That's what I did.
“God sits above the circle of the earth” Isaiah then went on to say “And spreads the heavens out like a TENT to dwell in.”
Exactly as I said. The analogy conveys flatness, to the extent it conveys anything at all about the earth's shape. A tent covers a level surface. Anyone who's ever used a tent knows that you look for a particularly flat area to pitch a tent.
I’d say that does far more to confirm the spherical nature of the earth than the hebrew word.
Really?! Seriously, how do you get any hint of sphericity from a circle covered by a tent?
As I said before, the Bible might have said instead that the heavens cover the earth like the rind of a fruit. Or it might have said the heavens surround the earth like the darkness surrounds a firefly. There are any number of ways the the sphericity of the earth might have been conveyed in Biblical language, but it never is.
And remember. Your author is not merely claiming that the Biblical language can be harmonized with a spherical earth after the fact. He's arguing instead that the Bible positively affirmed that the earth was spherical prior to this fact being known by scientific observation or inference. Thus you need far more than hints of sphericity, yet even the hints are absent.
Again, the author is just making this one up. Maybe you can harmonize the sphericity of the earth with the Bible ex post facto, but there is simply nothing whatsoever in the Bible that suggests the earth is a sphere, absent already knowing this to be the case by other means.
Stultis,
He’s referring to the heavens(meaning the skies...which are PART of the EARTH of the earth) as the tent/canopy. He’s not referring to something outside the earth, he’s referring to the earth’s skies themselves.
and I know of Hebrew scholars who disagree with you on that word.
oops typo.
I accidentally said “of the earth” twice. sorry about that.