A few remarks before we start.
- My comments below are not one monologue, they are paired with parts of the video by Metatron, with timestamps (usually where the comment ends that I'm answering).
- If my comments are answered or some, dialogue may be added. That's why I do not sign the below corpus of text, as it can be added to.
- The Bible may teach a thing en passant while intending to teach another thing as the main point. Hence the title.
- Literalism can go way further than some expect and still make sense.
- This is because Moses (like St. John the Gospeller, when he was on Patmos) was a prophet.
So, first the video by Metatron, then the comments I made under it, and then the footnotes with material I refer to.
Is the Bible a Flat Earth Book? The TRUTH
Metatron | 16 April 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwLIjxEGIr4
0:07 "science says it's a sphere"
Geography says it's a sphere. Geography, like history, are not properly speaking science, they are not cognitio certa per causas.
2:01 "that were not written to settle that question"
I would say that lions roar and this is settled also from the Bible, even if the Bible wasn't written to settle that question.
Ezechiel (Ezekiel) 22:25, Psalms 21:14 (LXX numbering), Proverbs 28:15, 1 Peter 5:8 all imply that lions do roar.
So, suppose someone were bad enough at geography and zoology not to know that lions roar, but he were a Christian, one could settle it that way.
Likewise with a globe earth, which is implied in the four corners (once we know sufficient geography to know a Flat Earth map has three).*
2:46 By now, the Bible actually does support the sphere model.
A Flat Earth map has three corners, unless you try to count Australia as two corners.
But on the globe, you actually can find four corners. The most peopled cities outside these, and near the South East corner, are on New Zealand, clearly offshore from the earth that has corners, i e continents. The next most peopled city outside the straight lines between the corners would be Murmansk, but this can be avoided if you bend the line between NW and NE corner slightly.*
2:57 Apart from Proverbs, the four quotations given were not adressing wild life hazards.
Nevertheless, one can conclude from them that lions in fact do roar.
3:23 Neither the Bible nor Riccioli would consider Earth as an ᾰ̓στήρ πλᾰνήτης.
Nor should a Christian, may I recommend.
"Not everything needs to be pointed out to us through scripture, but those things that we require scripture to help us understand. Anything that we can figure out through our own minds and science and intelligence and study, we can do that through observation." (4:21)
Yes. We can figure out by observation that a "mulier" is a "homo" but once the semantics on the latter word started to shift towards "vir" in the popular language, a certain young bishop was told, from the Bible, that a "mulier" is indeed a "homo" given that Christ is "filius hominis" namely "inquantum" (insofar as) "filius Mariae" i e "filius mulieris".
The Bible now and then does cater to a dofus who won't figure sth out with normal human means.
Similarily, that the Earth is a sphere and that it's stationary, both of which are verifiable by repeated observations. (With the roundness, you need to combine such from several different angles).
4:51 "the dome"
There is no proof that the Biblical raqiah is indeed a half globe shaped dome.
5:32 Waters above the firmament.
The most common molecule in the universe is H2.
Does that qualify as water? Well, it's instant water. Just add "air" (Oxygen!) and fire, and you have water. Plus Greek and Hebrew and German names for it are derived from "water" while the Norse names are derived from "wetness" (a quality of water).
"what people thought in that period. We are in the late Bronze Age, early Iron Age, depending on how much was actually written" (6:20)
Would you place 1510 BC / 1511 BC (traditional date of Exodus in Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day) in "early Iron Age"?
Because, if not, you might be denying the Mosaic authorship of Genesis, which as a Catholic you shouldn't.
I: Are the arguments gathered by critics to impugn the Mosaic authorship of the sacred hooks designated by the name of the Pentateuch of such weight in spite of the cumulative evidence of many passages of both Testaments, the unbroken unanimity of the Jewish people, and furthermore of the constant tradition of the Church besides the internal indications furnished by the text itself, as to justify the statement that these books are not of Mosaic authorship but were put together from sources mostly of post-Mosaic date?
Answer: In the negative.
Pontifical Biblical Commission, June 27, 1906.
https://www.catholicapologetics.info/scripture/oldtestament/commission.htm
9:06 My main identification of the raqiah is the aether from Oceans up to Fix Stars (but below Empyraean Heaven).
From the meaning "beaten out", however, I think one could make a case for the magnetic field.
9:33 God's ability to create?
Excuse me, but do we live in some kind of space that has some kind of spread?
If so, what's wrong with taking them literally? (In "as a tent" it can be mentioned that "as" makes the tent as such a simile.)
10:25 For waters above in Genesis 7:11, I'd disagree with normal precipitation.
There is a stretch kind of "in the atmosphere" but with Hydrogen and no Oxygen.
Now, if in the pre-Flood time the Hydrogen was thicker and at this precise point came into contact with Oxygen from below, and then God put (or told an angel to put) a spark to it (lightning, perhaps, or sth else), that would be a big Brown gas reaction.
So, I'd say much of the pre-Flood atmospheric Oxygen is now in water (seas, for instance).
10:45 I'd say the context in Apoc. 7:1 actually excludes the idiomatic context.**
Angels are not ubiquitous, and if one stands in each corner, that means that the corners are actual places.*
10:55 The continents on the surface of the sphere do not cover all of it (there is water too) which means that the "earth" as in mainland actually can have precisely corners.
It has, and with some arbitrary exactness, it has four of them. I'm not counting interior corners, like against the Atlantic or Indian, just exterior ones against the Pacific.
I'm noting that between Alaska and Siberia, the land theoretically could have formed a fifth corner, but is too rounded for it to qualify, like the four. Also, there is very little human habitation up North into that circle segment (Murmansk being the most peopled, about the population of Malmö).
11:32 No, the four corners are in the NW, NE, SW and SE.
In the pre-Flood world, the rivers of Genesis 2*** were flowing outward to them, with obviously Euphrates going NW (along present Euphrates, but other way, across Taurus mountains, across Black Sea, along Danube, but other way, across Alps, along Rhine, across now Atlantic -- the stretch could have been shorter -- and along St. Lawrence River, but other way, and across remaining parts of Canada into Alaska, where the NW corner is). Tigris NE. The two Niles, Blue and White, SW and SE (involving Amazon River, also other way, and Ganges, same way).
11:50 Oh, on Isaias, I go to the Septuagint. "τὸν γῦρον τῆς γῆς" would mean "the circuit of the earth" ...
12:51 I think it's equally safe to maintain it refers to some object like the aether (with Sun, Moon and Stars in it, the latter including planets), that make a circuit of the Earth.
Especially as the verse in the LXX reads: ὁ κατέχων τὸν γῦρον τῆς γῆς. God is upholding this circuit. Or restraining the earth from getting into a circuit itself (if we take a cue from Thessalonians on alternative meanings of ὁ κατέχων).°
12:57 Psalm 92:1 (in LXX numbering), unlike fake proof texts for a flat earth, is a real, though not the strongest one for a fixed earth.
I'd say the very strongest proof text for a fixed earth is Romans 1 verses 18 to 20. St. Paul says people have always been able to prove God (not least His inexhaustible power) from Geocentrism. No, he was not speaking of "poetic knowledge" that some prosaic people are too obtuse for. He speaks of "without excuse" so it's clear and rational knowledge. He was also not speaking of the irreducible complexity of the flagellum of the bacterium, or the code of DNA requiring information and therefore intelligence, because these have not been observed since creation, and cannot be observed with the naked eye. They have only recently been observed in microscopes or perhaps electronic microscopy.°°
13:23 "Observational" ... that (or "how it appears to humans") happens to be our sole safe way of knowing some things, for instance the Earth being fixed.
You cannot observationally get to it being moved, you need to reinterpret observations to get that. And what I have seen over twenty five years arguing this, including with astronomers, is, the arguments against a fixed earth are really only from metaphysical assumptions that a Christian either does not share (like God not existing to move the universe around us) or does not necessarily share (like God having preferred to create a clockwork over an instrument He's still playing).
Besides, what were you thinking if you took Ps. 92:1 to refer to a flat earth?
[καὶ γὰρ ἐστερέωσε τὴν οἰκουμένην, ἥτις οὐ σαλευθήσεται.
Etenim firmavit orbem terrae, qui non commovebitur.
For he hath established the world which shall not be moved.]
13:30 "the ends of the earth"
After the Flood, the Earth has some more ends than previously, not just against the Pacific, but also against Atlantic, Indian, Black Sea.
If you walk to Santiago, and then continue c. 100 km more, you come to a place where I did not go, as it was not constituent of the pilgrimage, but it's called in Latin "Finis Terrae" ... it's not at all idiomatic, but a physical fact that "terra" that you can walk on ends and "aqua" or "mare" begins instead.
[Below comments have been somehow suppressed]
14:04 Come on, Newport Beach is an end of the earth, that is of the land. I've bathed there in shallow water week after week in 1977. It's not as if the water were just a river or a trickle, there actually is loads of water and no earth, that is no land, from Newport Beach to basically China!
And for a man so versed in "translation theory" how come you don't realise that Germanic has an extra word "land" sometimes "mainland" where Latin and Hebrew simply has another usage of Terra or Eretz?
14:32 I actually am literal with the stars singing.
When St. Thomas Aquinas comments on Job 38:7 he does mention metaphor, but also as a second reason "or because angels are the ones moving the stars" or "celestial objects" ...
15:11 You know, in Church of Sweden, there are loads of people who disagree in Fixed Earth, Young Earth, and some will also disagree on demons being what Jesus drove out or a bodily resurrection being what Jesus did after dying.
I knew those types before I became Catholic.
15:57 You don't need modern science to reject Flat Earth.
You just need observation.
Geographic observation.
In Heliocentrism and in Old Earth, you are getting a "Science" which definitely involves theory not directly based on the observed facts.
[tried to add]
Geography isn't a science. You can't deduce the Peninsulas in Cornwall from first principles, like a physics theorem.
[the last added still to stand under the video is at timestamp 13:30]
* See my series some time back: Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: One Comment, a Bit Prematurely Under a Long Video · New blog on the kid: Where Are the Four Corners on a Globe? · But What About the West and East Lines? ** I meant "excludes the idiomatic meaning" ... *** This topic, I covered a bit further back in a longer series: Creation vs. Evolution : How Much was Shinar Devastated by the Flood? · You Find a Fossil Whale Here, a Fossil Pterosaur There ... · Answering Carter and Cosner on Eden · Trying to Break Down "Reverse Danube" or "Reverse Euphrates" Concept · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Damien Mackey on Four Rivers and Related, I to X · Continuing Previous, XI to XX - are Nile Rivers Excluded? · Continuing Previous : XXI to XXXIII - getting to Troy (as we Tend to Do) ° Ellopos provides the parallell English translation: [It is] he that comprehends the circle of the earth °° Hereon this very recent series, especially the post that has "Romans 1" in the title: Creation vs. Evolution: I Hope, For Galileo's Sake, He Did Retract · Parallax and Heliocentrism · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? · The Introibo Blogger Repeats A Blunder by Henry Drummond
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