East to West
Jan
29
2020
Common knowledge says that before Columbus, people thought the world was flat. I think that’s a bad generalization.
Consider what the Bible says in Psalm 103:12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
I have heard that explained a number of times as a good description of an infinite distance – no matter how far east you go, you’ll never be west. Unlike north and south – if you head north, eventually you end up going south, and vice-versa.
And that all makes sense, we can picture that on a globe.
Of course, like all analogies there is a weakness. If your sins go west and you go east, you’ll end up meeting when you circle around. But as far as your direction goes, if you go east you’ll always go east.
But that description and that explanation means that people in the Bible (that Psalm was probably written around 1000 BC, so 2500 years before Columbus) knew the earth was a globe and that north and south were the poles.
I think we need to give people of the past more credit. And the Bible too.
As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:12
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:27 am and has been carefully placed in the Uncategorized category.
April 23rd, 2020 at 9:42 pm
I had a class on Thomas Aquinas. In one text Aquinas used as an example of something everyone agreed on the fact that the world was round (sort of like, “We all know fire is hot…”). The professor pointed out that that meant in the 13th century, not only did people know the world was round, but it was so well-established that Aquinas could use it in that way.