In Honor of Columbus…

Christopher Columbus and the Flat-Earth Myth

 

Each October, Christopher Columbus is hammered for his voyages of exploitation of native peoples, and Christians are ridiculed for once opposing the forward-thinking Columbus and his rejection of the flat earth mythology held by the medieval church. Is any of it true? I’ll leave the question of exploitation to be answered by others, but the flat earth issue is easily answered. In the eleven-volume Our Wonder World, first published in 1914, the editors offered the following undocumented claims: “All the ancient peoples thought the earth was flat, or, if not perfectly flat, a great slightly curving surface,” and “Columbus was trying to convince people that the earth was round.”[1]

Even the Encyclopedia Britannica perpetuated the myth of a round-earth solution for Columbus’s voyages as late as 1961: “Before Columbus proved the world was round, people thought the horizon marked its edge. Today we know better.” The people knew better in Columbus’s day. A 1983 textbook for fifth-graders reported that Columbus “felt he would eventually reach the Indies in the East. Many Europeans still believed that the world was flat. Columbus, they thought, would fall off the earth.”[2] A 1982 text for eighth-graders said that Europeans “believed . . . that a ship could sail out to sea just so far before it fell off the edge of the sea. . . . The people of Europe a thousand years ago knew little about the world.”[3]

 

Poor Scholarship
Prominent scholars like John D. Bernal (1901-1971), in his four-volume Science in History (1954), and Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004), prize-winning author and Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, propagated the myth without any historical substantiation. Boorstin spills a great deal of ink inventing a history of flat-earth beliefs that he traces to an obscure sixth-century monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who, according to medieval scholar Jeffrey Russell, “had no followers whatever: his works were ignored or dismissed with derision throughout the Middle Ages.”[4] 

 

Earlier attempts to present Columbus as a scientific iconoclast can be found in two standard nineteenth-century anti-Christian works pitting science against religion. John William Draper claims that Christians had no concern for scientific discovery. Instead, “they originated in commercial rivalries, and the question of the shape of the earth was finally settled by three sailors, Columbus, De Gama, and, above all, by Ferdinand Magellan.”[5] While Columbus and other informed sailors who regularly sailed beyond the horizon believed in “the globular figure of the earth,” such an idea was, “as might be expected . . . received with disfavor by theologians.”[6] A similar argument appears in Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.[7] The “shape of the earth” was not in question in Columbus’s day. “Columbus, like all educated people of his time, knew that the world was round. . . .”[8]                 

 

The Flat-Earth Culprit

 How and why did the flat-earth myth get started? The legend entered history when Washington Irving published his three-volume History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). Irving, best known for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” used his fiction-writing skills to fabricate a supposed confrontation that Columbus had with churchmen who maintained that the Bible taught that the earth was flat. No such encounter ever took place. Samuel Eliot Morison, a noted Columbus biographer, describes the story by Irving as “misleading and mischievous nonsense, . . . one of the most popular Columbian myths.”[9]

Irving’s fictionalized account of Columbus describes him as being “assailed with citations from the Bible and the Testament: the book of Genesis, the psalms of David, the orations of the Prophets, the epistles of the apostles, and the gospels of the Evangelists. To these were added expositions of various saints and reverend Commentators. . . . Such are specimens of the errors and prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition, and the pedantic bigotry, with which Columbus had to contend.”[10] There is only one problem with Irving’s account: “It is fabrication, and it is largely upon this fabric that the idea of a medieval flat earth was established.”[11]
 
Attacking the Church

Boorstin asserts that from A.D. 300 to at least 1300, Europe suffered under what he describes as “scholarly amnesia” due to the rise of “Christian faith and dogma [that] suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so slowly, so painfully, and so scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers.”[12] He also claims that the scientific advances made by the Greeks were dismantled by Christians based on an appeal to the Bible. It is actually the Bible, independent of any competing cosmology, which supports the empirical data that the earth is a globe: 

Scientific demonstration of the earth’s rotundity was enforced by religion; God made the earth a sphere because that was the most perfect form. In the Old Testament there is a reference to this in Isaiah l.22: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth”-”circle” being the translation of the Hebrew khug, sphere.[13]

Of course, not all Christians made appeals to the Bible for their views of the shape of the earth. Actually, the Bible has little to say on the subject. Nothing in the Bible, however, contradicts the empirical data. For example, Bede (673-735), monk of Jarow and “the Father of English history,” maintained “that the earth is a globe that can be called a perfect sphere because the surface irregularities of mountains and valleys are so small in comparison to its vast size.” He specifies that the “earth is ’round’ not in the sense of ‘circular’ but in the sense of a ball.”[14]
 
Deep and Wide
The debate in Columbus’s day was not over whether the earth was flat or round. “The issue was the width of the ocean; and therein the opposition was right.”[15] Columbus had underestimated the circumference of the earth and the width of the ocean by a significant number of miles. “In fact, the distance Columbus was planning to cover [based on accurate maps] was 10,600 miles by air.”[16] Providentially for Columbus and his edgy crew, the Americas stood in his way.

Even considering his mistaken conclusions about measurements, “Columbus always rates the highest accolades from scholars when it comes to seamanship. He was, without question, the finest sailor of his time.”[17] Virtually every student of Columbus accepts the opinion of Bartolome de Las Casas (1484-1566), who wrote in his Historia de las Indias, that “Christopher Columbus surpassed all of his contemporaries in the art of navigation.”[18]
 
Conclusion
The Columbus myth is another example of historical revisionism, the attempt by secularists to cast the Church in a negative light. Liberal historians relish the fact that schoolchildren all over the country are being taught that Christians are ignorant, flat-earth kooks who will not listen to reason and science. When the facts of history are accurately surveyed, however, we discover true science never conflicts with the Bible. Scientific misinformation is never promoted through an accurate understanding of the Bible. Instead, the manipulation of truth always occurs outside the biblical worldview.[19]
 
Gary DeMar
 
Gary DeMar is the author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 27 book titles. He also hosts The Gary DeMar Show and History Unwrapped-both broadcasted and podcasted. Gary has lived in the Atlanta area since 1979 with his wife, Carol. They have two married sons and are enjoying being grandparents to their grandson. Gary and Carol are members of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA).
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[1]  Howard Benjamin Grose, ed., Our Wonder World, 11 vols. (Chicago: George L. Shuman & Co., [1914] 1918), 1:1, 5.

[2]  America Past and Present (Scott Foresman, 1983), 98. Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 3.

[3]  We the People (Heath, 1982), 28-29. Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 3.

[4]  Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991), 4. See Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983), chaps. 11B14.

[5]  John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1875), 159.

[6]  Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, 160.

[7]  Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: George Braziller, [1895] 1955), 108.

[8]  Zvi Dor-Ner, Columbus and the Age of Discovery (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 72.

[9]  Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1942), 89.

[10]  Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 53.

[11]  Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 53.

[12]  Boorstin, The Discoverers, 100.

[13]  Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 6.

[14]  Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 20.

[15]  Morison, Admiral of the Sea, 89.

[16]  Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (New York: Crown Publishers, 1990), 6.

[17]  Robert H. Fuson, The Log of Christopher Columbus (Camden, MN: International Marine Publishing Co., 1987), 29.

[18]  Quoted in Fuson, The Log of Christopher Columbus, 29

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PLEASE NOTE:  Publishing this article does not infer that I endorse other writings by Gary DeMar.  I have listened to him on the radio, read his writings and heard him debate.  While I do not doubt is love for the Lord Jesus, I do not stand with him in his beliefs concerning eschatology (doctrine of end times) .  None the less, this is quite an interesting article that I wanted to share.  

Happy Columbus Day!

 

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The Suitable Helper by Ruth Hunt

 

It’s an awesome responsibility for a man to take on the role of husband. Let’s consider some ways that a wife can help her husband to be a good one. In Genesis 2:18 we read that God provided Adam with a helper suited to his needs. Today’s “suitable helper” will desire to do her husband “good and not evil all the days of her life.” That’s Proverbs 31:12.

          One: The suitable helper will make home a place of shelter and refuge. When the door is closed, the world’s turmoil is left outside. I like to think of the Christian home as a temporary abode where husband and children are sheltered and cared for on the way to their heavenly home.

          Two: She will communicate wisely. I believe a wife should be her husband’s chief counselor, but in dispensing wisdom, “Let your speech always be with grace,” we’re told in Colossians 4:6. An alternative to discussing an issue verbally is to write it down. You’ll have no interruptions. You won’t get off track. Your emotions won’t spill over, and you can think as you write and revise. Your husband can then read, re-read, ponder, and respond by whatever means he chooses.

          Three: She will have a genuine interest in her husband’s problems and concerns. Six PM is the danger hour of the day in many homes. Our husband comes through the door, and we can be so hung up on our horrible day that we can hardly wait to unload. The solution has something to do with Philippians 2:3: “Let each esteem others better [more important] than themselves.” Then there’s Galatians 6:2, where we’re told to “Bear one another’s burdens.” Best of all, we’d be following Christ’s example. He gave His very life for us, and He gives us His full attention when we pour out our hearts to Him in prayer.

          Four: She will be trustworthy when he shares confidences. They are for her ears only. He doesn’t want his poorer moments advertised with the girls over coffee, or his confidences given away, even to her best friend, or her mother.

          Five: She will be courteous. The sweet, gracious ways that won his heart during courtship are sometimes left behind at the altar. Consistent courtesy smooths the path in every situation.

          Six: She is submissive to her husband. In God’s wisdom, it’s a command: “Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands,” we’re told in 1 Peter 3:1. Way back there, Satan wanted to be “like the most High” (Isaiah 14:14). But how many “most Highs” can there be in any relationship? Satan was cast out of heaven for demanding equal rights with God. God commands wives to obey their husbands (in the Lord). He commands husbands to love their wives “even as Christ loved the church [His bride].” That’s Ephesians 5:25. It shouldn’t be difficult to decide which is the greater challenge.

          Seven: She is a good manager, a good executive over her little kingdom. “She looketh well to the ways of her household,” says Proverbs 31:27. The whole chapter is a recital of all that this amazing woman accomplishes. She had to be organized. And the result? Her husband could relax and do his job more efficiently because she was doing hers.

          Eight: She will be contented with her lot. “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” says 1 Timothy 6:6. How can we be godly and not contented, when our Lord “daily loadeth us with benefits,” as Psalm 68:19 reminds us. Try thanking God for things you never dreamed of being thankful for before: the wildflowers growing among the weeds in your yard, the sun that’s drying your clothes because you don’t have an electric dryer, the coupons that have come just in time to buy the groceries you need. Practice being thankful for all those little things, which aren’t really little because they’re also God’s gifts.

          Nine: A gracious wife accepts his love, however offered. Husbands are not all poets and romantics. They may work hard, be loyal, faithful, helpful, but have a problem saying the words she longs to hear. Love can be unspoken and just as real. Accept it.

          Ten: Most important of all, the wise woman attends to her inner beauty because “Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who feareth the Lord will be praised,” Proverbs 31:30 tells us. Those many virtues listed throughout chapter 31 add up to a zero if her relationship with the Lord is not the priority. So–number ten is really number one.

A final thought from an unknown author: “Who are better suited to wedlock than men and women who have already died to self? Already they have learned to serve and please Another [our Lord Jesus Christ].”.

Happily, in this way, our relationship with our Heavenly Bridegroom can be the pattern for our earthly marriages.

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–from September 2009 Berean Call newsletter

 

 

Tisha b’Av

 

from K-House eNews:

The Hebrew day of great tragedies, Tisha b’Av, falls at sundown this Wednesday, July 29. In remembrance, the Knesset has turned its focus to the Temple Mount, dominated by the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. While the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, Jews are not permitted to worship on the mount itself for fear of inciting a riot by Muslims.

Tisha b’Av is simply Hebrew for the 9th day of the month of Av. Many disasters have befallen the Jews on this day throughout history. According to Jewish tradition, this was the day that God told the Children of Israel they were prohibited from entering the Promised Land because of disbelief. They were forced to wander in the desert forty more years until that adult generation had died out. That tragic day was just the beginning…

On the 9th of Av in:

• 586 BC, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonian captivity began;
• AD 70, the Second Temple, which stood during Christ’s ministry, was destroyed by the Romans precisely as Jesus predicted in Luke 19;
• AD 135, the famous Bar Kokhba revolt was squelched when Bethar, the last Jewish stronghold, fell to the Romans;
• AD 136, the Roman Emperor Hadrian established a heathen temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple. Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, and renamed the land as Palestina, to distance its Jewish heritage. The date when the Temple area was plowed under by the Romans was the 9th of Av.

The day has continued to be associated with grief for the Jewish people throughout history. For example, Pope Urban II declared the Crusades on the 9th of Av in 1242. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 on this day, and in 1942, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were mass deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Thus the 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av, has become a symbol of all the persecutions and misfortunes of the Jewish people, for the loss of their national independence and their sufferings in exile. Above all, it is a day of intense mourning for the destruction of the Temple.

This week, Israel’s Knesset has taken a longing look once again toward the Temple Mount. Israel has technically controlled the site since the Six-Day War in 1967, but the Waqf, a Muslim council, manages the site. Israeli law is supposed to protect free access to the site, but the Israeli government enforces a ban on any non-Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount in order to avoid Muslim riots. The Knesset members took time this week to discuss the Temple Mount and the approach Israel should take on this holy site in today’s world.

In the first session, Dr. Mordechai Keidar commented on the lack of a Palestinian connection to the Temple Mount, saying:

“Jerusalem does not appear in the Koran, not even once, not even in any one of the four different names the city has in Arabic. The struggle for Jerusalem is not territorial, it’s theological. Is Judaism still a relevant religion, or do we give in to the Muslim claim that Judaism is no longer relevant? And that’s why we heard from PA official Saeb Erekat not long ago that they will not recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state even in 1000 years. Why is this? Because Judaism in their eyes is irrelevant, so how could a Jewish state be founded?”

Keidar also noted that the Palestinians are not moderate on the issue of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, but claim it as their own. He held up a PLO traditional garment, which bore the words, “Jerusalem is ours.”

A Chabad rabbi who spoke argued that Israel would do well to lay a firm claim to sovereignty on the Temple Mount, believing that doing so would not harm Israel but would in fact win friends.”When you tell the nations of the world the truth, not only will they stop fighting against you, but they’ll even join forces with you,” he explained.

East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have been points of major contention in past efforts to negotiate a two-state agreement. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, and the Jews do not want to give up this location that is so precious to Judaism.  The world would never expect the Muslims to hand over control of the Kaaba in Mecca in order to keep peace, but the Jews are not free to worship on their holiest site because they fear Muslim violence. Knesset members spoke out in favor of educating people about the importance of the Temple Mount to Judaism.

Tisha b’Av is indeed a day of mourning. It is marked with sadness and fasting from food and drink.  Observant Jews avoid bathing or washing clothes or enjoying entertainment like music or movies, and the Book of Lamentations is traditionally read both in the evening and during the day.   On this day the Jews are reminded of their tragic history. 

Yet, this day is also expressly linked with Israel’s glorious destiny.  The Jews also look forward to the ultimate rebuilding of the Temple, to a time when Tisha b’Av will become a day of joy and gladness (as it was foretold in Zechariah 8:19).

We do know that the Temple will be rebuilt because Jesus, John, and Paul all make reference to it. But we also know that this Temple will be desecrated by the Coming World Leader when he sets himself up to be worshiped. It is possible this prophetic event will also take place on Tisha b’Av – and may happen in the not-too-distant future

Satan’s “Yea, hath God said…?” Strategy

T.A. McMahon, of The Berean Call, has written a hard-hitting article titled, ‘The Battle over Truth for Our Youth’.    McMahon rightly asserts that Satan, from the beginning, has employed a subversive strategy of questioning God’s Word in his effort to draw sinners away from Truth.  Today, we find,

The “Yea, hath God said…?” strategy has been very successful in undermining the critical belief in the sufficiency of the Word of God.  Although the Bible claims to be sufficient for “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), many Christians who profess to believe the Bible no longer regard it as sufficient.

‘Sola scriptura’, or scripture alone, was a battle cry of the Reformation.  Today, however, our youth are being seduced by churches and parachurch ministries that offer,

the “new” experiences, … religious art (primarily impressionistic images of “Jesus”), “biblical” films, rituals based upon Catholic/Orthodox liturgy, “community,” personal relationships, contemplative spirituality and mysticism (some include yoga), Bible “dialogues,” ecumenical interaction with “people of faith,” a social gospel, plans to save the planet, restore the kingdom, and so forth.

McMahon concludes that the only preventative measure for such enticements is to ground our children in God’s Word; to discipline and teach them sound doctrine.  I would add that parents must be the primary providers of this teaching and discipleship.  Sunday School teachers, youth pastors and private schools will NOT be held accountable for what YOUR child is taught.  YOU WILL BE!  

Sadly, the following is so true:

The Bible is the most exciting book there is, yet for years here in the U.S. our children have been fed a “let me entertain you” diet with only a hint of scriptural nutrition. That’s part of Satan’s “Yea, hath God said…?” strategy. The consequence is an upcoming generation that is, for the most part, spiritually anemic and ripe for the various schemes of apostasy. Deprived of the objective truths of Scripture, they are easy prey for those who would entice them through the subjective and experiential, that is, their “feelings.” Nevertheless, our marching orders involve a rescue operation as found in 2 Timothy 2:24-25: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.”   (emphasis mine)

I encourage you to read the entire artice which can be found at this link:  http://www.thebereancall.org/node/7636. 

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The Greatest Event in the Universe

The Power of His Resurrection
By Dave Hunt

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian believers is very specific. He asks God to bestow upon them a deeper knowledge and understanding of Christ that we do well to seek for ourselves. This is not something that one can learn in a seminary or even in a Bible study or from reading devotional books. Paul’s desire for them was that they would willingly receive from God “the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ” (Eph 1:17-23).

Specifically, Paul prays that they would know the “exceeding greatness” of the power that God wanted to demonstrate in their lives. His explanation of this power is most instructive. Paul tells us about it in Philippians 3. It was, in fact, what he desired so much for himself. He called it the “power of his resurrection” and declared: “[Oh] that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.”    

Was Paul uncertain of his salvation, concerned that he might not qualify for the resurrection of believers at the Rapture? Hardly! He is telling us that the Resurrection of Christ is not only a historical event that we look back to with satisfaction and joy. It is the greatest event in the history (past, present, or future) of the entire cosmos!

The greatest event that the universe will ever see is also one of the most difficult to understand. We mention it so casually, but here is the hinge upon which all history hangs and is forever divided. The division of time ought to be not only BC (Before Christ) and AD (meaning After Christ); it ought to be BR (Before the Resurrection) and AR (After the Resurrection).   (emphasis mine)                     Read the rest here.

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