That's quite a stretch. I think we also disagree on how it does matter. After all plenty of things are supposedly interpreted literally. Don't forget that Tiles already said that the Bible teaches nothing. With all due respect, basically that's quite right as it's totally dependent on ones interpretation of the vagueness.
yes, but Tiles first said that the Catholic church had to admit the church was round and therefore "the bible is wrong". it can't be "wrong" if it's too vague to figure out exactly what it means.
if the bible described a "sea of people" would we have to take it as an ocean composed of people, or a large crowd? you can't expect anyone to take it
that literally.
this vagueness you associate with the entire bible shows exactly how little you've read of it.
Such expressions are obviously remnant of ancient times and can have many meanings, in case of sailors and navigators they simply meant 'out of reach', in early times not knowing that the earth didn't quite has ends the way they thought.
Back in the day it wasn't that strange to think of earth as something with ends at all. In their view the earth does have ends, either because landmasses stop where the seas start, but also because they weren't fully aware about the entire earth so 'ends of the earth' would also mean 'out of reach' or 'never been there' more or less.
that's what i'm saying. it's just an expression. do you think anyone who read those passages soon after it was written thought that it meant "the earth has four corners"? of course not.
I agree that there's an inconsistency, but that's part of the whole point. It shows that it doesn't teach a spherical earth. It shows that it's inconsistent and it shows that they thought the earth was flat in my opinion
how many times do i have to say it doesn't teach a spherical earth? it doesn't teach that the earth has any shape. the inconsistency shows they didn't presume to know the shape of the earth, and instead were using imagery. if this discussion was with native-english speakers it would've been over long ago.
"the corners of the earth" is as ancient an expression as "the ends of the earth", and describes vastness, not geography.
"the circle of the earth" allows readers (especially readers who have no idea what shape the earth is) to imagine how God has dominion over it in its entirety and created the heavens to surround it and cover it. it's a huge stretch to imagine someone reading either of those passages and saying "this is a teaching about the earth's shape".
in a time when the idea of a spherical earth is simply ridiculous (no concept of gravity), would it have been helpful to describe the earth as a sphere in any of those images?
ultimately, whether you agree with those arguments or not, you cannot say the bible teaches a flat earth and does not teach anything.
julz
