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Feb. 28, 2007 Using the search engine provided by BibleGateway.com, and checking both the King James Version and the New International Version, I find that the word ‘circle’ appears once in the KJV and five times in the NIV. Four of the instances in the NIV concern motion or position in a circle, rather than a monolithic circular body, for example, in Joshua 6:15, we have, “…they circled the city seven times.” Just once in either translation does the word
‘circle’ refer to a circular body. A circular body, as everyone knows, is a
nearly planar figure, like a coin, a pizza, a phonograph record or a
tondo. No one ever speaks of the
earth as a circle if he understands that it is a sphere. A sphere is a three-dimensional object
approximating the shape of a basketball, a grapefruit or a clue of yarn. The place where the word
‘circle’ appears in both translations is Isaiah 40:22, which reads
thus in the KJV: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the
earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the
heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:” In no way is this to be construed as meaning that
Isaiah knew that the earth is spherical.
In fact comparing the heavens to a curtain or a tent suggests strongly
that Isaiah thought the earth to be circular, like the floor of a circus
surrounded by the big top. It would
be rather unusual to imagine outer space, enveloping the earth as the sea
envelops a fish, as being similar to a curtain or a tent. Hebrew words for ‘circle’ include hog, galil
and egol. Words for sphere are caddur and galgal. In English, the
word ‘circle’ can often be replaced by the word ‘disk’,
while the word ‘sphere’ may usually be replaced by
‘ball’, ‘globe’ or ‘orb’. The words ‘disk’,
‘sphere’, ‘orb’ and ‘globe’ do not appear
in either translation of the Bible.
But the word ‘ball’ appears once in each, in Isaiah 22:18,
which follows: “He will surely violently turn and toss thee
like a ball into a large
country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the
shame of thy lord's house.” Checking Isaiah 40:22 and Isaiah 22:18 in the online
Hebrew text at Mechon-Mamre.org, I find that Isaiah has chosen hog to translate ‘circle’
and caddur to translate
‘ball’. So
there’s no doubt but that Isaiah knew both words. That he chose to say ‘the circle
of the earth’ rather than ‘the ball of the earth’ gives us
clear insight into his primitive geodesic comprehension. Caddur is used even today in Hebrew. It means ‘sphere’,
‘bullet’ or ‘ball’. It came to mean ‘bullet’ in
the day of the musket. In modern Hebrew, caddur-sal
is a literal translation of English ‘basketball’. So there is no precedent to show that the authors of
the Jewish Bible and the New Testament knew that the earth is spherical. We see this is Matthew 4:8-10. "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; And saith
unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship
me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan:
for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou
serve." Of course, this could have been true only if the earth were a plane, whether
circular or not, rather than a sphere.
Someone said that Matthew was using poetic license when he wrote that
passage. If that was the case, he
surely missed the mark, for nothing could be less poetic than the above-said
singsong or doggerel.
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