The prophet Isaiah in about 700 BC said “It is He who sits above the vault (circle) of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The earth is of course not a perfect circle but the Hebrew word translated circle means circle, round, or sphere. It seems that in some ancient cultures, Babylonian, Egyptian, and China, there was a belief in a flat earth. The Bible proclaimed the truth about the matter even centuries before Isaiah, for in the book of Job we read, “He has inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness”(Job 26:10). Here it also indicates that where light terminates, darkness begins, which suggest both day and night at the same time on a round earth. Often the Greeks are credited with the thought of a round earth in the sixth century B.C. and around 250 B.C. it is said that Eratosthenes of Alexandria calculated the circumference of the earth within fifty miles of the present calculations. The roundness of the earth was well known many years before Columbus, and evidence suggest that different people had already navigated to the New World.
Some falsely say that the Bible teaches a flat earth and point to passages that refer to “four corners” or something similar. Such passages are referring to the four directions of North, South, East, and West, and it should not be assumed that the world or earth mentioned in any given passage refers to the entire world. The Roman world, or the land of Israel for instance should be the understanding in some passages. Very early on the Bible, the inspired word of God, taught what astronauts see when they look back on our earth from space. The Bible is not intended of course to be a science book, but when it does speak on these matters it is right, and such statements give evidence for the uniqueness of the Bible. Of course we should study it not to learn of the geography of earth, but of the way from earth to heaven - through the one Savior, Jesus the Christ!
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