Does the Bible teach that the earth is flat?

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Does the Bible teach that the Earth is flat? We're going to answer that question.

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Many skeptics claim that the Bible depicts a flat Earth. Critics cite several scriptural references in an attempt to prove their theory.

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Are the critics correct? Is the Bible anti -science in its teaching that the Earth is flat?

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The truth is, the Bible does not comment on the shape of the planet Earth. It does not say that the

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Earth is flat, and it does not say that it is spherical. Let's take a closer look at those commonly cited passages that supposedly depict a flat

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Earth. Revelation 7 -1 says, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth.

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In writing this, the Apostle John was using idiomatic language. We use the same idiom today.

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For example, when we speak of Olympic athletes coming from the four corners of the earth to compete in the games, we mean that they are coming from all over the world.

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The four corners encompass the cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west.

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Psalm 75 -3 quotes God saying, When the earth and all its people quake, it is

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I who hold its pillars firm. Other passages also refer to the Earth's pillars, but in no case should the language be taken literally.

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The Book of Psalms and Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2 are poetry. The writers liken the founding of the

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Earth to the constructing of a house, and their depictions are metaphorical, not literal. The point is not that the

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Earth is flat, but that the Earth belongs to God. It is His construction, and He guarantees its stability.

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What about the Bible's references to the ends of the Earth? Does a reference to the ends of the Earth teach that the

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Earth has an edge and is therefore flat? For that, we'll take Deuteronomy 13 .7 as representative of all the passages.

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Here, Moses warns the people, The gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other.

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First, that phrase, like the four corners of the earth, is idiomatic. We don't expect people to take us literally when we speak of going back to the drawing board.

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Neither should we force a literal interpretation on the ends of the earth. When biblical writers speak of the ends of the earth, they are simply referring to the farthest reaches of the inhabited world.

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Second, the phrase, the ends of the earth, at times refers to people, not to land.

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For example, Psalm 67 says, May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear

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Him. In this verse, the ends of the earth references the people who inhabit remote and distant places.

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Obviously, in this context, the phrase is metaphorical and cannot be used to depict the earth as having a physical edge.

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The same phrase used elsewhere should also be considered figurative. The Bible does not teach that the earth is flat.

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The references to the earth in the Bible are often not references to planetary earth, but to a portion of dry land bound by water.

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For example, Genesis 1 says, God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together

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He called seas. Earth is mentioned as distinct from seas and cannot refer to earth as a planet.

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While the Bible does not teach that the earth is flat, neither does the Bible explicitly teach that the earth is spherical.

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Some passages do allow for a spherical earth, such as Job 26 -7 and Isaiah 40 -22.

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In any event, the Bible is far from affirming a naive or unscientific understanding of the earth and the solar system.

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There is simply no basis for the charge that the Bible teaches a flat earth. Passages that seem to present a flat earth can all be explained when correctly understood.

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That answers the question, does the Bible teach that the earth is flat? Research this question further on our website,

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