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[gadam123]

Hi dear brothers and sisters I am back again.

Peace and love to you all…….Adam

[gadam123]

Nicely explained by sis Jodi on Proverbs 8. Yes the Hebrew Bible states that it’s Messiah is not a preexisting one but rather a future Messiah and even till date it is also being claimed by its owners

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Continued…..

Yahweh of Teman

The title “Yahweh of Teman” is found outside the Old Testament at Kuntillet Ajrud, and this adds historical weight to the idea that Yahweh with the South were associated early on. Kuntillet ʿAjrud (AKA Horvat Teman) is a small, one-period site situated between the southern Negev and the eastern Sinai peninsula. Its occupation dates back to the late 9 th / early 8th century (BCE), according to its ceramics, paleography, and carbon-14 dating, although Schniedewind has recently outlined a good argument
that some activity at the site goes back to the 10 th century. It appears to have been a minor caravan stop with attached religious shrines. In this latter function, the discovery of references to Yahweh at the site have rightly drawn the attention of historians of Israelite Religion. The item which has received the most attention is a pithos depicting three humanoid figures with an accompanying Hebrew inscription, “I bless you by (or to) Yahweh of Samaria and his A / asherah.” But there are also several references to “Yahweh of Teman.”

Most of the occurrences of Yahweh at Kuntillet Ajrud are to the name on its own (e.g., Stone inscriptions 1.2, Pithos A 3.1; Wall Plaster 4.2). “Yahweh of Teman,” however, is found in several inscriptions. Twice it  is written on Pithos B, at 3.6 and at 3.9, the second with the definite article, “Yahweh of the Teman.” This might translate as “Yahweh of the South,” or Teman may be treated as requiring a definite article, similar to “the Negev,” “the Carmel,” or “the Sharon.” Twice, Asherah is associated with Yahweh of Teman: “I have blessed you by Yahweh of Teman and Asherata [sic],” Inscription D on Pithos B, and “May he
bless you by Yahweh of Teman and Asherah,” Inscription F on Pithos B. In all these cases, Teman is written defectively. In Inscription G on Wall Plaster 4.1.1, Yahweh of Teman is written with plene spelling: “Recount [praises] to Yahweh of Teman and Asherah. Yahweh of the South did good…set the vine…Yahweh of the South (or of the Teman) has ….” The main debate is whether Yahweh of Teman, Yahweh of Samaria—which also occurs at Kuntillet Ajrud, and whatever other Yahwehs there might be are different deities or whether they are different manifestations of the same deity.

Kenites at Kuntillet Ajrud

Kuntillet Ajrud has another important link to the biblical traditions about Yahweh’s southern origins. Line 7 of Wall Plaster 4.3 reads “Cain (Heb. קין) destroyed a field and lofty mountains.” This was written on the north doorjamb of the foyer to the “Bench Room” of Building A, the most clearly cultic structure of the site. Within Building A, the Bench Room served ritual functions, as it produced decorative fragments of Pithos A, woodwork pieces, exotica like fresh- and salt-water fish bones and shells, chalices, and fragments of white-plaster with remnants of Kenites at Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions including Wall Plaster 4.1.30 Inscription 4.3 is the only wall inscription found in situ, 1.2 m above the floor.

The “translation” by Nadav Naʿaman of 2011 must be addressed, as this translation has been embraced by Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer. Naʿaman translates the entire inscription, producing a variant of the Exodus narrative. Most of the letters Naʿaman reads cannot be seen on the inscription, and in the few cases where letters are visible, Naʿaman regularly departs from the readings given by the initial decipherment of Aḥituv and Eshel. One could just as easily translate the line as “The Kenite(s) destroyed a field” or “The Kenite(s) devastated the territory” (cf. Gen 14:7; 32:4; 36:35; Hos 12:13). The final clause, מרמהרמ, could be translated either “lofty mountains” or “treachery,” reconstructing perhaps a following בידו. The original editors of the inscription do suggest a

connection to the Kenites, and cite the Oracle of Balaam in Num 24:21, assigning the Kenites a “nest in the rock,” as well as Jer 49:16’s oracle against the
Edomites who “live in the clefts of the rock, who hold the height of the hill…[who] make your nest as high as the eagle’s.” Whether the translation is Cain or Kenites, in either case this inscription is important. The name Cain is unknown outside of Cain son of Adam and where it means Kenites.

So the Cain / Kenite inscription is situated at the entry to the Bench Room of this religious building. Another wall inscription at this location reads as follows:

And when God shone forth on r[
And mountains melted
And peaks were crushed
———————————
To bless the Lord on the day of batt[le
To the name of God on the day of batt[le

“The Lord” and “God” are preferable to “Baal” and “El,” names that are extremely rare in Phoenician in comparison to the widespread usage of both אל and בעל with Yahweh in Iron II inscriptions. This inscription features many of the motifs of the variants discussed in Chapter One. “Mountains disintegrating” from Judg 5:5 and Hab 3:6 is here, as is the shining forth of God from Deut 33:2 and Hab 3:4, using precisely the same verb zrḫ .

Although Judah may have originally built the site, for most of its use the territory surrounding Kuntillet Ajrud belonged to the Northern Kingdom. Axelsson suggests the emphasis on Yahweh coming from the South in Northern Kingdom traditions, including Elijah’s journey to Mount Horeb, is due to the
political inaccessibility of Jerusalem and Zion having displaced the South in Judah—the exact opposite of Pfeiffer’s argument. However, although Kuntillet Ajrud may have politically been Israel, as has been mentioned above, the pottery is Judahite, and the orthography mixed. On pithoi, the short yaw in theophoric personal names displays the Israelian orthography, while the Phoenician script on the wall plasters is Judahite orthography. The latter script would have a formal, prestige status, and it is in this script that the Cain / Kenite inscription appears.

One entered the Bench Room shrine past inscriptions that refer to Yahweh of Teman, well-attested throughout Kuntillet Ajrud, the shaking of mountains, the shining forth of God, and Cain or the Kenites. If we had the entirety of the Cain / Kenite inscription, assuredly much more would be added to what it means that Yahweh comes from the South, a tradition the site’s inscriptions further support. The divine name Yahweh appears several times among peoples who were not Israelites. Most of these occurrences post-date Israelite usage, and so tell us little about the origin of Yahweh, southern or otherwise, but they are rarely if ever listed together in contemporary scholarship….(taken from the book “Yahweh Origin of a Desert God by Robert D Miller II)

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The God of the Hebrew Bible

The name “God,” “El” in Hebrew, also belongs to this Northwest Semitic literary tradition. In Ugaritic texts, the god El is creator, king, and father. In the Deir Allah literary text, El behaves in ways similar to the Old Testament’s portrait of God. El is ubiquitous in West Asia, showing up in personal names found in Tell Amarna letters, in Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions, and in Egyptian topographic lists. “El” is one of the ways Israel addressed and understood God from an early period (Deut 33:26; Ps 68:36). Even the name “Israel,” found first in the 13th -century Merneptah Stele, displays the divine name El. Israel’s God has another name, however, “Yahweh.” Daniel Sibony calls this name “La plus grande création de la Bible hébraïque.” Yet, as Meindert Dijkstra writes, “The name and character of YHWH appeared out of the blue in the Ancient Near East.” No Yahweh appears in Ugaritic texts. Unlike Baal and El, ancient Palestine knows no Yahweh theophoric place-names.

The Old Testament itself gives conflicting accounts of how and when Israel came to know the name Yahweh. Yahweh was God of both Israel and Judah, and that might suggest that Yahweh was known quite early. The oldest biblical text that uses the name Yahweh is probably Judg 5:13, 23, and the name’s appearance in Yahwistic names Joshua and Jonathan is also old, although no personal names found in the LB or Iron I  Levant contain the name Yahweh. Ancient Near Eastern texts from outside the Bible also attest to Yahweh being the God of Israel; the earliest of these is the Mesha Stele (840 BCE).

According to Gen 4:26, people began to “call on the name of Yahweh” close to the origin of the world. Most scholars assign this text to the so-called Yahwist Source. By contrast, the Priestly Writer believes the name was new to Moses (Exod 6:3), or is at least aware of two conflicting accounts and attempts to reconcile them. Biblical scholars have long ignored the testimony of Exodus 6 and assumed Israel knew the name Yahweh “long before the time of Moses,” a view argued by Kittel, Delitzsch, Ewald, Wellhausen, Smend, and Kautzsch among others.

On the other hand, Genesis 4 may not concern the use of the name Yahweh at all. It could simply be a statement about people first worshipping God, a God whom the biblical author naturally knew to be named “Yahweh.” In that case, the text says nothing about what its author thought early people called God and when. If the author of Genesis 4 meant to say that in Enosh’s time people began to address God by the Tetragrammaton, there were many easier ways to say that (as in Gen 9:20; 10:8).

Some scholars have found the etymology of “Yahweh” relevant for the name’s (and the God’s) origin. First, we must establish that the name is, in fact, Yahweh. The Mesha Stele preserves the form identical to the Hebrew Bible, יהוה. The form Yah occurs in personal names and in words like hallelujah, but also in Exod 15:2; Isa 12:2; and Ps 68:19. These two forms, Yah and the tetragrammaton, occur together on the Khirbet Beit Lei Inscription, c. 700 BCE. The Samaria Ostraca have Yaw in personal names, a form also attested in Assyrian royal annals. Other names include the form Yahow, which also appears in various epigraphic sources such as the Elephantine texts and Murashu archive from Nippur. The correct vocalization is Yahweh, first proposed by Gilbert Génébrard OSB in 1567.

The chapter of Exodus 3 that presents the Tetragrammaton, introduces in v 1 Moses’ “father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian,” a title he is again given in Exod 18:1. Exodus 18 continues in v 9 (ESV, with the proper name Yahweh as it appears in the MT),

9 And Jethro rejoiced for all the good that Yahweh had done to Israel, in that he had
delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians.
10 Jethro said, “Blessed be Yahweh, who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. 11 Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.” 12 And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God.

The plain sense is that the priesthood of Jethro is a priesthood of Yahweh. Admittedly, the text only ever calls him a priest of God (El), but Yahweh is the name The Midianite (Kenite) Hypothesis used in vv 9–11. The author might envision Jethro as a priest of some other god(s) and intend that v 11 reflect a realization that Yahweh is greater than those other gods, and that is, in fact, how Judaism has traditionally interpreted the passage. Yet as Morgenstern wrote, “It is not the cry of a hiterhto half-convinced and hesitating convert to a new faith, but rather the exultant shout of an old and loyal worshiper and champion of Yahweh.” Some Jewish traditions noted rightly that the “conversion” interpretation would require a mental “conversion” before v 9, only voiced in v 11, as well as the awkward fact of Moses’  marriage into a non-Yahwistic family. Before this chapter, Jethro (and by extension, his daughter Zipporah) is never presented as a polytheist or “pagan” of any sort. Moreover, the fact that it is Jethro who makes the offering in v 12 (stated even stronger in the Syriac, Targumim, and Vulgate, where he not only “brings” it but also burns it) requires that his priesthood has at a minimum somehow automatically transferred. The more natural interpretation is that the author believes Jethro’s was always a priesthood of Yahweh. Note that Jethro knows the name “Yahweh” in v 10 before Moses has even told him about it. The strength of this reading caused some rabbinic traditions to say that Jethro was such a great Yahwistic saint that when he arrived at the Israelite camp, even the Shekinah went out to meet him (Mekhilta 1c; Midrash Tanhuma Yitro, 6).

And Exodus 3:1 calls the father-in-law of Moses by the name Jethro and states that he was a Midianite. Num 10:29, however, refers to Hobab son of Reuel, stating that either Hobab or Reuel is Moses’ Midianite father-in-law, although it is not clear which. That Hobab is to guide Israel through the wilderness suggests he is meant to be the younger man, and Reuel is the father, although Haupt argued that “Hobab” was the Edomite word for “father-in-law.” Exod 2:18 calls Moses’ father-in-law Reuel, while in Judg 4:11, Hobab is the father-in-law. In Judges 4, however, Hobab is a Kenite, as is the unnamed father-in-law in Judg 1:16, named Hobab in the Septuagint. Reuel is called a priest in Exod 2:18, just as Jethro is.

These names allow us to make connections in other texts, shedding more light on the intended ethnicity of Moses’ father-in-law. Genesis 36:4 has a son of Esau named Reuel, the half-brother of Eliphaz father of Amalek (by a Horite woman named Timna). Benno Jacob believed this was the same Reuel and that
he was an Edomite who had moved to Midian. In any case, the text is linking Midianites with Edomites and with Amalekites (as does 1 Samuel 14:35; 15:5–7; 27:5–11, which also includes Jerahmeel[ites]). Amalekites ally with Midianites in Judges 6 and 7.

The Song of Deborah, to which will shall return, makes a fascinating connection between Israel and Amalek. Verse 14 reads, “From Ephraim is their ancestry, in Amalek, following you, Benjamin, with your kin.” The translation here is not in question. This might mean some of the Ephraimites (and Benjaminites ?) lived among Amalekites; it is hard to see how it could mean that Amalekites had been absorbed into Ephraim or that there was an Amalekite enclave in Ephraim. It could simply preserve the memory of some past defeat of Amalekites on a mountain of Ephraim, historical or otherwise, but it might also have something to do with Amalekites lurking in the background of Israel’s identity.

Jethro is priest of Midian, and other texts associate Midian with Yahweh and with Israel’s early identity. The “Cushan” in this passage is often used to identify the “Cush” of Moses’ “Cushite” wife in Numbers 12 as another name for Midian and not Ethiopia, thereby confirming the rabbinic view that Moses had only one wife: Zipporah the Midianite was that wife, and there was no second, Ethiopian wife. Exod 18:2 states that Moses had sent Zipporah away, i. e., divorced her. As scholar after scholar has noted, the biblical text’s significant antipathy toward Midian (e.g., Num 25:6–8, 17; 31; Judges 6–7; and Edom and Amalek) supports the historicity of a Midianite connection at an early period and a religious connection at that. The connection is reiterated in three separate places: Exodus; Numbers 10; and Judges 1 and 4. In the core traditions of the Exodus narrative, as Kenton Sparks writes, “The Midianites prove crucial to the very survival of Moses and his mission”: as guides in the desert, in the subdivision of society, and potentially as an adjunct to the Israelite community although Jethro declines the invitation. Moreover, the oldest traditions say the name “Yahweh” was learned in Midian. The Kenites are always portrayed as Yahwistic (e.g., Judg 4:17; 5:24; 1 Sam 15:6; 27:10; 30:29).  They are connected with the Rechabites, whose zeal for Yahwism was renowned, untouched by “Canaanite cults” – precisely the “Ugarit-free” I am after in this study, and who abstained from alcohol. The nature of the Kenites expands when they are connected with Cain. The spelling is identical, and in fact the word translated “Kenite(s)” in Num 24:22 and Judg 4:11 is simply “Cain.” The only problem would be that the line of Cain ought to have been exterminated in the Flood, although such issues are often overlooked in the Hebrew Bible.

The origins of the name Yahweh in Midian, a Midian / Kenite who worships Yahweh before the Exodus, both early traditions, and the identity of the ethnic groups involved as nomadic smiths, led over a century ago to the so-called Kenite Hypothesis. Often the poetic passages ascribing “southern origins” to Yahweh himself, to be discussed below, were allied to the theory. In its usual form, a less literal version viewed Yahweh as originally the god of the Kenites (or Midianites), from whom Israel adopted both the divine name and some usually-undefined theology. Zeal for Yahweh passed down, then, from the Kenites to their offspring the Rechabites. Numbers 25 suggests an important sanctuary at Baal Peor that was a “place of covenanting involving Simeonite Israelites, Midianites, and Moabites,” at a time at the end of the Late Bronze Age when “we find several tribes – Kenites, Kenizzites, Calebites, Jerahmeelites, Judahites, Simeonites and Levites – moving into the northern Sinai and the Negev.” I question our ability to assess the historicity of a shrine at Baal Peor, of such migrations, even of the existence of actual tribes called “Calebites” or “Jerahmeelites.” Moreover, although Cain is condemned to wandering, it is Abel who is the shepherd, Cain the crop farmer, and Cain’s descendants are the founders of the first cities.

Metallurgy is one of the earliest associations with the Kenites. The Exodus 18 text analyzed above is either an early independent tradition or E, if there is such a thing.The tradition in 1 Samuel 30 that the Kenites are nomadic may be early. The Kenites-Amalekite connection is also old; 1 Samuel 15 is “part of the oldest traditions,” where Saul is not rejected but rebuked. 1 Samuel 27 is pre-Deutero-nomistic, the entire chapter lacking Deuteronomistic language. Caleb’s story in Numbers 13 is from the so-called Yahwist, but preserving some earlier traditions. Caleb’s account in Joshua 14 is the work of the Deuteronomistic Historian, but using earlier material since it seems to be a free-floating fragment only placed here as the least problematic locus. Noting that Judges 6–8 is already presupposed by Isa 9:4, the connection of Midianites and Amalekites in Judges 6 and 7 is pre-DtrH. The Midianite-Kenite connection, the nomadic status of Midianites, the ethnic identity of Caleb as Kenite / Kenizzite, and the story of the Rechabites, are all late Pre-Exilic memorats. The remaining memorats are Post-Exilic.

This means that the Rechabites are probably irrelevant to this discussion. Their connection to the clans of Moses’ father-in-law is late. I have not here sorted out Midianites vs. Kenites, to determine if one or the other is the non-Israelite Yahwists’ primary identification. This is because, as we have seen, both traditions are equally early. It is Midian as early as Judges 6, Habakkuk 3, and the early strata of Exodus. Kenites appear similarly as early as the Oracles of Balaam, and again in early strata of Exodus. I prefer to see these as two terms for the same people, with Midian slowly dropping out and, ultimately, Chronicles making the Kenites part of Judah. This Traditions History shows that at least as early as, say, 700 BCE, Israelite thinkers had a tradition that there were non-Israelite Yahweh-worshippers in the region just to the north and northeast of the Gulf of Aqaba—pastoralists, smiths, and musicians known as Kenites or Midianites (related to Amalek)—and that Yahweh in name at least entered Israel through their influence.

Southern Origins of Yahweh in the Bible

Scholars have long correlated Biblical texts, theophanies of God where the symbolic matrix is not (or primarily not) God coming on the clouds in rain and thunder but coming from the deserts of the South.

Deut 33:2. The text reads,

He said, “Yahweh came from Sinai
And dawned on him from Seir
He shone  forth from Mount Paran
And went from his peak sanctuary                                                                                                        From his southland mountain slopes for them.

This passage is a poem of five trilexic stichs. The stichs list five locations from which God has come: Sinai, Seir, Paran, “peak sanctuary,” and the mountain slopes. These locations are in parallel, but not identical, as we shall see. I will also argue that only in this variant is Sinai one of the places from which God comes.
Since Paran is also in Habakkuk 3, Teman in Habakkuk 3 and Zechariah 9, and Seir in Judges 5, Sinai may have been added here at an early point to make the poem more “orthodox.” After all, Sinai breaks the “two-and-two” pattern. Thus, v 2b could have been added, perhaps by the Deuteronomistic Historian, who also added Moses in v 4. This would then leave a perfect pair of parallels. Seir can be synonymous with Edom, as it is in Ezekiel 35. While Gen 36:8–9 equates Edom with Seir, v 20 identifies Seir as a Horite who lived earlier than the time of Esau. Gen 14:6 and Josh 15:1–4, however, consider Seir to include that portion of Edom that is west of the Arabah, and this is the general usage, although Nathan MacDonald has unpacked variations. Seir can also refer to a people who live in this region, although this seems to be unique to Priestly-associated writings (Gen 36:20–21; 2 Chron 25:11, 14). The phrase “Mount Seir” occurs in Gen 36:8–9; Deut 1:2; and Josh 24:4, and refers to a range in Seir.305 The name Seir may derive from “hairy.” This could mean “forested” (Gen 27:11, 23; Lev 13:3; Isa 7:2; Ezek 16:7; Zech 13:4; Cant 4:4; Job 4:15), but should not determine where it is to be located, since it could equally refer to Esau’s personal appearance.

Paran—the only term here with “mountain” attached — overlaps with Edom and abuts the Wilderness of Zin between Kadesh and Edom (1 Kgs 11:17–18). It is to Paran that Hagar and Ishmael flee in Gen 21:21, where, according to the book of Jubilees, they were later joined by the sons of Keturah (20:12–13). Knauf ’s philological equation of Paran with Wadi Feiran within the Sinai Peninsula is linguistically impossible. Moreover, this passage is not about Mount Sinai at all, or at least not about the revelation of the Law at Sinai. As we shall see, it is the only variant that mentions Sinai; the rest are clear in referring to Israel’s southeast, not southwest. In any case, Yahweh does not come from Sinai in Exodus, he comes to Sinai, to deliver the Law (Exod 19:18–20).

Judg 5:4–5

4 Yahweh, when you went out from Seir
When you marched from the territory of Edom
The earth shook, and also the heavens, they dripped
The clouds dripped water
5 The mountains trembled
Before Yahweh, the One of Sinai
Before Yahweh, the God of Israel

The Song of Deborah “presents a complex interplay of various poems, perhaps not originally related to each other,” although the narrative association with Kenites is notable. At some point in the song’s development, a point prior to the final form of the Song, these verses belong together as one of the variants of the RMS. At an earlier point, however, vv 4 and 5 do not belong together. They display two different poetic schemes. Verse 4 consists of trilexic stichs, the same as vv 26 and 29, while v 5 has tetralexic stichs like vv 23, 26b, and 28. Those scholars of the last century who removed v 5b as a gloss were correct about the fact that it does not belong, but incorrect in that it does not belong only at one level; in later forms of the Song, it does belong.

God marched from the south is the basic theme. This requires that the integer God is a being that moves on earth. That notion is ubiquitous in those parts of the Hebrew Bible that readily anthropomorphize God,  parts such as the so-called Yahwist Source. More intriguingly, God has at one time resided in the south, for him to be able to come from there. I do not think this is about Sinai. First, no tradition has God dwelling on Mount Sinai. The closest is two places (Exod 3:1, 1 Kgs 19:8) that refer to Mount Horeb as the “Mountain of God.” Exodus 3:5 says the ground there is holy. Exodus 24 has Moses “come up to meet the Lord.” But both the Yahwist and Priestly layers understand this to mean that God, too, has to arrive at Sinai from somewhere else, in both cases from above, the heavens. Thus Exod 19:11 (J) has, “the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people,” and Exod 24:16 (P) has, “the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai.” Moreover, as we have seen, the theophanic variants we have been examining are not about the Sinai experience at all.

This theme means “The South” needs to reckoned with as itself a divine abode. When God dwells on earth in the Hebrew Bible, it is typically in Zion, including in Psalm 68, in vv 17–18 (also Ps 9:11; Joel 3:17–21; cf. Jubilees 7:11–12). Here it is in Teman, Seir, Edom. From the south, Yahweh has approached Israel; he is not marching past Israel or to some other location. It is, therefore, a horizontal theophany. The south is not, therefore, a temple or shrine, not a place where God is meant to be worshipped or where he can be encountered. It is instead comparable to the heavens, or comparatively speaking, Mount Zaphon in Ugaritic mythology or the Greek Mount Olympus.

Deuteronomy 33 may have added Sinai from other biblical texts, localizing the tradition. It shows a tradition that has been elaborated. Zechariah 9 seems to be generalizing, and its changing the motif to future tense causes it to lose much of its folkloric quality; both are signs of the theme developing. Habakkuk 3 seems to have lost members, as does Psalm 68, which has borrowed incorrectly from Judges 5. Edom in Judges 5 is unlikely to have been added, given the Hebrew Bible’s general abhorrence of Edom;417 by the 8 th century, Edom was the archetypical villain, second only to Babylon in excoriation. We might, therefore, consider the element Edom as lost in the other variants. On the other hand, Edom is a familiar term in the Hebrew Bible; Paran, Seir, and Teman are not. Replacing rare words is a typical movement in the development of folklore. Since Paran, Seir, and Teman occur in multiple variants while Edom, Sinai, and the desert do not, the more vague references to the south are probably primary. That several of the early translations of the variants (Latin, Syriac, Barberini Greek) used “from the south”
instead of “Teman” suggests they already interpreted the theme to be an image of a deity who merely comes from the south as his place of origin.

I think there are two things that underlie the registers found in these variants. I have elsewhere considered the extent to which the motifs preserved in these variants function as mythic language, referring not only to a historical south but also to the mythic south. But regardless of that, I think there is something historic behind them, that “history per se is inscribed in a non-historical time” in these variants. When I put these variants together with a tradition going back to at least 700 BCE that there were non-Israelite Yahweh-worshippers north and east of the Gulf of Aqaba and that Yahweh in name at least entered Israel through their influence, it suggests a historical reality. When we add the fact that, Egyptian sources of 1300 BCE refer to a people they call the “Shasu of Yahweh” in precisely the same region—regardless of whether Yahweh here is a place name or a divine name—that suggestion is strengthened. In the meantime, the strength of the 8th century datum point for Yahweh of the South rests not only on the biblical evidence, but as well on inscriptions from the site of Kuntillet Ajrud…(taken from the book “Yahweh Origin of a Desert God by Robert D Miller II)

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Here is another so called unique revelation….

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach the imminent end of the current world society, or “system of things” by God’s judgment, leading to deliverance for the saved. This judgment will begin with false religion, which they identify as the “harlot”, Babylon the Great, referred to in the Book of Revelation. They apply this designation to all other religions. They do not currently place their expectations on any specific date, but believe that various events will lead up to the end of this “system of things”, culminating in Armageddon. Armageddon is understood to include the destruction of all earthly governments by God. After Armageddon, God will extend his heavenly kingdom to include earth.

They believe that after Armageddon, based on scriptures such as John 5:28, 29, the dead will gradually be resurrected to a “day of judgment” lasting for a thousand years. This judgment will be based on their actions after resurrection, not on past deeds. At the end of the thousand years a final test will take place when Satan is brought back to mislead perfect mankind. The result will be a fully tested, glorified human race.

Watch Tower Society publications teach that Jesus Christ returned invisibly and began to rule in heaven as king in October 1914. They state that the beginning of Christ’s heavenly rule would seem worse initially for mankind because it starts with the casting out of Satan from heaven to the earth, which according to Revelation 12, would bring a brief period of “woe” to mankind. This woe will be reversed when Christ comes to destroy Satan’s earthly organization, throwing Satan into the abyss and extending God’s kingdom rule over the earth, over which Jesus reigns as God’s appointed king. They believe the Greek word parousia (usually translated as “coming”) is more accurately understood as an extended invisible “presence”, perceived only by a series of “signs”.

Witnesses base their beliefs about the significance of 1914 on the Watch Tower Society’s interpretation of biblical chronology, which is hinged on their assertion that the Babylonian captivity and destruction of Jerusalem occurred in 607 BC. From this, they conclude that Daniel chapter 4 prophesied a period of 2,520 years, from 607 BC until 1914. They equate this period with the “Gentile Times” or “the appointed times of the nations,” a phrase taken from Luke 21:24. They believe that when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, the line of kings descended from David was interrupted, and that God’s throne was “trampled on” from then until Jesus began ruling in October 1914. Secular historians date the event of Jerusalem’s destruction to within a year of 587 BC. The Witnesses’ alternative chronology produces a 20-year gap between the reigns of Neo-Babylonian Kings Amel-Marduk (rule ended 560 BC) and Nabonidus (rule began 555 BC) in addition to the intervening reigns of Neriglissar and Labashi-Marduk, despite the availability of contiguous cuneiform records.

They teach that after the war of Armageddon, Jesus will rule over earth as king for 1000 years after which he will hand all authority back to Jehovah.

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that since October 1914, humanity has been living in a period of intense increased trouble known as “the last days”, marked by war, disease, famine, earthquakes, and a progressive degeneration of morality. They also believe their preaching is part of the sign, often alluding to the text of Matthew 24:14, “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end shall come.” (MKJV) They claim that various calamities in the modern world constitute proof of these beliefs, such as the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Spanish flu epidemic in May 1918, the onset of World War II in 1939, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that in 1918, Christ judged all world religions claiming to be Christian, and that after a period of eighteen months, among all groups and religions claiming to represent Christ, only the “Bible Students” (from which Jehovah’s Witnesses developed) met God’s approval. Watch Tower Society publications claim that the world’s other religions have misrepresented God, and filled the world with hatred. They identify “Babylon The Great” and the “mother of the harlots” referred to in Revelation 17:3–6 as the “world empire of false religion”

During the final great tribulation, all other religions will be destroyed by “crazed” member governments of the United Nations, acting under the direction of Jehovah. Witness publications identify the United Nations as the “beast” to whom the “ten kings” of Revelation 17:12,13 give their “power and authority.”

[gadam123]

“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”

In fact the above statement is the title statement of the second creation account recorded by the Yahwist writer in the book of Genesis 2nd chapter which clearly mentioned the God’s name as ‘Yahweh’ whereas the first creation account recorded by the Priestly writer did not mention God’s name but only used ‘Elohim’. The Priestly writer gave importance to the Seventh Day of rest by the end of his creation account. So the six days of creation are of Hebrew normal days which have both evenings and mornings. The same was confirmed in the Exodus and other later books.

The above was my post on Page no 256 which you have not seen by mistake shows my argument on how the ancient Biblical writers differ in their narrations in the creation stories which were recorded in our Bible. Let us be honest in finding the truth in these ancient writings.

[gadam123]

FEs will say that the earth is stationary and if it were travelling at 1000 mph, then you would feel the wind and there would be all kinds of problems associated with that. But they do not understand what the earth travelling at that speed really means.

The problem is not with FE alone brother, the original problem is very well found stationary in the ancient Biblical texts….

Earth is fixed and immovable:

1 Chronicles 16:30  tremble before him, all the earth.
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.

Psalm 33:8-9 8 Let all the earth fear the Lord;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.

Psalm 93:1 The Lord is king, he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed, he is girded with strength.
He has established the world; it shall never be moved;

Psalm 96:10 Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!
The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.
He will judge the peoples with equity.’

Psalm 104:5 You set the earth on its foundations,
so that it shall never be shaken.

Psalm 119:89-90 The Lord exists for ever;
your word is firmly fixed in heaven.
Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
you have established the earth, and it stands fast.

Zechariah 1:11 So they answered the Angel of the Lord, who stood among the myrtle trees, and said, “We have walked to and fro throughout the earth, and behold, all the earth is resting quietly.”

Sun Moves, not the Earth: Genesis 15:12, Genesis 15:17, Genesis 19:23, Genesis 32:31, Exodus 17:12, Exodus 22:3, Exodus 22:26, Leviticus 22:7, Numbers 2:3, Numbers 21:11, Numbers 34:15, Deuteronomy 4:41, Deuteronomy 4:47, Deuteronomy 11:30, Deuteronomy 16:6, Deuteronomy 23:11, Deuteronomy 24:13, Deuteronomy 24:15, Joshua 1:15, Joshua 8:29, Joshua 10:27, Joshua 12:1, Joshua 13:5, Joshua 19:12, Joshua 19:27, Joshua 19:34, Judges 8:13, Judges 9:33, Judges 14:18, Judges 19:14, Judges 20:43, 2 Samuel 2:24, 2 Samuel 3:35, 2 Samuel 23:4, 1 Kings 22:36, 2 Chronicles 18:34, Psalm 50:1, Psalm 113:3, Ecclesiastes 1:5, Isaiah 41:25, Isaiah 45:6, Isaiah 59:19, Jeremiah 15:9, Daniel 6:14, Amos 8:9, Jonah 4:8, Micah 3:6, Nahum 3:17, Malachi 1:11, Matthew 5:45, Mark 16:2, Ephesians 4:26, James 1:11

Sun STOPS moving: Isaiah 60:20, Job 9:7, Joshua 10:12–14, Habakkuk 3:11

Sun moves BACKWARDS: 2 Kings 20:8–11

Earth has Pillars, and hangs on nothing: 1 Samuel 2:8, Job 9:6, Job 26:7, Psalm 75:3, 2 Peter 3:5

 

[gadam123]

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

In fact the above statement is the title statement of the second creation account recorded by the Yahwehist in the book of Genesis 2nd chapter which clearly mentioned the God’s name as ‘Yahweh’ whereas the first creation account recorded by the Priestly writer did not mention God’s name but only used ‘Elohim’. The Priestly writer gave importance to the Seventh Day of rest by the end of his creation account. So the six days of creation are of Hebrew normal days which have both evenings and mornings. The same was confirmed in the Exodus and other later books.

[gadam123]

I liked the above article on the Biblical Cosmological models…..

[gadam123]

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT FLAT EARTH THEORIES ?

Against the background of declining confidence in the elites—be they political, religious or scientific—the flat earth theory has lately been revived and promoted by a wave of fake news and misinformation that circulates on social media. Unfortunately, it has been noted that many Christians have become swept up in this trend, using shaky theology to argue their points. For Christians who claim that the Earth is flat, a single Bible verse is considered superior to any number of scientific arguments.

In response to the concerning trend we see here, this article will focus on some of the Bible verses most frequently referenced by Christian proponents of the flat earth theory. There are teachers and theologians who have carefully analysed the subject and their conclusions are worth the attention of honest and open-minded Christians investigating this topic. Two such men are Dr Danny Faulkner, a creationist who specializes in mathematics and physics and has a PhD in astronomy, and Dr Randal Younker, professor of Archaeology and History of Antiquity at Andrews University, USA.

The four corners of the Earth
There are three verses in the Bible that are often quoted by Christian proponents of the flat earth theory. The first, Revelation 7:1, states: “And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree”. The repetition of the number four creates an obvious connection between the four angels, the four corners of the earth and the four cardinal points from which the winds are about to blow: North, South, East, and West. As Faulkner points out, not even a hyper-literal interpretation of the Bible can disregard the symbolism of the book of Revelation. “The four corners of the earth” is an expression which is widely used in different languages, but always with the same meaning: to indicate the farthest points on earth or a great distance, not literal corners.

This is also the context in which the expression appears in the second verse that is often cited, Revelation 20:8 which states that the devil will “will go out to deceive the nationsin the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore”. The fact that the same sentence also mentions the number of people in the four corners as being as numerous as “the sand on the seashore” supports a non-literal understanding of the text. The alternative is to believe that the text speaks of four literal corners containing a number of people mathematically equal to the sum of the grains of sand on all the shores of the world.

The final time this expression is used is in Isaiah 11:12, which speaks of God bringing the Israelites together, stating “He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth”. In many other cases in which the expression appears in the Bible, there is talk not of a place but of the people who live in faraway lands, thus strengthening the non-literal understanding of the expression. Once the idiomatic use of the expression in a passage is acknowledged, it is hard to claim that in other similar situations it is used differently.

In some translations of the Bible, mentions of the four corners of the earth appear almost 30 times and, if understood literally, would not only suggest that the earth is flat but also that it is square. There is no cosmology in which the earth is square. Not even followers of the flat earth theory claim such a thing. This once again highlights the non-literal interpretation of the phrase.

The flat surface of the Earth
How can you tell if the earth is flat or round? According to some flat-earthers, if you climb to the highest central point and you can see everything to the end of the earth, then it is flat. This idea of “the ends of the earth” is mentioned in the Bible, which says in Daniel 4:10-11: “These are the visions I saw while lying in bed: I looked, and there before me stood a tree in the middle of the land. Its height was enormous. The tree grew large and strong and its top touched the sky; it was visible to the ends of the earth.” On a round earth it would not be possible for such a tree to be visible from everywhere on earth. Does this Bible verse then say that the earth is flat?

In reality, the text does not refer to a physical reality; rather it is the description of a dream of king Nebuchadnezzar. As we know, dreams do not abide by the laws of physics. The Bible is actually very clear about this passage. The dream, as interpreted by Daniel, refers to something completely different to a physical tree on earth. The tree in the dream is actually Nebuchadnezzar himself.

Another Bible passage which is interpreted in a similar way is the one in Matthew 4, in which Jesus, tempted by the Devil in the desert, is at some point brought to “a very high mountain” where the Devil showed Him “all the kingdoms of the world”. The same logic we applied to the tall tree also applies here; if the whole Earth could be seen from the top of a mountain we would conclude that the Earth is flat. However, if there was a literal mountain from which the entire Earth could be seen in Jesus time, where is this mountain now and why can’t anybody see it? There is no evidence in Palestine’s geography for the existence of a mountain higher than any other mountain in the world. We must recognise that the situation recounted in the Gospels includes supernatural elements, something Luke also alludes to when he says that the Devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world “in an instant”.

The firmament
In the cosmology of the flat Earth, the disk-shaped planet is covered by a dome whose edges stop just beyond the 45-meter-high ice wall of Antarctica, which surrounds the Earth. The stars are fixed on this dome, while the sun and moon, which are only about 50 kilometres in diameter, revolve about 5,000 kilometres above the Earth.

The idea of this dome is born at the intersection of three arguments, Professor Younker explains: 1. raqia, the Hebrew word used for “sky” in Genesis 1 would somehow imply the need for a solid, metal-like material; 2. subsequent translations of the biblical term in the Greek (stereoma) and Latin (firmamentum) versions keep the idea of a solid material; 3. ancient Jews would have supported this cosmology like their Mesopotamian neighbours.

Let’s look at the three arguments starting from the second one. Most likely, raqia was translated into Greek and from there into Latin so as to preserve the meaning of a solid object because this meaning suited the cosmology of the Greeks, the scientists of the time. We must not ignore who made these translations. The first versions of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek) were ordered by Ptolemaeus II Philadelphus, the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, for the famous library in Alexandria.

Starting in the 6th century BC the Greeks based their distances on the models of the disk-shaped planet and were evolving to the sphere model (not half spheres or domes). Therefore, the idea that the Earth was contained in one or more solid spheres was common in the academic environment in Alexandria when the Septuagint was translated “and is undoubtedly the main factor (rather than etymology) in translators choosing the word stereoma to translate raqia,” professor Younker says.

Regarding the first argument, it must be mentioned that in Hebrew, the verb raqa, which is a derivative of the noun raqia, points to the actions of making something thin by stretching it and has no intrinsic meaning which would make someone think about a form or a material (for instance, metal). Raqa is used as a verb for objects like tent cloths and other fabrics for which the idea of stretching actually makes sense. Dr. Faulkner explains that this is why modern theologians have concluded that raqia must be translated “sky”—a vast expanse of space that includes not only the Sun and the Moon, but also the Earth’s atmosphere in which birds fly—since Genesis 1:14 and 1:20 both use the same word, raqia, to refer to the two different situations.

The third argument, according to which ancient Jews would have had the same cosmology as their Mesopotamian neighbours, namely, that the Earth is flat and covered by a solid dome, is twice wrong. First of all this argument is wrong because Mesopotamians, although they supported the flat Earth theory, never talked about a dome. This incorrect idea was introduced in 1850 by Hormuzd Rasam and used by other historians who, at that time, were trying to sketch the landscape of ancient cosmologies. According to them, during their Babylonian exile Jews would have assimilated these ideas into their cosmology. However, in 1975—when specialist in Assyriology, W.G. Lambert tried to establish the origin of the idea that the Babylonians believed that the Earth was covered by a dome—Lambert did not find any historical proof until the works of Assyriology specialists in the second half of the 19th century, the first ones to translate the Babylonian word for sky as “celestial vault”. On the contrary, the Babylonians saw the cosmos as a series of objects, flat layers piled up one on top of the other and held together by ropes, with no mention of a tri-dimensional dome. “The reality is that there is no term to describe a celestial vault in ancient Mesopotamia,” Younker says.

The second error is to assume, without valid historical arguments, that we know what kind of cosmology ancient Jews used. The oldest Jewish writings on this topic date from the medieval period and reflect the cosmology of that time, namely geocentrism, Faulkner says. Therefore, at the time the Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) was written we can, at most, only assume what the Hellenized Jews in the diaspora believed. Since many of them lived in Alexandria, Egypt, one of the educational and cultural centres of the Greek world, they most likely assimilated the translation raqia with stereoma—not, however, the meaning only introduced in the 1850s, of stereoma as a dome, but the meaning understood by the Greeks of that time: a spherical Earth contained in solid spheres.

The Bible on the flat Earth theory: a history
Perhaps the final argument from the flat Earth camp is that up until 500 years ago the church supported the model of a flat Earth, as many still do today. Again, this is wrong.

As we will see shortly, the church never claimed that the Earth is flat, but supported the theory of geocentrism—which says that the Earth stands still and the Sun, Moon and stars revolve around it—placing humans at the centre of creation. This generated the conflict between heliocentrist Galilelo Galilei and the church. So where did this long-standing false idea of a conflict between Christianity and science on this point come from? It comes from an attempt to discredit the Bible at the end of the 19th century, Faulkner says.

If you are familiar with the Flammarion engraving, a very well-known illustration of the flat Earth covered by a dome, you might believe it originates in the medieval period but it actually dates from the 1880s. Such illustrations—of a religious or scientific origin—are almost non-existent in the medieval period, because during the Middle Ages almost nobody believed in the flat Earth theory, not even the church leaders. Therefore, if the proponents of the flat Earth theory are geocentrists, it is important to know that from a historical point of view the converse is not true.

A possible explanation for the geocentric model remaining as the preferred model for such a long time—although the Greeks developed, almost in parallel, geocentric and heliocentric cosmological models—is that the technology of the time was not advanced enough to provide evidence in favour of the heliocentric model. For observers in that time, the Sun and planets seemed to revolve around a stationary Earth. Without an external reference point, any observer might draw a similar conclusion even today—for instance, a passenger in a moving train carriage might believe that the train on the next line is the one that actually started moving. The idea that the heliocentric theory had supporters everywhere, except in the church, is completely false. Copernicus dedicated his famous work on heliocentrism to Pope Paul the second.

Conclusion
There are a number things that we can learn from this history, Faulkner says. The Bible does not promote a specific cosmology. It is people who put together different passages to make up a cosmology. The fact that it does not promote a specific cosmology may even be a good thing. If the Scriptures supported a specific cosmology, ancient or modern, those who believed otherwise would have had reason to renounce the Bible. Some do this today because they learn from unreliable sources that the Bible teaches the flat Earth theory. However, as discussed above, this is not what the Bible teaches but what people have read into it. Some do it knowingly, others not, and others, instead of using an exegetical approach (that is, critically examining the Bible to understand the context and meaning of the verses), use an eisegetical approach; that is, they introduce new meanings from external sources into Scripture. At the same time, a reader of the Bible must not stop at exegesis, but must always seek to understand what the message of the text is for the contemporary reader, and this implies understanding the right principles of interpretation for the text that is being analysed.

At the end of this brief review of the main arguments that the Bible supports the flat Earth theory, we can draw a sufficiently clear conclusion: the Bible does not promote a specific cosmological model—the flat or round Earth, geocentrism or heliocentrism—and the conflict on cosmological models between science and religion, although having a rich history, is still an artificial one.

Just as false is the assumption that the church rejected heliocentrism based only on biblical arguments. The church (both Catholics and Protestants) rejected the theory of heliocentrism because it was contrary to the science of the time and did not offer comprehensive and satisfactory answers. The geocentric model had dominated the world for more than 1500 years and made sense, according to what could be observed prior to the invention of the telescope. As the Greeks before them, neither Copernicus nor Galileo Galilei managed to solve the severe flaws in the heliocentric model, due to the lack of a more advanced technology. While problems still existed on an empirical level, however, their calculation models for determining the position of the planets were advanced. Unfortunately, the limitations of direct observation at the time prevented these beliefs from becoming scientific consensus. Therefore, 60 years after Copernicus had published his theory, only ten other authors with supportive works had emerged.

It would have been a big leap of faith for the church to give up geocentrism when not even the scientific world had reached a positive consensus. Let us remember that it was a period in which individual interpretations of Scripture was a delicate subject for the Catholic Church, which had just gone through the Protestant Reformation. This is why, when it hit the theological arena, the debate of Galileo’s ideas ended the way it did. Meanwhile, technology proved Galilelo right, and geocentric systems have been, for the most part, forgotten. Only much later did the Catholic Church admit its guilt in one of the more infamous incidents in its history….link https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2021/05/flat-earth-theory-and-the-bible/

[gadam123]

Flat Earth?

The biblical evidence presented for a flat earth is fourfold and includes 1) the firmament, 2) the waters and the heavens above, 3) the earth being immovable, and 4) specific texts that supposedly refer to a flat earth are given below;

1. Firmament/Vault Texts

   “And God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault ‘sky.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day” (Gen 1:6–8, 14).[19]
   “Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies” (Ps 148:4).
   “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water” (2 Pet 3:5).
   “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isa 40:22).
   Other verses that support the notion of the heavens like a tent or canopy include Psalms 104:2–3, 19:4–5, 18:16 and 2 Samuel 22:16.

2. Foundation Texts

   “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (Ps 102:25; see also 104:2; 93:1).
   “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, and he hath set the world upon them” (1 Sam 2:8, KJV).
   “Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together (Isa 48:13; see also Zech 12:1).

3. Immovable Texts

   “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day” (Josh 10:13).
   “Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved (1 Chr 16:30, KJV).

4. Literal Flat Earth Texts

   “And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come” (Jer 49:36, KJV).
   “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says to the land of Israel: “The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land!”” (Ezek 7:2).
   “And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree” (Rev 7:1; 20:8).

 

[gadam123]

Bible Verses about Flat Earth
What does the bible say about the flat earth theory? Although the theory of Earth being flat is not directly spoken about, some verses describe the potential shape of our planet. One verse mentions the “four corners of the earth” and could be interpreted as a flat earth. The following are such verses;

1. 1 Chronicles 16:30 Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
2. 1 Samuel 2:8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world.
3. Isaiah 11:12 He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.
4. Isaiah 40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
5. Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
6. Job 26:10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.
7. Job 28:24 for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.
8. Job 37:3 He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth.
9. Job 37:18 can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?
10. Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.
11. Proverbs 8:27 I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
12. Psalms 75:3 When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm.
13. Psalms 93:1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.
14. Psalms 104:5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
15. Revelation 7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree.

[gadam123]

Sorry

[gadam123]

Hey @gadam123

I asked you a question.

What is your no1 flat earth bible verse.

If you avoid me, it means you are defeated.

Hello Proclaimer, I don’t think I am defeating anyone here. You are my elder brother so I can only express my little views here which are troubling me. Yes we are debating on the ancient texts (Verses) which describe the Geography and Science of their own days. There is nothing like No 1 or 2 Verse here. Sorry brother….

[gadam123]

Stationary Earth as the Center of the Universe

An erroneous Bible teaching caused Christian theologians to oppose Galileo’s proof that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. In the sixteenth century, Copernicus proposed this theory about the double motion of the earth. In the following century, Galileo’s telescope proved that Copernicus had been right.

To oppose the Copernican doctrine and show that the earth remains stationary while the sun moves around it, the Catholic Church pointed to the tenth chapter of the book of Joshua. There we are told that Joshua, in order to have a longer period of daylight in which to carry out the Lord’s command to slaughter the Amorites, ordered the sun to stand still – not the earth.

Other passages demonstrating that the earth remains stationary include Psalm 93:1 (“The world is [e]stablished, that it cannot be moved.”); I Chronicles 16:30 (“[T]he world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.”); and Psalm 104:5 (The Lord “laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.”).

Because of Galileo’s support for the Copernican doctrine, the Inquisition threatened him with torture, forced him to recant, and subjected him to imprisonment. Additionally, for nearly 200 years the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books condemned all writings that affirmed the double motion of the earth.

Protestants weren’t much better. For generations the major branches of Protestantism – Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican – denounced the Copernican doctrine as contrary to scripture.

A Flat Earth Resting on Pillars

The Bible supports the primitive notion of a flat earth. In the sixth century, a Christian monk named Cosmas wrote a book, titled Topographia Christiana, describing the structure of the physical world. Basing his views on the Bible, Cosmas said the earth is flat and surrounded by four seas.

The prophecy at Revelation 1:7 was a basis for his conclusion. It states that when Christ returns, “every eye shall see him.” Cosmas reasoned that if the earth were round, people on the other side would not see Christ’s second coming.

Further support for the idea of a flat earth is contained in the verses mentioning the “four corners of the earth” (e.g., Isaiah 11:12; Revelation 7:1) and the “ends of the earth” (e.g., Jeremiah 16:19; Acts 13:47).

Because of such Bible teachings, most of the early church fathers thought the earth is flat. In the view of the world contained in Cosmas’ book was accepted for several centuries as orthodox Christian doctrine. Even in the fifteenth century, when Christopher Columbus proposed to sail west from Spain to reach the East Indies, the biblical notion of a flat earth was a major source of opposition to him.

As for the question of what holds the flat earth in place, the Bible indicates the answer is “pillars.” The pillars of the earth are mentioned in several verses in the Old Testament (I Samuel 2:8; Psalm 75:3; Job 9:6). These verses reflect the belief of the ancient Hebrews that the earth rests upon pillars.

Sky a Solid Dome Containing Windows

The Bible promotes the idea that the sky is a solid dome covering the earth. In the creation account given in the first chapter of Genesis, verse 17 says the Lord set the sun and moon “in the firmament” to provide light for the earth. The Hebrew word translated as firmament is raqia, which means “hammered metal.”

More support for the notion of a domed earth is found at Job 37:18 (where the sky is described as like a “molten looking glass”); Isaiah 40:22 (God “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in”); and Revelation 6:14 (“And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.”).

This concept of the sky was common in the ancient Near East and taken for granted by the Bible writers. Based on the Bible, most of the early church fathers accepted the notion of the firmament. The same position was supported by Cosmas, and thus was part of orthodox Christian doctrine for several centuries.

Orthodox doctrine also contained the related idea that the firmament has windows – which are opened by angels when God wants to send rain upon the earth. Cosmas believed that when the windows are opened, some of the waters contained above the firmament (which are mentioned at Genesis 1:17) fall to the earth. Cosmas’ basis for this belief was the statement, at Genesis 7:11-12, that at the time of the Noachian flood the “windows of heaven were opened” and the rain fell.

Supernatural Signs in the Heavens

Bible stories led the Christian world to believe – for centuries – that God sends humankind signs in the heavens.

Christians thought comets warn of divine anger and imminent punishment; stars and meteors portend beneficial events such as the birth of heroes and great men; eclipses signify divine distress in response to events on earth; and storms and other destructive weather result from the anger of God or the malice of Satan.

Additional Errors About the Physical World

The Bible has verses mentioning dragons (Jeremiah 51:34), unicorns (Isaiah 34:7), and cockatrices (Isaiah 11:8). These passages led many naturalists in the Middle Ages to think such mythical creatures actually exist.

The Bible is also incorrect in saying the bat is a bird (Leviticus 11:13,19), the hare and rock badger chew the cud (Leviticus 11:5-6), and the mustard seed “is the smallest of all seeds” (Matthew 13:32).

Finally, it’s inconsistent with science – and ludicrous – to believe that God confounded the language of humans because he was afraid they would build a tower high enough to reach heaven (Genesis 11:1-9).

[gadam123]

PRIMITIVE TEACHINGS IN BIBLE

(i) The sky has windows:

The sky is nothing but a vacuum.  It does not have windows. But Holy Bible states that the windows of sky were opened

Gen 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the Mountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

(ii) The earth has foundations, pillars and four corners!

According to Biblical Geography, the earth has foundations, pillars and four corners ! Please read the following three verses :

The Earth has foundations :

Ps 104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.

The Earth has pillars :1

1 Sam 2:8 for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he bath set the world upon them.

The Earth has four corners :

Rev 7:1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

(iii) The sun, not the earth, moves !

Joshua commanded the sun to standstill and not the earth.  This is Biblical writer’s understanding ! The following passage indicates that Joshua stops the sun and the moon :

Josh 10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.  Is not this written in the book of Jasher?  So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

Martin Luther “The fool (Copernicus) wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy.  But sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”

 

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[gadam123]

Of course you will just continue to preach the sun’s creation on Day four despite the acripturesvsaying otherwise. You will only say it to prove the earth is a pizza and gadam will concur so he can write off the Bible as a lie. So congratulations on your works of iniquity.

Sorry brother, I don’t write off the Bible that’s big allegation. I only want to properly understand these ancient writings from their own days and not with our religious fundamental bias.

[gadam123]

Psalm 74:16… You have prepared the light and the sun.

Will you scoff at that one also?

If you can answer even one of these points SCRIPTURALLY (as opposed to your own imagination concocting things to fit your own narrative), we will certainly listen to what you have to say.

Until that time, your self-congratulatory chest-beating pat on your own back (DEBUNK STATUS: Successful.) rings hollow, and makes people feel sorry for you.

I always appreciate your right method of arguments on this Forum. The above are the reasons why I was describing our traditional Christianity as hiding its head in the sand thinking itself as more intelligent and most scientific in its thinking.

[gadam123]

There are none so blind as those who willingly refuse to see.

It’s very telling that you are a ball believer just like Pretender, yet you (like most scholars) are willing to honestly admit that what the Bible teaches doesn’t align with the world you believe we live in.  Pretender did that early on in this thread, but now refuses to openly confess that “the Bible was written by ignorant goat herders who were only describing the world from their limited perspective”.

In other words, he said it before, but has since taken it back.  Why?  Because I pointed out that the things those “ignorant goat herders” wrote about our world came to them from the Creator of that world.  So ever since he realized that my point was a bombshell to his claim, he has changed his tactics and now just pretends that the Bible doesn’t actually say what it clearly and undeniably does say.

But I’m still working him through his dilemma in our private thread.  I haven’t given up on him yet.

Yes the fundamental Christianity is burying its head in the sand and pretending to be like intelligent and most scientific. Here are few more ancient narrations described in our Bible;

1. The Bible says in Gen 1: 16, that…‘God created two lights the greater light, the Sun to rule the day, and the lesser light the Moon, to rule the night. The actual translation, if you go to the Hebrew text, it is ‘lamps’…‘Lamps having lights of its own.’ And that you will come to know better, if you read both the Verses – Gen 1:16-17. Verse No.17 says…‘And Almighty God placed them in the firmament, to give light to the earth… To give light to the earth.’ Indicating, that Sun and the Moon has its own light today we know that sun have its own light but the light of the moon is reflected light from the sun but bible is saying that That moon have its own light.
2. In Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving, she says, “The pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them He has set the world” (1 Samuel 2:8, ESV). The pillars of the earth also appear in the book of Job. In answering his friend Bildad, Job talks about how God’s mighty power disqualifies any man from contending with Him: “They could not answer him one time out of a thousand” (Job 9:3). Job describes God as one who overturns mountains and “shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble” (verse 6, ESV). Also in Psalm 75:3 Asaph quotes God: “When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars” (ESV)…..Was the Earth founded on Pillars?
3. Lev 11: 20 All winged insects that walk upon all fours are detestable to you. 21 But among the winged insects that walk on all fours you may eat those that have jointed legs above their feet, with which to leap on the ground. 22 Of them you may eat: the locust according to its kind, the bald locust according to its kind, the cricket according to its kind, and the grasshopper according to its kind. 23 But all other winged insects that have four feet are detestable to you…………..                                            —This is an error since insects have six legs, not four, and also “fowl” have two legs, not four?
4. The Bible says in the book of Gen 1:29, that… ‘God has given you all the herbs bearing seeds, the trees bearing fruits – those that bear seed, as meat for you.’ New International Version says… ‘The seed bearing plants, and the trees bearing fruits bearing seeds are food for you, all of them.’ Today, even a layman knows that there are several poisonous plants like wild berries, stritchi, datura, plants containing alkaloid, polyander, bacaipoid – that which if you ingest, if you eat there are high possibilities you may die. How come the Creator of the universe and the human beings, does not know, that if you have these plants, you will die.
5. It is mentioned in the book of Lev 12:1-5, and we know medically, that after a mother gives birth to a child, the postpartum period, it is unhygienic. To say it is ‘unclean’, religiously – we have got no objection. But Lev 12:1-5 says that… ‘After a woman gives birth to a male child, she will be unclean for 7 days, and the period of uncleanliness will continue for 33 days more. If she gives birth to a female child, she will be unclean for two weeks, and the period of uncleanliness will continue for 66 days. In short, if a woman gives birth to a male child… ‘a son’, she is unclean for 40 days. If she gives birth to a female child… ‘a daughter’, she is unclean for 80 days. Scientifically, how come a woman remains unclean for double the period, if she gives birth to a female child, as compared to a male child?
6.  It is mentioned in the 1 Kings 15: 33 (also as per 1 Kings 16:8), that… ‘Baasha, ruled for 24 years (and died) in the 26th year of reign of Asa.’ And 2 Chronicles 16:1, says that…‘Baasha invaded Judah in the 36th years of the reign of Asa.’ How can Baasha invade 10 years after his death? – How come Bible is inerrant?
7. Other passages teach a flat earth are Deuteronomy 13:7; Job 28:24; Psalm 48:10; and Proverbs 30:4; all of which reference the “ends” of the earth.

It is not the job of science to disprove the Bible. Ancient authors wrote the Bible from earlier oral stories and with the limited knowledge of the time. Disproving the Bible as a goal is useless. It’s there, we can read it and all its mistakes, misinterpretations and contradictions. Historians study the texts to learn but not to ‘disprove’ the Bible. That is no one’s goal.

[gadam123]

What is your no1 flat earth bible verse?

@mikeboll64 says his verse is “the circle of the earth” verse. Lol. True story.

Looking forward to your answer gadam.

It’s again old question of yours only as you want to protect the Biblical Authors. The Circle itself is Flat only it’s not three dimensional like Globe. I have already given number of verses for such non-scientific writings.

…..

Just look at Genesis chapter 1, where some of the scientific errors are:

There were day and night, separated by evening, before the sun existed;
There was liquid water on the earth before the sun existed;
Plants grew before the sun existed;
There is a firmament that separates the waters above from the waters below;
The sun, moon and stars are lights placed in the firmament that is just above the earth;
The sun and stars were created after the earth;
Sticking with Genesis for the moment, the biblical Noah’s flood does not go with science. Neither does the explanation of the rainbow, as science tells us rainbows existed on earth for billions of years, as long as there was water in the atmosphere.

The continued existence of planet earth in its current form is evidence that the sun did not stand still for a day (Joshua 10:13). Science says it would be enormously destructive for the earth to cease rotating on its axis.

 

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