle of the earth"? Pressured later to apologize for his attack, Lorini later said that he "said a couple of words to the effect that the doctrine of Ipernicus [sic], or whatever his name is, was against Holy Scripture."

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileoaccount.html​

It should be noted here that Galileo does not contradict anything remotely resembling a vital doctrine. When it comes to Astronomy the Scriptures are altogether silent. It should be further noted that Galileo challenged the academic status quo of his day.

Some scholars believe that Galileo's eventual condemnation in 1633 was not to do particularly with his Copernicanism but due to his attack on Aristotle.

The Assayer was published in 1623 just after the election of Pope Urban VIII, who had been, as Cardinal Barberini, Galileo's friend, and had opposed his condemnation in 1616. The Jesuits deeply resented this book, which was a spirited attack on Orazio Grassi's (correct) interpretation on the 1618 comets that were widely believed to have been a baleful harbinger of the Thirty Years' War. By May 1632 the Pope needed the help of the Spanish to stop the Protestant Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden from crossing the Alps and descending on Rome. And the price of the Spanish was a greater attention to the protection of orthodoxy. They would dearly have liked to arraign Galileo for heresy in his atomistic views presented with such verve and force in The Assayer, which struck at the heart of the Tridentine doctrine of the Eucharist but they could hardly press this capital charge considering that the Pope himself would also be implicated (since he had welcomed The Assayer, which was dedicated to him shortly after he was elected). Therefore they chose a lesser charge predating the current Pope, that nevertheless will still silence Galileo.

For the next several years Galileo stayed well away from the Copernican controversy. Toward 1630, however, he revived his project of writing a book on the subject. The book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition for a book which presented a balanced view of both theories. However, in the book, the Copernican theory clearly receives better treatment. In addition, Pope Urban's view on the issue is repeated by a character named Simplicio. Because of this, Galileo was ordered to appear before the Inquisition for trial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair​

The Catholic Church was much more angry about Martin Luther proclaiming the doctrine of Justification by Faith, no doubt that is very Scriptural.

 

[mark kennedy]

[Editing out some annoyance.]

Please weigh the alternatives, including my obvious appeal to the meaning of stability. I am having a hard time not seeing this as baiting. I hope I am wrong. Not every argument needs to get posted. The standard is not every possible use of language a phraise can allow in isolation. This is about tryign to prove that the Bible is factually in error. You do see that you need a higher standard of proof?

I have no idea what they are talking about, could you break this down to kindergarden level and give me a clue what this is all about?

 

[The Lady Kate]

Some scholars believe that Galileo's eventual condemnation in 1633 was not to do particularly with his Copernicanism but due to his attack on Aristotle.

Some scholars should've explained that to Cardinal Bellarmine:

"We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, have heard that Mr. Galileo Galilei is being slandered or alleged to have abjured in our hands and also to have been given salutary penances for this. Having been sought about the truth of the matter, we say that the above-mentioned Galileo has not abjured in our hands, or in the hands of others here in Rome, or anywhere else that we know, any opinion or doctrine of his; nor has he received any penances, salutary or otherwise. On the contrary, he has only been notified of the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, whose content is that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus (that the earth moves around the sun and the sun stands at the center of the world without moving from east to west) is contrary to Holy Scripture and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we have written and signed this with our own hands, on this 26th day of May 1616."

 

[mark kennedy]

Some scholars should've explained that to Cardinal Bellarmine:

"We, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, have heard that Mr. Galileo Galilei is being slandered or alleged to have abjured in our hands and also to have been given salutary penances for this. Having been sought about the truth of the matter, we say that the above-mentioned Galileo has not abjured in our hands, or in the hands of others here in Rome, or anywhere else that we know, any opinion or doctrine of his; nor has he received any penances, salutary or otherwise. On the contrary, he has only been notified of the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index, whose content is that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus (that the earth moves around the sun and the sun stands at the center of the world without moving from east to west) is contrary to Holy Scripture and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we have written and signed this with our own hands, on this 26th day of May 1616."

You really have to understand something else was going on here, the Scriptures were being badly mishandled obviously but that was not the whole story. Galileo argued against Aristotelean science, the Jesuits actually repeated his experiments and observations. The problem was that he upset the status quo and Europe was on the brink of the Thirty Years War. The Protestant Reformation had been going on for some time and the gross abuses of Rome at this time were legion.

This really had nothing to do with Scripture, this was the academic status quo dictating science and religion and just about everything else.

Here is another guy who challenged Rome and ended up under house arrest, you have seen his stuff before but I doubt seriously you have read it:

But the Idols of the Theater are not innate, nor do they steal into the understanding secretly, but are plainly impressed and received into the mind from the play-books of philosophical systems and the perverted rules of demonstration. To attempt refutations in this case would be merely inconsistent with what I have already said: for since we agree neither upon principles nor upon demonstrations there is no place for argument. And this is so far well, inasmuch as it leaves the honor of the ancients untouched. For they are no wise disparaged--the question between them and me being only as to the way. For as the saying is, the lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one. Nay it is obvious that when a man runs the wrong way, the more active and swift he is the further he will go astray. (Francis Bacon, Idols of the Mind)

I would just love it if you guys ever took an interest in real science and philosophy...or theology for that matter and didn't waste so much time on useless controversies.

Let me guess....Your wrong, wrong, wrong Mark!!!! Creationists always are right?

 

[Mallon]

Hyperbole would be the most likely explanation for this one:

Job 38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; [and] caused the dayspring to know his place;​

Job 38:13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?​

Job 38:14 It is turned as clay [to] the seal; and they stand as a garment.​

Hyperbole is a "deliberate exaggeration or overstatement used for emphasis." Something like "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse." With that definition in mind, I hardly see how the above can be considered hyperbole (especially the latter verse). Verse 14 is clearly simile, which is "a figure of speech in which one thing is directly likened to another." In this case, the shape of the earth is likened to a piece of clay pressed under a seal. If this is hyperbole, I'm having a hard time seeing it.