I have been reading this recent book:
Ronald Hendel
Genesis 1-11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
volume 1A of the Anchor Yale Bible, 2024
Of interest to this discussion is Chapter V: “Interpretive Life of Genesis”, pages 42-56.
It gives a survey of the ways in which the Bible has been interpreted, starting off with the earliest interpretation that has survived, from the Book of Nehemiah chapter 8, texts from the Dead Sea, and the Book of Enoch. He marks Calvin’s Principle of Accommodation as leading to, eventually, through Spinoza and the 19th century Documentary Hypothesis to the kind of interpretation that Hendel presents in this book.
To begin with, Hendel accepts multiple authors in Genesis chapters 1 through 11: J, P and a redactor R, and mentions another author, E, whose work appears in later chapters. Their work was done starting in the 7th century or so BCE. He prints separate translations and commentaries, breaking out, for example, the J account of creation and the P account. I hope that that gives the idea of the flavor of the book.
Arbitrarily thick and wide, to avoid changes in g as you approach the edge. I expect that it would be possible to devise a suitable shape for a flat-topped earth to generate the observed consistency in g, particularly if you make the claim that Antarctica is an ice wall around the border of the known earth with what’s beyond entirely open to convenient speculation. However, you run into difficulties with how to make the structure able to resist being pulled into a sphere by gravity.
Imagine a flat earth centered within the Artic. Now imagine the same flat earth completely rotating around its center within a 24-hour period and simultaneously revolving around the sun completely, annually. What would a map of the earth’s surface look like?
ChatGPT said:
ChatGPT
In this scenario, with the flat Earth centered on the Arctic (North Pole), the map would follow a structure similar to an azimuthal equidistant projection centered on the North Pole. Here’s what the map and its features would look like:
Features of the Map
Arctic-Centered Projection:
The North Pole (Arctic) is the central point.
Landmasses and continents radiate outward from the Arctic. For example:
The Equator would form a circular band halfway between the Arctic and the outer edge.
The Southern Hemisphere (e.g., South America, Australia, Antarctica) would be spread around the outer edges of the map.
Antarctica, instead of being a centralized landmass, becomes a continuous ring surrounding the outer boundary of the map.
Rotation (24-hour Cycle):
The flat Earth rotates around the Arctic center every 24 hours, causing the Sun to sweep across the surface.
Day-night cycles are created by the Sun acting as a spotlight moving over the flat surface.
Revolution Around the Sun (Annual Cycle):
The entire flat Earth orbits the Sun in a circular or elliptical path over one year.
Seasonal variations arise due to the changing angles of sunlight reaching different parts of the map, mimicking the effect of axial tilt in a spherical Earth model.
Map Visual Appearance
Continents’ Layout:
Continents like North America, Europe, and Asia are near the Arctic center.
Continents in the Southern Hemisphere, such as South America, Africa, and Australia, are distorted outward toward the edges.
Antarctica’s Role: Antarctica forms a continuous outer boundary around the edge of the map, serving as a perimeter around the flat Earth.
Illumination and Seasons:
As the flat Earth revolves around the Sun, the position of sunlight changes.
The Sun might trace a spiral-like or circular path over the surface across the year, depending on how its angle interacts with the revolution. This motion creates varying day lengths and seasons.
Dynamic Aspects
Day-Night Cycle:
Over 24 hours, the Sun’s spotlight moves across the map, simulating sunrise and sunset.
Seasonal Shifts:
In this model, the Sun’s position relative to the Earth would change over the year, focusing more light on the “Northern Hemisphere” during one part of the orbit and the “Southern Hemisphere” during another.
Would you like me to create a visual map or diagram of this model?
You said:
Yes.
ChatGPT said:
ChatGPT
Here is the visual representation of the flat Earth map centered on the Arctic, with the described features such as the North Pole at the center, continents radiating outward, and Antarctica forming a perimeter ring. Let me know if you would like any adjustments or additional details!:
It does make you wonder what ancients thought about gravity pre-Newton. As a child, I never thought about it, it simply was a property of reality. It is sort of strange when you sit back and consider this invisible force that pulls everything down, once you think of it. Perhaps that is why Hades and Sheol are seen as deep underground, as everything is irresistibly pulled towards death by the passage of time.
Excuse me, I have not been following this topic, so this may be a dumb question. If the Earth is flat, with the North at the center and Antarctica is an ice wall around the edge – then isn’t it a very long trip to travel all the way near Antarctica? I’m sure that one can book commercial flights - let’s say from Sydney, Australia to Johannesburg, South Africa to Buenos Aires, Argentina and back to Sydney. How many miles, how many hours, how fast must you be travelling - as compared to a similar trip starting from London, say. Not to mention the long-distance flight paths. Sydney to Johannesburg on a Globe is a different path on a Flat Earth, This seems an obvious test.
The idea of a flat Earth with Antarctica as an ice wall presents significant challenges to long-distance travel, particularly those involving southern hemisphere routes. Here’s why:
Distances and Travel Times
Flat Earth Model: If the Earth were flat, travel between points in the southern hemisphere would require traversing much greater distances compared to a globe. This would translate to significantly longer flight times and fuel consumption.
Reality: Current flight times between locations like Sydney, Johannesburg, and Buenos Aires are significantly shorter than what would be expected on a flat Earth model.
Flight Paths:
Flat Earth Model: Flight paths would need to be drastically altered to avoid the “ice wall” of Antarctica. This would likely involve convoluted routes and significantly increased travel times.
Reality: Many flights in the southern hemisphere, including those between the locations you mentioned, follow relatively direct routes that are consistent with a spherical Earth.
Speed and Fuel Consumption:
Flat Earth Model: To maintain current travel times on a flat Earth, aircraft would need to achieve significantly higher speeds and consume far more fuel than they currently do. This is not feasible with current technology.
Evidence from Existing Flights: The existence of flights like the Qantas route from Buenos Aires to Darwin, which flies closer to the South Pole than any other passenger flight, directly contradicts the flat Earth model.
In Conclusion: The observed flight times, routes, and fuel consumption for flights in the southern hemisphere strongly support the spherical Earth model and contradict the predictions of a flat Earth model.
Disclaimer: This information is based on the widely accepted scientific understanding of Earth’s shape.
Note: This response aims to provide a factual and scientific explanation. The flat Earth theory is not supported by scientific evidence.
And, I add, you don’t have to believe in either the Flat Earth Theory OR Young Earth Creationism to believe in the crucifixion, death, entombment, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
A conic shape should work, with the right density distribution (if I remembered my calculus I might give it a shot at working out). There’s also the “ice wall”, which gives a fudge factor for the edge – not reason it can’t be 1,000km wide or whatever would make the math work.
BTW, this little discussion here is a perfect example of how YEC works: start with a notion, and spin ad hoc ideas to make the notion work.
To them it was just a part of all reality that stuff all falls. And heavy stuff falls with even more vigor. So the heavier something is, the more it just wants to “go down” toward the bottom of the universe - the very bottom being the underworld (Hades or Hell) and our earth being right next door to that. So of course lighter stuff doesn’t want to fall as much, and water, air, fire and all that lightest stuff can be more up at the top of the earth and even into the heavenly spaces. The angels are up there (intermediaries between heaven and earth) - and God even above them, up above the stars even. So the universe isn’t so much all around us as “all above us”. It’s easier to see this mindset if one is inhabiting the ancient and therefore also Biblical cosmology of a flat earth covered by a dome, etc - but it gets more curious if we take on board the few Greeks who already knew it was spherical (and a fewer yet who even imagined it rotating around its own axis). Even though they were probably an extreme minority, how did they think of the “heavens” as universally “up” given that they would have known geometrically that the heavens were all around us in all directions? One thing they probably (almost certainly) would not have had any mental concept of was universal gravitation. That had to wait on Newton because it was radical even in his time. That everything could be attractive to everything is decidedly not obvious to pre-Newtonian casual observers. That “stuff falls” and heavier stuff even more so - … that’s what was obvious to everyone. How the ancients (who conceptualized a round earth) visualized anyone on the other side (were they upside down?) is a good question. I think it likely that they didn’t think anyone was “over there” - wherever “there was” - because even into the middle ages the thought long survived that nobody could get through the equatorial belt of heat to gain access to “the antipodes” (points opposite you in the other hemisphere). So maybe even the globalists just didn’t imagine there would be any survivable place to live “over there” - probably all water or ‘underworld’ and/or all too hot or some other thing that would prevent them from even having to entertain such notions too seriously. [though I do seem to remember reading how some had postulated an hitherto unmet ‘antipodean’ race that might live over there unable to cross to us - and they had no small amount of fun imagining implications of that.]
A lot of cultures thought the same as what Aristotle did: things have their proper place and so unless impeded will move towards that. For example, the proper place of fire is the sun, so flames rise, trying to reach the sun but impeded by the air. Christian Aristotelians introduced love into the scheme, making love the driving force behind things seeking their proper place.
Actually yes – even some Christian thinkers regarded the stars as pure spiritual beings so that spiritual things went upwards and dead things – the opposite of spiritual – moved downwards. The spirits of the dead, even though spirits, were not pure and so obviously they sank down into the earth! Some eloquent writing has been done to explain how that works – including making it fit with Aristotle.
That has often struck me as odd since there is evidence that the Egyptians sent at least one fleet far enough south that they knew of the existence of Madagascar.
Yeah - I hear you. I think the key is to think of the populations back then as largely fragmented in their knowledge of each other and each other’s doings (even historically). No internet then to be sure! Not even any regular news. Just hearsay. So whatever tiny fraction of some population would have been aware of traveling Egyptians and where they were situated globally (not to mention other Africans farther south), those few must have had their own unique ideas shaped a bit differently by their own experiences I suppose. Even in Galileo’s time, he managed to persist in the belief that only one high-tide happens each day on any given shoreline - despite sailors informing him otherwise. Something we could so easily just check on today he could easily dismiss as hearsay from a few less educated folks. Although - come to think of it, we do have flat earthers alive and well today too, don’t we! So the internet too does make it easy for people to dismiss large swaths of reality in favor of their own pet delusions.
And you don’t have to believe YEC, or deny evolutionary biology, to accept Divine creation, to believe that one is the creature of God, the object of individual care and salvation. Evolution is not about the individual, but populations. Contrast the common 18th century belief in preformation: that each individual living thing was not generated by reproduction, but pre-existed in the earlier generation, and some natural scientists of the day, serious, well-informed, and intelligent, thought that all individuals were created at the creation time. Today, no one has any problem in reconciling sciences of reproduction, embryology, growth and metabolism of the individual with creation.Why should there be major difficulty with what happens with populatioins, species, or “kinds”?
