The Blogs: ACUTE ANGLES Did Our Sages Believe The Earth To Be Flat?

Dear Rabbi, In a recent essay, you poked gentle fun at those who think the earth is flat. But didn’t Judaism once hold that to be the case?. Even today in our prayers we talk about “the four corners of the earth.” Just curious! Jake.

Dear Jake,

Firstly, don’t fret about “the four corners of the earth”. That’s a woeful mistranslation. The primary meaning of the word kanaf is “wing”, as in the phrase al kanfei nesharim “on eagles’ wings.” Arba kanfot ha’arets simply means the four ‘wings,’ or primary directions, of the compass, north, south, east and west.

That the ancient Sages believed the earth to be flat is one of the myths that people perpetuate. The overwhelming evidence points to the fact that our ancients knew the earth was a sphere – long before the Greeks did.

The book of Job is of very ancient origin. Its author (thought to be Moses himself) writes (26:7): “He (G-D) suspends the world on b’lima (zilch!)”. In other words, you cannot say it is suspended on anything! Rashi interprets the Hebrew word b’lima as if it were two words b’li ma, literally “without what.” In other words, without anything we can point to and define what it is!

Did our ancient sages know that our earth isn’t still, but spinning? I’ll wager they did. G-D taught them! The Hebrew word for earth, erets, contains the root letters resh and tsadi, רץ which means “to run.”. Accident? I don’t think so. The universe was created with the Aleph Bet, G-D’s holy alphabet! And so the aleph of erets denotes The One, our Creator!

Some other notable sources include

The Mishna in Avoda Zara 3:1 speaks of icons from which all benefit is prohibited: they include an image holding a kadur, a sphere. The Talmud (A.Z. 41a) expounds: this indicates that the image purports to hold the entire world in its hands. Tosafot adds: because the world is shaped like a sphere Similarly the Talmud Yerushalmi (A.Z. 3:1) declares “kadur, because the earth is a globe!”
Bemidbar Raba (13:17): The Midrash, expounding on the offering of the tribe of Zevulun, describes his one silver basin as “symbolising the earth which is shaped like a ball”.
Zohar (Vayikra 10a): “In the book of Rav Hamnuna the Elder, it is explained …that all the inhabited world (i.e. Planet Earth) is circular like a ball ….there is a part of the world where it is light while in another part it is dark, so that some have night while others have day. Also there is a place where it is always day and where there is no night except for a very short time”. Had the sages explored the Arctic and Antarctic regions? Assuredly not! The Zohar text goes on to cite as the source for this information “the book of Adam” i.e. the traditions that had been handed down from the dawn of Creation and had, no doubt, been taught to Adam by G-D. So Adam already knew that the world was round, as perpetual-light and perpetual-darkness seasons at the earth’s extremities would only make sense on a spherical earth not a flat one.

It remains for us to deal with a key passage in the Gemara, which many cite in support of their view that the Talmudic rabbis viewed the earth as flat. Let us examine it and see what it is really saying.

The Jewish Sages have said that by day the sun travels below the vault of the rakia (firmament) and by night it travels above the rakia. But the Gentile Sages say that by day the sun travels below the vault of the rakia and by night it travels below Earth. Said Rebbi: Their words appear more reasonable than our words! (Pesachim 94b)

Disregarding the fact that neither group of Sages appear to acknowledge that the earth rotates around the sun and not the other way around, the Gentile Sages clearly maintain that the earth is not flat but round, otherwise how could it travel “below Earth”? And Rebbi – the great Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (c.135-217CE) who compiled the Mishna – acknowledges the intellectual correctness of the Gentile Sages’ view as opposed to the Jewish Sages’ view (see glosses of R’ Hai Gaon, R’ Sherira Gaon and R’ Avraham ben ha-Rambam).

What is going on here? Is Rebbe pouring scorn on his rabbinic colleagues? I don’t believe so, since he continues to call the Sages’ opinion “our words”

I think what he is saying is that two differing perspectives can exist side by side – one scientific and one theological-cum-anthropocentric!

Dibra Torah k’lashon bnei adam. “The Torah speaks in the language of man” (Baba Metsia 31b). This also serves to explain why G-D is spoken of in anthropomorphic terms (the mouth of G-D. the eyes of G-D, etc.) Our sacred writings are not books of science. They seek, as Rashi says several times in his commentary “to explain to the average human ear (i.e. in simple layman’s language) that which it is capable of grasping.”

But it is also a theological perspective. G-D created man on Earth. So theologically too, the earth, where humankind is to perform His will, is the centre of the universe!

The fact remains that, of course, we all speak in simple layman’s language when we talk about the rising and setting of the sun as though it travels around the earth. It is simply the way people speak. Just as a popular ABC-TV global current-affairs program is entitled Four Corners!

So in summary, yes: the Sages may not always have spoken in scientific language. But they certainly knew – as a tradition from Adam himself as we have said – that the earth is not flat but round!