Thanks for your penetrating analysis once again Paul. It seems to me fairly
obvious that the understanding of the physical universe of the people that
God's word came to has been largely irrelevant to the Holy Spirit's mission
in this world. After all the Law and the Prophets can be summarised in
Ezekiel's terms as "repent and do good"... very little matters beyond that
for the Spirit I'd say.
In such issues I'd argue that Truth is always good and a good to strive
for... God tailors His message to our understanding, or at least His
servants do.
Adam
PS
Considering the absurdities believed about the composition of the Bible by
educated believers, like Josephus in the C1st, then I'd say we also have to
reassess our attitudes towards textual criticism as well. "Pious fraud"
might sound ugly but Jeremiah accused the scribes of his day of something
very close to that [Jer 8:8; also 7:22...]
>From: PHSEELY@aol.com
>To: lhaarsma@calvin.edu
>CC: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: Re: Where has the church has had to change
>Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 18:55:41 EST
>
>In a message dated 12/16/1999 8:54:17 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>lhaarsma@calvin.edu writes:
>
><< -Is there a solid "Firmament" holding back "waters above the sky"?
> (This is an interesting issue. The Old Testament cosmology believed in
> a solid-dome firmament and waters above the sky. Many Old Testament
> passages refer to it. However, the Greeks figured out that the earth
> was spherical several centuries before the New Testament. That
> knowledge must certainly have made its way to SOME Jews by the first
> century A.D. This certainly would have been known by well-educated
> Jews who used the Septuagint and lived all over the Roman Empire. Did
> the apostle Paul know about this? What about the average person-on-
> the-street (or the average religious leader) living in Palestine at the
> time of Jesus? Did they know that the earth was spherical? Did they
> see a conflict with the Old Testament cosmology and references to the
> firmament and waters above the firmament? How did they deal with this?
> I would like to see someone dig in and answer those questions
> sometime.)
> >>
>
>Educated Christians knew that the earth was spherical (although the NT
>reflects a flat earth), and the waters above the firmament did become an
>issue. The early Church fathers went on believing there really were waters
>above the firmament but had to face the jeers of Greeks who believed in the
>solidity of the firmament but could not see how waters could stay in place
>above a spherical firmament. One of the fathers, Ambrose as I recall,
>replied that there could be a holding tank above the spherical firmament in
>the shape of a bowl and explained how it could be held in place. I address
>this issue on pp 37 and 38 of my paper on the water above the firmament.
>
>Paul S.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com