In the mutual trespassing which has caused our problem, religion has
had her guilty share, and the reason is not difficult to find. God did
not have to give a modern scientific education to his ancient Hebrew
saints before he could begin to reveal to them something of his will
and character. And they, writing their experience and thought of him,
could not avoid--as no generation's writers can avoid--indicating the
view of the physical world which they and their contemporaries held.
It is easy, therefore, from scores of Scripture passages to
reconstruct the early Hebrew world. Their earth was flat and was
founded on an underlying sea. (Psalm 136:6; Psalm 24:1, 2; Gen. 7:11);
it was stationary (Psalm 93:1; Psalm 104:5); the heavens, like an
upturned bowl, "strong as a molten mirror" (Job 37:18; Gen. 1:6-8;
Isa. 40:22; Psalm 104:2), rested on the earth beneath (Amos 9:6; Job
26:11); the sun, moon, and stars moved within this firmament, of
special purpose to illumine man (Gen. 1:14-19); there was a sea above
the sky, "the waters which were above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7; Psalm
148:4), and through the "windows of heaven" the rain came down (Gen.
7:11; Psalm 78:23); beneath the earth was mysterious Sheol where dwelt
the shadowy dead (Isa. 14:9-11); and all this had been made in six
days, a short and measurable time before (Gen. 1). This was the world
of the Hebrews.
Because when the Hebrews wrote the Bible their thoughts of God, their
deep experience of him, were interwoven with their early science,
Christians, through the centuries, have thought that faith in God
stood or fell with early Hebrew science and that the Hebrew view of
the physical universe must last forever. In the seventeenth century,
Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,
said: "Heaven and earth, center and circumference, were created all
together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water.... This work
took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. C.,
at nine o'clock in the morning." Of what tragedy has this identification
of science with religion been the cause!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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