Clive wrote:Another question is what is a day and what happens to define the cycle of a day? Does the sun die and resurrect, or go to sleep, or go to the underworld, or continue on a path or what? Did people know the world was round and knew without putting it in words that the sun was orbiting? They knew that from the movement of the moon and the stars, why should they not have realised the sun was also going in circles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth sets out the current Catholic apologetic view that “The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century.”
Allow me to cite a conflicting source. Former Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney in Australia, William O’Neil, was also a historian of astronomy. In his magnificent book
Early Astronomy from Babylonia to Copernicus, O’Neil makes the following claim, which I am typing up because I would like to know if his allegations about Tertullian, Lactanius and Kosmas are true:
“The early Christian Fathers contributed to the decline of the Hellenistic astronomy and other branches of science in both the west and the east of the empire. After Constantine had adopted Christianity as the official religion (early fourth Century) not only was paganism discouraged, if not suppressed, as a religion, but also pagans had obstacles placed in their way in teaching or otherwise promulgating views on secular matters where these views seemed to be in conflict with the Scriptures. Extreme examples of the rejection of Hellenistic astronomy were provided by Tertullian (early third century), by Lactanius (early fourth century) and by Kosmas (sixth century). Without differentiating amongst the details of their several views it may be said that they rejected the Hellenistic notion of the sphericity of the earth and of the universe in favour of a layered, flat, square scheme as suggested in Genesis. Indeed to varying degrees they tended to support the view that the Mosaic Tabernacle represented the shape of the universe. Rather than conceding that the Sun between sunset and sunrise passed underneath a spherical earth,
such thinkers argued that at sunset it fell behind a mountainous wall and after passing south behind the wall rose again in the east. They could not admit that there was a ‘beneath’ to their supposedly flat earth.”
O’Neil is incorrect in his questioning whether paganism was suppressed (it was, violently). But it is a shame he does not cite his sources more specifically than the names of the three fools. It would be very good to get a scholar of the early dark ages to indicate if these idiots actually expressed this ‘sun goes round the south’ idea. I suppose it has a logic - the sun is good, hell is evil. If hell is under the earth, then it is repugnant to all proper magical faith to assert the sun goes to hell every night where it could be influenced by Beelzebub. Far better for Tertullian to imagine the sun chucks a left at sunset and switches course to track along the southern horizon.
[Note- the above comment is from
http://www.booktalk.org/post128702.html#p128702] I will follow up with some subsequent research answering some of the questions raised.
