Paul,
In modern physics motion is defined in such a way as to make the laws of
physics expressible in very simple form. It doesn't seem to me to be sound
exegesis of an OT passage to insist on this modern interpretation of the
vocabulary used.
Here is another example of the same point. In Daniel 3:19 we are told that
Nebuchadnezzar ordered the furnace to be made seven times hotter than
usual. Should we take a modern interpretation of these words and insist
that its temperature was seven times as high in degrees Kelvin? It seems
unlikely that this was the author's original intent since he probably had
no concept of absolute zero.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 PHSEELY@aol.com wrote:
> These along with the Joshua reference are indeed the primary Scriptures the
> Church used against Galileo; and the Church was not mistaken in its exegesis.
> Within their historical context, these scriptures are all speaking of the
> literal immovability of the earth. In OT times the earth was conceived of by
> ANE peoples as a flat disc, with the sun moving over the earth during the day
> and then under the earth, or perhaps into the earth during the night. As
> Whybray says in his commentary on Eccl 1:5: "After it has set in the west it
> returns swiftly by an underground route (the earth being regarded as a flat
> disc) to the east where it is to rise again-a cosmological concept shared by
> a number of ancient peoples."
>
> The error of the Church was not its exegesis, but its failure to realize that
> the purpose of Scripture is not to reveal science, and that Scripture is
> regularly accommodated to the science of the times.
>
> Paul S.
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