Biblical inerrantists should be challenged to explain why the Bible says Earth is flat. Apologists may point out that no simple declarative statement in the Bible says, “Earth is flat.”[1]+ But, as we will see over the next few pages, the most natural and plausible interpretations of relevant Bible passages plainly depict Earth as a flat circular disk covered by a solid dome, much like a snow globe.
Most modern flat-Earthers are religious.[2] The percentage of flat-Earthers who consider themselves highly religious is over twice the percentage in the general population. The single greatest risk factor for becoming a flat-Earther is high confidence in the Bible. These folks brandish the Bible’s flat-Earth passages like Crusaders’ swords.
For perspective, however, less than 5 percent of Americans are flat-Earthers. By and large, Christians nowadays are sensible globists who want nothing to do with flat-Earth nonsense. They scoff at the suggestion that the Bible is a flat-Earth book. Some reluctantly admit that it is a flat-Earth book, but they downplay the significance, yawning, “So what? Scientists also once believed Earth is flat.”
To defend the religious belief in a flat Earth by pointing out that scientists also believed in a flat Earth is to commit the tu quoque fallacy, pronounced too-kwoh-kwee, meaning “You, too.” (This reminds me of Pee-wee Herman snarking, “I know you are, but what am I?”) Such a defense of flat-Earth passages implicitly forfeits any claim of biblical inerrancy.
Setting aside the tu quoque fallacy and the implied forfeiture of biblical inerrancy, let’s be clear about the following historical fact: scientists never believed Earth is flat. Science historian Edward Grant reports that, according to scholarly consensus, science began when institutions and practices central to the scientific endeavor were established during the seventeenth century.[3] Early scientists knew full well that Earth is spherical. Only if you trace back nearly a millennium before the rise of science, when religion ran the show, will you find a preponderance of flat-Earthers.
When I call the Bible a flat-Earth book, Christians typically leap back as though I threw a homosexual rattlesnake at them.[4]+ They then sputter passages, such as Job 26:7, that refer to Earth as hanging in a void or nothing, commonly taken to mean space.
The situation of Earth in space has no bearing on the debate over Earth’s shape. When I tell Christians this, they usually look puzzled. Apparently, no one has ever bothered to point this out to them.[5]+
Believers predictably cite Isaiah 40:22, which speaks of the “circle of the earth.” This passage notably doesn’t refer to the sphere of the Earth; it says circle. People living in biblical times could distinguish circles from spheres. Paul H. Seely reports that the Bible never refers to Earth as a sphere or dur, the Hebrew word used for ball in passages such as Isaiah 22:17–18: “Behold, the LORD will hurl you away violently, O you strong man. He will seize firm hold on you, and whirl you round and round, and throw you like a ball” (ESV).
Isaiah 40:22 continues, “He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (NIV). This reinforces the image of a flat Earth covered by a ceiling or solid enclosure.
Proverbs 8:27 says God “inscribed” or “drew” or “marked out” the circle of Earth. The precise verb varies among translations, but the meaning is consistent. Only a two-dimensional shape such as a circle, in contrast to a sphere, can be inscribed, drawn, or marked out. This passage thus affirms that the authors meant circle, as they explicitly and repeatedly stated.
Luke 17:34–35 says, “I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left” (KJV). The Answers in Genesis website claims that because the women are awake and the men are in bed, this passage depicts Earth as a globe divided between day and night. But women commonly worked in what Genesis 3:8 refers to as “the cool of the evening” (GWT). More to the point, the Luke passage explicitly says “that night.” The passage assumes that it is nighttime everywhere.
The inerrantist’s case is already looking unpersuasive: the “void” passages are irrelevant, whereas the “circle of the earth” and “that night” passages are detrimental to the inerrantist cause. Let us now evaluate passages indicating that Earth is shaped like a snow globe.
Daniel 4:20 describes a tree so tall that it was visible from everywhere on Earth. It is impossible to see a tree, no matter how tall, from all locations on the surface of a spherical Earth, so the author of Daniel 4:20 could not have believed in a spherical Earth. This passage is, however, perfectly consistent with belief in a flat Earth.
In 4:10, Daniel claimed that the tree was “at the center of the earth” (NRSV). On a spherical Earth, this would suggest that the tree’s roots extended to Earth’s core.[6]+ On a flat circular disk, the statement depicts the tree as equidistant from all points along the perimeter, the ideal location to make the tree visible from everywhere.
Modern apologists argue that the flat-Earth perspective was not meant to be taken literally because Daniel’s description of the tree occurs within a dream (had by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II). This defense acknowledges that Daniel implies a flat Earth; that’s not in dispute. The defense claims, however, that Daniel’s flat-Earth perspective doesn’t count as a mark against the credibility of the Bible because it is dream-embedded symbolism. In favor of the apologists’ argument, we might note that the tree itself does have symbolic meaning within the dream: reflecting the might, followed by the humiliation and the ultimate redemption of the king. But unlike the tree, the shape of Earth isn’t central to the narrative, which removes the incentive to infuse it with symbolism.
One challenge facing apologists is that the flatness of Earth is not even explicitly stated. It is implied background knowledge. The book of Daniel was written by multiple authors around 165 BCE, during the Maccabean Revolt. At that time, the flat-Earth perspective was prevalent among everyone except the intellectual elite. It’s hardly surprising that all parties in the Daniel narrative implicitly accept the flat-Earth perspective, even after the dream, during waking hours.
Dreams constitute a familiar biblical motif, appearing in such passages as Genesis 20:6, Genesis 28:12, and Job 33:14–18, as well as, notably, Acts 2:17, where the veracity of dreams is affirmed, and Numbers 12:6, where God himself gives explicit assurance that he reveals the truth to his prophets through dreams. Biblical historian L. Michael White reports, “Usually the revelations come in the form of visions or dreams that are delivered to a righteous person, typically by an angel.”[7] According to author Tony Crisp, there are 121 mentions of revelatory dreams or potential dream states throughout the Bible.
Apologists typically laud biblical prophecies conveyed through dreams. Daniel’s dream is singled out and treated differently because it challenges their faith-derived presupposition that the Bible is inerrant. Unfortunately for apologists, the flat-Earth perspective extends beyond the dream to waking hours. This fact alone pulls the rug out from under the apologists’ “it’s only a dream” argument.
Speaking of rugs, Job 38:13 says God “might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it” (NIV), an allusion to the way a housekeeper might grasp the ends of a rug and shake it to dislodge loose dirt. This passage just screams flat Earth.
Personally, throughout my entire life, I have never owned anything but flat rugs—not a spherical rug in the bunch. If I ordered a rug from an online vender and opened the box to find a spherical rug, I would call their complaints department and ask them if they could possibly be any dumber.
This divine rug-shaking threat is to be heeded because, according to Job 28:24, God “views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens” (NIV). The reference to the “ends” of the Earth suggests flatness as opposed to sphericity. So does the idea that everything is “under the heavens.”
Job 38:14 tells us that Earth “takes shape like clay under a seal” (NIV). The form of clay under a seal is distinctly pancake-like, complete with oversized runes appearing as ridges and valleys impressed upon its upper surface. The book of Job was probably written in the sixth century BCE, whereas the theory of plate tectonics was not proposed until the twentieth century, so it’s hardly surprising that Job got it wrong.
Numerous biblical passages refer to Earth as fixed in place, resting on pillars. Psalms 104:5 informs us, “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved” (NIV). But God can nonetheless shake these pillars when he gets angry: “He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble” (Job 9:6, NIV).
It’s time for a thought experiment. Suppose you had four concrete cylinders set on end like the four legs of a chair. These could serve as pillars. Suppose you also had a concrete disk and a concrete sphere. Question: Which would fit more securely on top of the pillars, the disk or the sphere?
Most toddlers free of mental deficiencies would quickly perceive that the disk-on-pillar design is more stable than the sphere-on-pillar design. The biblical authors surely thought God could design as well as a non-brain-damaged toddler.
Some inerrantists protest that all these passages are simply speaking in poetic language. As far as I can tell, the principal reason to presume the language is poetic is because it expresses falsehoods.[8]+ If all these passages are poetry, then I have a question. Why does the Bible’s poetry always make Earth seem flat? If a group of poets wrote poetry about me that consistently portrayed me with an odd attribute that I do not have, I would eventually conclude that the they really thought I possessed that attribute. That is especially so if their poetry never rhymed, they never claimed to be poets, and they never even hinted that my possessing the strange attribute was anything other than literal fact.
As mentioned, the biblical authors believed the disk of Earth was covered by a solid dome (Genesis 1:7), like a big upside-down cereal bowl. One clue to the solidity of the dome is that the Bible refers to it as a dome, vault, and firmament. It’s hard to get much clearer than that.
The biblical authors do, however, get even clearer. Job 37:18 says that God “[spread] out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze” (NIV). (Mirrors used to be made of polished bronze.) This passage contains plain, unambiguous text, and it contradicts the modern scientific perspective. We now know Earth is not covered by a solid dome, or else our astronauts would have terrible headaches.
Job 37:18 suggests that God beat the heavenly firmament into shape much as an artisan hammers out a bronze bowl. The Hebrew word raqiya, used in Job and elsewhere, is translated to English as “firmament.” The word raqiya derives from riqqua (pronounced rick-KOO-ah), which means “beaten out,” as one might beat out a metal plate to thin it and expand it. The same word appears in Jeremiah 10:9, Isaiah 40:19, Exodus 39:3, and Numbers 16:39 in reference to beating out shapes in metals, including gold, silver, and bronze.
The solid nature of the sky is also indicated by Revelation 6:14, according to which the firmament could be peeled away “like a scroll being rolled up” (NIV). Revelation tells us that God, who lives in heaven, the area atop the firmament, will be visible once he begins to peel away the firmament. Heaven is where God sits on his throne (1 Kings 22:19).
Exodus 24:9–10 tells us heaven is paved with sapphire stone, which geologists suggest was possibly misidentified lapis lazuli.[9]+ The creators of the New International Version, with their passion for editing out biblical goof-ups, took it upon themselves to change the references from sapphire to lapis lazuli. Virtually all other versions stay true to the original authors and say sapphire. The bigger problem is not mistaking lapis lazuli for sapphire; it’s thinking the bluish color of the sky means blue stone was used in its construction.
Additional evidence that the firmament was sturdy is that the stars were attached to the lower surface of the firmament. According to Genesis 1:14, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament . . . ’ ” (KJV). Isaiah 14:13 and Job 22:12–14 also indicate that the stars were attached to the underside of the floor of heaven, noting that God lived above the stars. The order of creation described in Genesis 1 makes more sense when we recognize that the firmament had to be created earlier (day two) than the stars (day four) so that the stars could be attached to the lower surface of the firmament.
Incidentally, Genesis 7:11 tells us heaven is equipped with windows from which God released water during the flood that occurred when Noah was six years old. I’m kidding about Noah being six years old. That would be silly. He was six hundred years old (Genesis 7:6).
How high was the solid dome or vault of heaven? The Bible is not specific, but it drops a few clues. It was above the clouds (Acts 1:9). So, it must have been fairly high. Nonetheless, the tower of Babel described in Genesis 11:1–9 was a sufficiently credible attempt to reach the vault of heaven that God destroyed it. By the way, God had to leave heaven and come down to Earth to inspect the tower. He apparently could not see it well enough by simply peering out heaven’s windows, even using his magical omni-vision.[10]+
As discussed earlier, Daniel’s tree touched the floor of heaven. In Genesis 28:10–19, Jacob speaks of a ladder that extends to heaven, from which he sees God looking down. Job 22:14 reminds us that God “walks on the vault of heaven” (ESV). Isaiah 40:22 says God “sits above the circle of the earth” and from heaven humans look the size of grasshoppers (ESV).
Since the stars were attached to the underside of the firmament, they would have to be much smaller than what science teaches. Based on the Isaiah 40:22 scale, in which a human looks the size of a grasshopper, and given that from Earth’s surface stars appear to be dimensionless points of light, we can infer that stars were no bigger than apples, oranges, or nectarines.
Or figs. Revelation 6:13 says stars can drop to Earth “as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind” (NIV). The notion of fig-sized stars jibes well with the story of the magi who found the baby Jesus because “the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was” (Matthew 2:9, NASB).
Let’s pause briefly to contemplate how the New Testament authors perceived the night sky. Imaginatively transport yourself back to a cloudless evening in the first century CE. The only source of light is a distant campfire, or perhaps a torch or tallow candle. You look up and behold a velvety black dome arching overhead, magnificently studded with thousands of shimmering figs.
The biblical authors didn’t know there are a septillion (1024) stars in the observable universe, one hundred million times the number of ants on Earth. Their knowledge was limited to the roughly three thousand stars visible to the naked eye.[11] They also didn’t know that Earth is spherical, much less that if Earth were scaled down to the size of a pea, a star like our sun would be the size of a large (meter-wide) beach ball. If, as Revelation says, all these stars suddenly dropped to Earth like figs, it would be equivalent to thousands of beach ball-sized objects simultaneously falling onto a pea. The mechanics of the situation just don’t work.
My quarrel is not with biblical authors who lived millennia before the first tenured astronomer, but rather with present-day religious zealots who, for ideological reasons, deny that the Bible is a flat-Earth book. Former president Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian, once said, “There is no need to teach that stars can fall out of the sky and land on a flat Earth in order to defend our religious faith.”[12] It was admirable of Carter to fess up to what the Bible says. He should have also admitted that any Carter-style defense of the faith requires unmooring faith from Scripture.
[1] Nor does it say, “Earth is an oblate ellipsoid,” which is still just an approximation. As expressed by author Isaac Asimov, “When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” I love to quote this to political independents who argue that Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable.
Quotation Source: Isaac Asimov, “The Relativity of Wrong” in The Relativity of Wrong (Doubleday, 1988).
[2] Hoang Nguyen, “Most Flat Earthers Consider Themselves Very Religious,” YouGov, April 2, 2018, https://today.yougov.com/topics/philosophy/articles-reports/2018/04/02/most-flat-earthers-consider-themselves-religious.
[3] Edward Grant, “History of Science: When Did Modern Science Begin?” The American Scholar 66, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 105.
[4] The researcher Bruce Bagemihl reports that the red diamond rattlesnake is among about five hundred animal species that engage in homosexual behavior. A male garter snake will deposit a feminine scent trail to guide other males away from a female. He will then race back to the female, hoping to mate with her before any duped males show up and ruin the party.
[5] The belief that Earth is suspended in space dates back at least to the ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander of Miletos (ca. 610 – 546 BC).
[6] The Earth’s molten iron core, nearly 5,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) deep, exceeds 6,000 degrees Celsius, hotter than the sun’s surface. The pressure at Earth’s core exceeds 1.3 million atmospheres. The deepest penetration of Earth, the Kola Superdeep Borehole drilled by the Soviets, penetrated about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers). That’s roughly 0.2 percent of the distance to Earth’s center. No tree could extend its roots to Earth’s core.
[7] L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries and Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 70.
[8] The eagerness of modern Christians to misrepresent their holy book is paralleled in their eagerness to distort facts in other contexts: denying the Holocaust, the moon landing, climate change, evolution, the safety of vaccines, and the causes of social inequality. Some people have priorities other than truth.
[9] Sapphire is hard, scoring 9 on the Mohs hardness scale, exceeded only by diamond. Lapis lazuli is much softer, registering an unimpressive 5 or 6 on the Mohs hardness scale. Therefore, lapis lazuli is probably unsuitable as construction material for building a massive firmament arching overhead. Michelangelo used ground-up lapis lazuli to create brilliant blues in his paintings, including—appropriately enough—the hues of the heavens depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
[10] God also apparently had to came down from heaven to voyeuristically inspect Sodom and Gomorrah to confirm their debauchery (Genesis 18:20–21). I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
[11] “Deep Astronomy,” https://www.youtube.com/user/tdarnel?feature=watch (video no longer available).
[12] “Carter Slams Georgia’s ‘Evolution’ Proposal,” CNN, January 30, 2004, https://edition.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/30/georgia.evolution/.
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