History of the flat-earth Theory

by **Christ is My Life!** Sat Oct 20, 2007 9:49 pm

History of the flat-earth Theory

The long association between Christianity and the flat-earth theory begins in the
sixth century when a Greek monk of Alexandria, Cosmas, who had traveled widely in the
East, retired to a cloister in Sinai and wrote his Christian Topography. In it
he refuted the 'false and heathen' notion that the earth is a sphere, and showed that it
is really a rectangular plane arched over by the firmament which separates us from heaven.
The inhabited earth, with Jerusalem at its hub, is at the centre of the plane, and it is
surrounded by oceans beyond which lies Adam's paradise. The sun revolves round a north
polar mountain, circling its peak in summer and its base in winter.

Christian Topography was well received by the Church, whose policy at the time
was to eradicate all previous knowledge and establish itself as the sole authority in
religion, philosophy and science. The flat-earth theory, hitched on to the geocentric
cosmology of Ptolemy, prevailed among clergymen (if not among navigators) until the sixteenth
century, when Copernicus called it into question by venturing the idea that the earth is
a planet orbiting the sun. He was not very assertive. The preface to his book emphasized
that the heliocentric system was merely a hypothesis, and Copernicus avoided controversy with
the reviewers by dying on the day it was published.

Copernicus first derived his theory from esoteric studies of the Pythagorean and other
ancient traditions. His successor, Galileo, challenged the flat-earth believers to scientific
experiments. One of theirs was to shoot a cannonball vertically into the air. When it
fell to earth near the cannon they claimed to have proved that the earth was not moving.
Galileo explained that the reason why the ball was not left behind by the spinning earth
was that it partook of the same motion. The argument went on for years, but heliocentricism
was in the air. It won its way against the Inquisition and finally triumphed with the
cosmological system of Sir Isaac Newton. The Church found that it could after all live with
the round-earth idea, and that references in the Old Testament to the four corners of the
earth and the pillars on which it rests might have been intended, not literally, but as
figures of speech.

From
Eccentric Lives and Peculiar Notions by John Michell (1984) pg. 21-22

by **Christ is My Life!** Sat Oct 20, 2007 9:58 pm

Contrary to what most people think, the Earth was known to be spherical
in ancient times. The ancient Greeks even calculated its circumference
with surprising accuracy.
Who invented the idea of a flat Earth?

I find this rather interesting....Still, I am always skeptical ....what do ya think?