THE BIBLE: God’s Word or Man’s?

ALTER2EGO -to- EVERYONE:

There are various types of religions in existence with their own sacred books called bibles. As a result, many people believe that all religions are valid and that they are simply different roads to the same place. Along that line, many feel that no type of religion can lay claim to which type of religious bible is really the word of God. For instance, Muslims claim the Koran is the correct bible, while Christians claim the Judeo-Christian Bible is the right one.

The difference between the Judeo-Christian Bible and other religious books is that there is EVIDENCE showing the Judeo-Christian Bible was inspired by Almighty God. No other religious book has been able to prove such. For instance, hundreds of Bible prophesies have been fulfilled, some written centuries before the fulfillment of the prophesied events. Secular history and archeology bears this out. In addition, Bible writers were privy to information that was not discovered by scientists and explorers until centuries later. Below are two such examples.

Example #1: For a period of time in history, humans thought the earth was flat and that if one sailed too far out to sea, one was likely to sail off the earth. By the 15th Century when Christopher Columbus claimed he discovered the new world, most Europeans correctly theorized that the earth is a circle or sphere. However, it was not until after the first circumnavigation of the globe was led by Ferdinand Magellan in the year 1519 that this theory of a 3-Dimensional, circular earth was proven as fact. More than 2,000 years before Ferdinand Magellan attempted to sail around the globe, the prophet Isaiah did not merely theorize but stated that the earth is a circle. Isaiah was inspired by God to write:

"{22} There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gaze, who spread them out like a tent in which to dwell, {28} Have you not come to know or have you not heard? Jehovah, the Creator of the extremities of the earth, is a God to time indefinite. He does not tire out or grow weary. There is no searching out of his understanding." (Isaiah 40:22 and 28 )

SIDE NOTE: Circles can be 2D (flat) or 3D (an ORB or a SPHERE)


Example #2: Prior to the 17th century, none of the best scientific minds could explain what causes the earth to be positioned in a stable orbit. Then in 1687, Isaac Newton published his theory that gravitational forces are the explanation behind the earth's stability. (Gravity is also the reason why humans can move around without fear of toppling off the earth into space.) More than 3,000 years before Newton's existence, under divine inspiration Moses wrote that the earth hangs upon nothing (indicating gravity), as follows:

"He [God] is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing;..." (Job 26:7)


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. How could Isaiah have known that the earth is circular, considering that the writing of the book of Isaiah was completed in 732 B.C.E., and it wasn't until the 16th century AD/CE that the first person to attempt to prove the earth is a circle was Ferdinand Magellan? Magellan attempted to circumnavigate the globe in 1519 AD/CE or 2,251 years AFTER Isaiah wrote that the earth is a circle.
http://didyouknow.org/sailing/
http://www.rmg.co.uk/magellan


2. How did Job know that the earth hangs upon nothing--indicating gravity--considering that the book of Job was completed in 1473 B.C.E. and it wasn't until 1687 AD/CE that Isaac Newton published his theory about gravitational forces--3,160 years AFTER Moses wrote that the earth hangs upon nothing?
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blnewton.htm


3. Where did Isaiah and Moses get this info?

 

Most intelligent people in the ancient world knew that the Earth was a globe. They could determine it by looking at the stars in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Job 9:9 = He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, And the chambers of the south;

In the winter the Pleiades are in the Northern Hemisphere. In the summer they are in the Southern Hemisphere. The Babylonians were well aware of their cycle.

The Middle Easteners never did sail into the Atlantic because of their location but they did travel from Spain to India and into the top parts of Africa.

 

The fact that the earth is round has been known for a long time. As Wyrd said, they could see that from looking at the stars. Many civilizations had noticed that the further north you go, the higher the northern star is. It has also been pointed out that there are mountains in the region that are so tall and so isolated that you can see the earth's curvature from them. That doesn't necessarily indicate orb, but circle. None-the-less, the wording in the book doesn't specify that it was orb either, so it would explain the mentioning.

I don't see that "the earth hangs upon nothing" indicates gravity. You might interpret it to mean gravity, but if you're willing to be that creative, I bet you can find prophecy in Moby Dick. It is not specific enough to be impressive.

Isn't that the same question as the ones before?

 

Speaking of gravity you know how the spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way spin around the nucleus. But with all of that force that distorts the spiral arms how does the central bulge exist like a discrete ball that extends above and below the galactic plane?

http://www.godandscience.org/images/spiralgalaxyngc4565.jpg
http://www.godandscience.org/images/spiralgalaxym81spitzer.jpg

I wonder if anyone has ever replicated that structure in a science experiment?

 

I think that's where dark matter is supposed to turn up. I don't think it's fully understood, but then again, I'm not an astrophysicist.

 

You wish they could. Isaiah "knew" the world was a disc with Yahweh enthroned somewhere above it.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

God “sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth [chuwg], whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the skies [shamayim] like a curtain, he spreads them out like a tent to live in...[Isaiah 40:22].” Chuwg literally means “circle” or “encompassed.” By extension, it can mean roundness, as in a rounded dome or vault. Job 22:14 says God “walks to and fro on the vault of heaven [chuwg].” In both verses, the use of chuwg implies a physical object, on which one can sit and walk. Likewise, the context in both cases requires elevation. In Isaiah, the elevation causes the people below to look small as grasshoppers. In Job, God's eyes must penetrate the clouds to view the doings of humans below. Elevation is also implied by Job 22:12: “Surely God is at the zenith of the heavens [shamayim] and looks down on all the stars, high as they are.”

 

ALTER2EGO -to- THE WYRD OF GAWD:

The book of Isaiah was written in the 8th century B.C.E. It was not until 200 years later, in the 6th century B.C.E., that the Greeks (specifically Aristotle) theorized that the earth is spherical. In other words, Isaiah was well ahead of his time. And he didn't merely theorize, he wrote affirmatively that earth is a 3D circle. This is because he was writing under Divine inspiration from God--the Creator of the earth.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- DURANDAL:

Unless you can prove where Isaiah was writing that the earth was a disc, you're merely expressing your opinion. Since everybody on this planet has an opinion, just don't expect me to put your opinion above anybody elses.

Isaiah was NOT writing from his perspective on earth. If that had been the case, he would have described what the Greeks (beginning with Aristotle) described: a sphere. Instead, Isaiah was writing from God's perspective and was giving a description of how earth looks from the perspective of someone who is hovering above it. From a hovering position, the earth appears to me a circle rather than a sphere.


"{22} There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gaze, who spread them out like a tent in which to dwell, {28} Have you not come to know or have you not heard? Jehovah, the Creator of the extremities of the earth, is a God to time indefinite. He does not tire out or grow weary. There is no searching out of his understanding." (Isaiah 40:22 and 28 )

It was not until humans mastered space flight in the 20th century that astronauts were able to hover above earth and see what God saw—the earth appearing like a floating circle. Below is a photograph taken from outer space. Because of the camera angle, it looks exactly as Isaiah described it: like a floating circle. To enlarge the image on your screen, simply click on it.

​

 

So, my fact-based view is "just my opinion" while your wholly unsubstantiated claims that Isaiah knew the Earth was spheroid in shape are factual?

The language of the Bible is dead-set against your view, as are ancillary facts.

 

IMO they're pulling our leg with the dark matter claim. Something weird is happening though to create such a structure.

 

Here's some background as to who thought what.

Cosmology:

Two Pagan views and the modern view
http://www.religioustolerance.org/cosmo_bibl1.htm

 

ALTER2EGO -to- DURANDAL:
The "fact-based" view you presented is based entirely upon your erroneous opinions, as follows:

Your above statements do not amount to being "fact-based" because you are voicing your opinions. Opinions are never facts. You are merely speculating. In this instance, your opinion is that God would have had to literally have his foot on the earth. That idea is illogical because the Bible makes it clear that Jehovah is a spirit. Therefore he would not literally have his foot on the earth.

"God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth." (John 4:24)


Furthermore, the "vault of the earth" (Isaiah 40:22) is with reference to the circle of the earth from God's viewpoint, whereas the "vault of heaven" (Job 22:14) is talking about heaven itself—where God resides. Since when did "earth" and "heaven" become the same thing merely because the word "vault" is mentioned with both of them? Assuming there's a scripture regarding the "vault of the sea," is this forum to then accept that it all means the same thing because of the word "vault"?

 

Good link!

 

All these documents are the word of man, claiming to be the word of god.

This is fact, until theists scientifically prove otherwise, anything else is hearsay, rumour and chinese wispers.

 

More from the link http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

The Vault of Heaven

The vault of heaven is a crucial concept. The word “firmament” appears in the King James version of the Old Testament 17 times, and in each case it is translated from the Hebrew word raqiya, which meant the visible vault of the sky. The word raqiya comes from riqqua, meaning “beaten out.” In ancient times, brass objects were either cast in the form required or beaten into shape on an anvil. A good craftsman could beat a lump of cast brass into a thin bowl. Thus, Elihu asks Job, “Can you beat out [raqa] the vault of the skies, as he does, hard as a mirror of cast metal (Job 37:18 )?”

Elihu's question shows that the Hebrews considered the vault of heaven a solid, physical object. Such a large dome would be a tremendous feat of engineering. The Hebrews (and supposedly Yahweh Himself) considered it exactly that, and this point is hammered home by five scriptures:

Job 9:8, “...who by himself spread out the heavens [shamayim]...”

Psalm 19:1, “The heavens [shamayim] tell out the glory of God, the vault of heaven [raqiya] reveals his handiwork.”

Psalm 102:25, “...the heavens [shamayim] were thy handiwork.”

Isaiah 45:12, “I, with my own hands, stretched out the heavens [shamayim] and caused all their host to shine...”

Isaiah 48:13, “...with my right hand I formed the expanse of the sky [shamayim]...”

...

The Shape of the Earth

Disregarding the dome, the essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. Likewise, in describing the temptation of Jesus by Satan, Matthew 4:8 says, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory.” Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat. The same is true of Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...”

These are opinions based in fact, not on what the author simply wants to be true. You, on the other hand... Well, let us continue a little further down the page.

The Book of Enoch

The cosmology previously described is derived from the Bible itself, following the 19th century flat-earthers. Some of the evidence is more ambiguous than we would like. Ambiguities in ancient documents can often be elucidated by consulting contemporary documents. The most important ancient document describing Hebrew cosmology is 1 Enoch (sometimes called the Ethiopic Book of Enoch), one of those long, disjointed, scissors and paste jobs beloved by ancient scribes. For a dozen or so centuries, European scholars knew 1 Enoch only from numerous passages preserved in the patristic literature. In 1773, the Scottish adventurer James Bruce found complete copies in Ethiopia.

Numerous manuscripts of 1 Enoch have since been found in Ethiopian monasteries. Turn of the century scholars concluded that parts of the book are pre-Maccabean, and most (perhaps all) of it was composed by 100 B.C. [Charles, 1913]. These conclusions were largely vindicated when numerous fragments of 1 Enoch were found among the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. There have been two major English translations of 1 Enoch, the 1913 translation of R. H. Charles and the 1983 translation by E. Isaac. All of the quotations that follow come from the newer translation.

The importance of 1 Enoch is poorly appreciated outside the scholarly community. Comparison of its text with New Testament books reveals that many Enochian doctrines were taken over by early Christians. E. Isaac writes:

There is little doubt that 1 Enoch was influential in molding New Testament doctrines concerning the nature of the Messiah, the Son of Man, the messianic kingdom, demonology, the future, resurrection, final judgment, the whole eschatological theater, and symbolism. No wonder, therefore, that the book was highly regarded by many of the apostolic and Church Fathers [1986, 10].


The cosmos as described in the book of Enoch.
Picture © 1992 by Robert Schadewald.

...

First Enoch is important for another reason. Unlike the canonical books of the Bible, which (in my view) were never meant to teach science, sections of 1 Enoch were intended to describe the natural world. The narrator sometimes sounds like a 2nd century B.C. Carl Sagan explaining the heavens and earth to the admiring masses. The Enochian cosmology is precisely the flat-earth cosmology previously derived from the canonical books.

The Ends of the Earth

The angel Uriel guided Enoch in most of his travels. They made several trips to the ends of the earth, where the dome of heaven came down to the surface. For instance, Enoch says:

I went to the extreme ends of the earth and saw there huge beasts, each different from the other and different birds (also) differing from one another in appearance, beauty, and voice. And to the east of those beasts, I saw the ultimate ends of the earth which rests on the heaven. And the gates of heaven were open, and I saw how the stars of heaven come out...(1 Enoch 33:1-2).

(The sharp-eyed reader will note what I suspect is an editing error in the Isaac translation. The earth resting on the heaven makes no sense. R. H. Charles has “whereon the heaven rests.”)

Again, Enoch says, “I went in the direction of the north, to the extreme ends of the earth, and there at the extreme end of the whole world I saw a great and glorious seat. There (also) I saw three open gates of heaven; when it blows cold, hail, frost, snow, dew, and rain, through each one of the (gates) the winds proceed in the northwesterly direction (1 Enoch 34:1-2).” This accords well with Jeremiah 51:16 which says, “he brings up the mist from the ends of the earth, he opens rifts for the rain and brings the wind out of his storehouses.” In subsequent chapters, Enoch journeys “to the extreme ends of the earth” in the west, south, and east. In each place he saw three more “open gates of heaven.”

...

 

Orphic hymns even speak about earth being tilted .
The christian bible is Odyssey fanfic .

 

Finally, here's The Book of Enoch in all its translated glory: http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/enoch.html

I'm sure it's the devil's work, though

 

Vague verses are only predictive in hindsight.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- DURANDAL:

Presenting something like this is supposed to prove what? None of this stuff is scriptural, meaning it's not found anywhere in the Judeo-Christian Bible. It's from the superstitions of humans who did not serve Jehovah. Sheol is the synonym for "Hades" and "hell," which is nothing more than mankind's common grave

 

ALTER2EGO -to- DURANDAL:

I hope you had a real good laugh. And I hope you laughed hard. But the joke's on you. There is no such thing as a book of Enoch. It doesn't appear in any Bible. It's not in the Jewish Tanakh, it's not in the Protestant Bible, it's not in the Catholic Bible, and it's not in the Eastern Orthodox Bible. It didn't show up among the Bible books that were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the oldest-known copy of the original writings. Parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated as far back as the 5th century B.C.E. and contains fragments of all of the Hebrew books except the Book of Esther. However, the Book of Esther appears in the Masoretic Text from which modern Bibles are taken. But guess what? Even the Masoretic Text doesn't contain a book called Enoch. Below is a weblink that will show you the Hebrew books in the Protestant and Jewish Bibles. Are you still laughing?
http://www.biblewheel.com/canon/ChristianOT_vs_Tanakh.asp


The following weblink gives all of the books in the various Bibles mentioned in my rebuttal above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible

 

Dark matter is really just a placeholder term to describe the phenomena since the Astronomy community doesn't actually know what's occurring. It's sort of the same way that Einstein had the cosmological constant in his equations before Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, which removed the need for the cosmological constant.

 

No matter where you are on the Earth, except for maybe extremely high altitudes that would allow you to see the curvature, the area that is visible to you is a 360 degree "circle". Saying that Earth is a circle is NOT the same thing as saying it's spherical, first off because "circle" does not imply a three dimensional object, and the "circle" would easily fit into the flat Earth theory that was prevalent for another 1500 years or so after the birth of Christ. If he was looking upon the Earth from a God's eye view, why would he use the wrong terms to describe it? Why wouldn't he have said globe, or sphere, or ball, or any other similar term that implies three dimensions and not flat two dimensional objects?

 

Moses was born, raised and lived in pharoahs house, per him per Torah, per se!

He would have had access to the whole of the Egyptian library.

Any "prophet" can be said to talk to gods. Heck if Moses lived in the pharoahs house as written then he perhaps talked to god each evening at supper.

As for visions? Have you ever had de ja vu?

Are you conscious enough to imagine your butt being slapped for lying?

Isaiah is not a book to use to point out childish circle jerks but that what has been said is what is per se to come. The prophets....!

What did Isaiah say would happen to the idiots?

 

Man is from the garden, naturally of course in her time.

Man became aware of choice (conscious of itself). The old books suggest women showed man to make a choice and then man thought he was not in the garden, named eve (created the word), the "god" told the man he was capable (gen 3:22), and made him cloths. The story is cool and makes sense. Women nurtures the next generation and conscious empathy by became a requisite for the next generations to even exist. Our kids are stupid unless we teach them. Mom has to give it it's first meal, by choice. Instinctively driven for the procurement of living into the next generation. (an entropy buster: life!)

Conscious man created the word. To describe what it experiences.

Knowledge has evolved and the bonafide proof of its good to us all is the population explosion of the last 200yrs.

We are it defining itself!

Boo

 

Isaiah wrote from the viewpoint of Jehovah who is positioned above earth. I believe I made that clear in my Post #8 on page 1 of this thread. I even posted a photograph taken from outer space by astronauts which shows earth appearing like a circle. Again, Isaiah was simply giving a description of how earth looks from the viewpoint of one who is positioned at a certain angle above the earth. Since he was on earth, he would not have been writing from his viewpoint, which presented a spherical view of the horizon and therefore a spherical earth.