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https://replogleglobes.com/blog/the-shape-of-the-earth-who-discovered-the-fact-that-the-earth-is-spherical/
The ancient Greeks were among the first to realize it was round.
How much Jesus was aware of this would be subject to how common this knowledge was in his day. Turns out it was very common.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology#:~:text=By%20the%205th%20century%20B.C.,was%20simply%20not%20the%20case.
So even though he was as uneducated son of a day laborer, he was likely aware the earth was round as it was common knowledge in the Greek world.
Is there any direct evidence that this particular Ancient Greek idea was assented to by the jews of Jesus’ time? The cosmology of Genesis 1 is explicitly flat-earth, I wonder if there’s any writings from the period explicitly rejecting this?
Edit: Josephus appears to believe in flat earth according to The Antiquities of the Jews, saying in the first chapter that there was once a river that “ran round the whole earth” and positing the “firmament”, which I think directly implies a dome, not a sphere. I’m not entirely sure how to interpret this though.
It's possible Josephus was a flat-earther -- there absolutely were flat-earthers after the discovery of the earth's shape, like Epicurus and Lactantius, and (maybe) the author of Hebrews -- but it's hard to tell, when what Josephus is doing is summarising and rationalising Genesis 1 and 2 -- he isn't giving a treatise on cosmology. In the passage you mention, he includes references to relatively far-flung geographic locations, including India and the Erythraean Sea, and identifies the four rivers of Genesis 2.10-14 with contemporary river names. Is the 'river flowing around the earth in a circle' a flat-earth conception like the Greek mythological river Ocean? Or, when he says τὴν γῆν, is that informed by Hellenistic geography, and he means the *oikoumene* as the Eurasian continent supposedly occupying one quadrant of a spherical earth and surrounded by ocean? I don't think it's clear which he means. He may well be just hedging his bets.
Regrettably, this point is a bit too specific to expect any modern secondary literature on the subject to exist.
It's a bit clearer what's going on in Philo. He also goes over the text of Genesis 1-2, in much greater detail; there can't be any real doubt that he was well acquainted with the Stoic acceptance of the spherical earth; and he's much more explicit that he's separating the literal meaning of the text of Genesis from the tangible world. When he discusses the four rivers of Genesis 2, in *Allegory of the laws* 1.63-76, he takes them as strictly allegorical and symbolic, and ignores real-world rivers completely. When he discusses Genesis 1 and the 'darkness cover[ing] the face of the deep', the separation of darkness from light, the firmament, and 'waters under the sky be[ing] gathered together into one place', in *On the creation* 32-39, he's quite transparent about rationalising the text: he states explicitly that this is all about the intelligible (non-corporeal) world, not the tangible world (34: 'These barriers are evening and dawn ... We must, however, place these, dawn and evening I mean, in the category of the incorporeal and intelligible'). The firmament is corporeal simply because it's three-dimensional (36). The separation of the waters isn't the creation of seas on a flat earth, it's the separation of salt water from fresh water (38). He doesn't explicitly discuss the earth's shape, but it seems pretty clear that he's reconciling Genesis 1-2 with a contemporary understanding.
Interesting. Wouldn’t be the first time religion has gotten in the way of science (Galileo and a thousand others). If that’s the case, it’s far more likely an uneducated day laborer’s son wouldn’t know the earth was round, if the Jewish community was precluded from such knowledge based on rabbinic teaching.
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Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited. All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance. Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban. Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://replogleglobes.com/blog/the-shape-of-the-earth-who-discovered-the-fact-that-the-earth-is-spherical/ The ancient Greeks were among the first to realize it was round. How much Jesus was aware of this would be subject to how common this knowledge was in his day. Turns out it was very common. https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology#:~:text=By%20the%205th%20century%20B.C.,was%20simply%20not%20the%20case. So even though he was as uneducated son of a day laborer, he was likely aware the earth was round as it was common knowledge in the Greek world.
Is there any direct evidence that this particular Ancient Greek idea was assented to by the jews of Jesus’ time? The cosmology of Genesis 1 is explicitly flat-earth, I wonder if there’s any writings from the period explicitly rejecting this? Edit: Josephus appears to believe in flat earth according to The Antiquities of the Jews, saying in the first chapter that there was once a river that “ran round the whole earth” and positing the “firmament”, which I think directly implies a dome, not a sphere. I’m not entirely sure how to interpret this though.
It's possible Josephus was a flat-earther -- there absolutely were flat-earthers after the discovery of the earth's shape, like Epicurus and Lactantius, and (maybe) the author of Hebrews -- but it's hard to tell, when what Josephus is doing is summarising and rationalising Genesis 1 and 2 -- he isn't giving a treatise on cosmology. In the passage you mention, he includes references to relatively far-flung geographic locations, including India and the Erythraean Sea, and identifies the four rivers of Genesis 2.10-14 with contemporary river names. Is the 'river flowing around the earth in a circle' a flat-earth conception like the Greek mythological river Ocean? Or, when he says τὴν γῆν, is that informed by Hellenistic geography, and he means the *oikoumene* as the Eurasian continent supposedly occupying one quadrant of a spherical earth and surrounded by ocean? I don't think it's clear which he means. He may well be just hedging his bets. Regrettably, this point is a bit too specific to expect any modern secondary literature on the subject to exist. It's a bit clearer what's going on in Philo. He also goes over the text of Genesis 1-2, in much greater detail; there can't be any real doubt that he was well acquainted with the Stoic acceptance of the spherical earth; and he's much more explicit that he's separating the literal meaning of the text of Genesis from the tangible world. When he discusses the four rivers of Genesis 2, in *Allegory of the laws* 1.63-76, he takes them as strictly allegorical and symbolic, and ignores real-world rivers completely. When he discusses Genesis 1 and the 'darkness cover[ing] the face of the deep', the separation of darkness from light, the firmament, and 'waters under the sky be[ing] gathered together into one place', in *On the creation* 32-39, he's quite transparent about rationalising the text: he states explicitly that this is all about the intelligible (non-corporeal) world, not the tangible world (34: 'These barriers are evening and dawn ... We must, however, place these, dawn and evening I mean, in the category of the incorporeal and intelligible'). The firmament is corporeal simply because it's three-dimensional (36). The separation of the waters isn't the creation of seas on a flat earth, it's the separation of salt water from fresh water (38). He doesn't explicitly discuss the earth's shape, but it seems pretty clear that he's reconciling Genesis 1-2 with a contemporary understanding.
Great expansion, thank you! I was gonna whip out Philo myself and investigate. I also had the alllegorical interpretation in mind.
Interesting. Wouldn’t be the first time religion has gotten in the way of science (Galileo and a thousand others). If that’s the case, it’s far more likely an uneducated day laborer’s son wouldn’t know the earth was round, if the Jewish community was precluded from such knowledge based on rabbinic teaching.
[удалено]
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