Did the New Testament Authors Believe the Earth Is Flat?

William Horst
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Abstract

Certain scholars find evidence that the authors of the New Testament held to the cosmology of the ancient Near East, in which the sky is regarded as a solid dome over a flat earth. However, it was uncontroversial among Greco-Roman astronomers that the earth was spherical and was surrounded by a celestial sphere of stars. This article explores knowledge of the “two spheres” model of the cosmos in the first century CE, as this would have been become known to inhabitants of the Mediterranean world through education, word of mouth, popular astrology, and representations of the terrestrial and celestial spheres on sundials, coins, and public art. Based on these factors and the sophistication of their compositions, a number of contributors to the New Testament likely understood the earth to be spherical; their knowledge has exegetical and hermeneutical implications for discussions about scripture vis-à-vis modern science.
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新约》作者相信地球是平的吗?
某些学者发现证据表明,《新约》的作者坚持古代近东的宇宙观,认为天空是平面地球上的一个坚实的圆顶。然而,在希腊罗马天文学家中,地球是球形的,被一个由星星组成的天球所包围,这是没有争议的。这篇文章探讨了公元一世纪的宇宙“两天球”模型的知识,因为地中海世界的居民通过教育、口口相传、流行占星术以及日晷、硬币和公共艺术上对地球和天体的代表已经知道了这一点。基于这些因素及其复杂的组成,《新约》的许多贡献者可能认为地球是球形的;他们的知识具有训诂学和解释学的含义,对圣经的讨论可见-à-vis现代科学。
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