“Talk about remarkable subjective experience, my youngest son and i were discussing this very subject last week! He is a fan of Greek mythology and was talking about the god Atlas holding up the earth. I remarked that the Hindus also believed that the earth was held up by some creature, an elephant (i think). When the religious gurus were questioned as to what held up the elephant, they said it stood on the back of a turtle. They did not have an answer for what the turtle stood on.”
I too love Greek Mythology, and took a few classical papers in university, though I just wanted to hear about the mythology and as the papers got more advanced they seemed to be more about the archaeological techniques, so I concentrated on other things. In regards to the Hindu belief, I seem to recall what might be an urban legend about some old lady answering this question something along the lines of “You can’t fool me, young man, it’s turtles all the way down!”
“He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.”
But of course, the earth isn’t suspended, and space-time isn’t nothing!
“(1) The Bible (both the Old and New Testaments) use the word world to mean the people of the earth.”
That’s fine, but the passage says “pillars of the earth” not “pillars of the [people]” I guess pillars of people would be legs??
And then puts the people on the earth, which is on top of the pillars.
And your copy highlights another problem, you’ve got YOUR version of the bible there, a perfect communication from a perfect being would require no translation, it would be understandable by everybody, otherwise it is inherently imperfect. If I recall correctly, Job also mentions pillars of the earth a couple of times, so it appears we have an internal contradiction in Job, and both points of view do not reflect reality.
“(2) Let us say, however, that i am wrong. Lets say Hanna really did believe that our planet does not rest on nothing, as Job said. This would not shake my belief, as Hanna never claimed to be one of God’s prophets.”
Then why is this passage even in there? The bible, in the form we have it today, is a reasonably lengthy work in total, sure, but with all this superfluous fluff with taking the trouble of quoting non-prophets making false predictions, there is space in there that could be used for relevant information, or more detail. It seems to rely far too much on vagueness and inclusion in the canon by power of hindsight, rather than foresight. Much is written after the facts as well.
“Hanna did not utter the words, “Thus saith the Lord” so her making some false claim would merely show the truth that she was not a prophet.”
Though if our first satellites did manage to take pictures of these pillars, I bet you wouldn’t be claiming that it was just a lucky guess, would you?
“Remember, i am not claiming that everything that everyone says in the Bible is true.”
I apologise, for some reason I was under the impression that you thought the bible was inerrant.
Merry Christmas S4J, as always I enjoy your thoughts.
