>>"But this leads immediately to another question:
"Why didn't God relate a spherical-earth account of creation in Genesis
1?" Although a heleocentric view may not have been available around the time
of the completion of Genesis, a spherical-earth view almost certainly was.
Yet God allowed his revealed truth to be couched in the cosmological imagery
of the author's culture, without first correcting that imagery. So it seems
unlikely to me that the passage's essential revealed truth has much, if
anything, to do with the actual "formative history" of creation.<<
I think everyone would be happier if certain bilbical descriptions of nature
had not occurred. But I am going to make the strongest case I can for what I
think may have been going on, knowing full well that it is a weak argument.
After you posted the above, I looked in some of my astronomy books. From my
freshman astronomy text, Baker and Frederick, _An Introduction ot Astronomy_,
p. 14, we find this:
"Fig1-15 Apparent Flattening of the Setting Sun by Refraction"
and the John R. Percy, _The Observers Handbook, 1978_(Toronto: The Royal
Astronomical Society of Canada, 1978), p.15 has several pages taken up by a
table with columns entitled "sunrise sunset"
for various latitudes. Later, this same journal has a table for "moon- rise
set"
On page 42 he advises you to "Look up the *sunrise and sunset times* in the
newspaper,...." The terms sunrise/sunset is used many times on page 42 and
indeed throughout the book.
My sophomore astronomy text, George Abell, Exploration of the Universe,
(Holt,Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 13 has a section entitled,"Rising and
Setting of the Sun". On page 12 he talks about stars rising and setting.
Are these noted astronomers, hopelessly Ptolemaic? Do they really believe
that the sun revolves around the earth as they obviously believe that the
moon does (afterall, they use the same term for sun rise and moon rise).
[Since the Canadian Royal Astronomical Society fills their pages with
"sunrise/sunset" it is probably best that 200 years ago, the Canadian
colonies did not join us in our revolution against Britain. Wouldn't want to
have to drag along such a backward people. :-) ]
With enough time, other examples could be found. The authors of these
statements are not "believers" in the Ptolemaic system. They are scientists
who in almost all cases are careful in choosing their words to reflect the
observations. But the language they inherited from an earlier age requires
the use of such terminology. The term "earth-turn" has not evolved to
replace the archaic term (nor do I think this particularly unpoetic term
will). Thus, what I am suggesting is that even though there are a few
references to a wrong cosmology, it may have been more due to the language
the writers were forced to use than either the appearance or their belief.
A search through modern literature (I don't read much fiction so am unable
to do this) would probably find numerous examples of the phrase "the four
corners of the earth". This phrase which might once have conveyed the concept
that the earth was flat with 4 literal corners, now has adapted to modern
life, and lives with the meaning of "the entire earth".
Baker and Frederick state, "Vertical circles are great circles of the
celestial sphere that pass through the zenith and nadir, accordingly cross
the horizon vertically." p. 10 They believe in the celestial sphere?
and
"The celestial poles are the two opposite points on the celestial sphere
toward which the earth's axis is directed, and around which the stars
circle." p. 26
If pages 10 and 26 were the only preserved pages out of this book in 1000
years, they might think we believed in the old Ptolemaic system of a tangible
sphere surrounding the earth and poles sticking out to hold the sphere up.
J.M.A. Dansby, in his classic _Fundamentals of Celestial Mechanics_
MacMillan, 1962, p. 7 states:
"The direction of an object is given by two angles that fix its position on
the celestial sphere. This is a spherical shell of arbitrarily large radius
on which celestial objects appear projected."
Does this mean that Dansby believes that way, way out there there is an
actual shell against which the stars are projected? The shell of course
marking the end of the universe. Although I couldn't find a case, I think I
have seen astronomy texts use the term dome of the sky.
Of the galactic disk, they state, "The disk rotates around the axis joining
the galactic poles." Poles? That too is an outdated word which now has
acquired a new meaning and is happily living on in the late 20th century.
The astronomical term "conjuction" may be a slight holdover. In the old
system the planets were considered to be very close to each other and were
co-juncted. Now we know that Jupiter and Mercury can appear to have a
conjuction even though they are not at their point of closest approach. A
better term would be "apparent conjuction" but that will never catch on.
When we talk about the constellation Cassiopia do we believe the old story
about the queen who was put into the sky?
Terms like zodiac have altered their connotation and now do not entail a
belief in astrology (necessarily).
To conclude, the use of a given term may not necessarily indicate belief on
the part of the writer but be part of the idiomatic construction of his
language. Terms which once meant one thing acquire new meanings at later
times and thus need to be understood in such a fashion. Whether this can be
applied to Biblical exegesis, is far beyond my expertise.
glenn