Flat earth map second in a series.
Working Flat Earth Map
Although this is not an official flat earth map, it is very impressive and considered as one of the best models out there.
Sphere Earth Over!
Google maps measures “sea level” and exposes the globe lie.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=PAhOXQIZ4OE
Bio on Cosmas
(Cosmas’ works) flourished at the time when Christianity perhaps most entirely and exclusively controlled a major area of the civilized world; and he seems conscious, not of a feeble and barbarized mind, but rather of having all knowledge for his province. He was not without profane science, but he now saw it (and saw through it) in the light of theology, the crown of sciences.
REFERENCES:
*Beazley, C., The Dawn of Modem Geography, volume I, pp. 273-303.
*Brown, L.A., The Story of Maps, pp. 91-102.
*Harley, J.B., The History of Cartography, Volume One, pp. 261-63, 319, 348, Figures 15.1, 15.2.
*McCrindle, J.W., The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian monk, Hakluyt Society, Series I, vol . 98, 1897.
*illustrated
This ^ statement shows that Cosmas’ works were highly regarded in early Christendom and those works were associated with Catholic thought and theology. Cosmas worked tirelessly against the pagan notion of the world in his day, which just so happens to be identical with the pagan model of earth accepted today.
Emperor Justinian
The Cosmological Philosophy of Imperial Orthodox Christian Byzantium was Mosaic Biblical Flat Earth Cosmography. In ‘The Madaba Map Centenary 1897-1997: Travelling Through the Byzantine Ummayad Period’ Dr. Irfan Shahid of Dumbarton Oaks contributed an article entitled ‘The Madaba Mosaic Map Revisited: Some New Observations on Its Purpose and Meaning’ which states the following on page 151:
“That Imperial Byzantium was also aware of Moses the Cosmographer in the sixth century is reflected in the fact that none other than Justinian himself spoke against the pagan Greek spherical view of the Universe and clearly implied strong support for the opposite conception, originally owed to Moses in Genesis, and held strongly by the school in Antioch, when he thundered his anathemas against Origenism at the Synod of Constantinople in AD 553.”
Consistent with all Orthodox Churches, the architecture of the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople and all Churches which Emperor Justinian built is a model of the Cosmos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia
The excellent, learned, and exhaustive Madaba Map Book containing the quotation above may be obtained through the Madaba Map website:
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/mad/index.html
The above quote in bold shows that Emperor St. Justinian spoke loudly against the Greek pagan view of the cosmos, but even more importantly, the quote ties together the shape of the earth/cosmos, according to Moses, expounded upon by Cosmas (Severian and others), helps deny the strange notions about the spiritual world that Origen had begun to teach. Every single time, flat earth is found in sound thinking, tied to Scripture, to Saints, to Fathers, to other Catholic teachings, even if somewhat buried in history by evil doers, yet always poking up through the ashes to show that the cosmology of the pagans is not only false, but to them, the foundation of their war against Christendom. And flat earth is the foundation of the war against paganism.
Globers think the popularity of spherical earth is what’s most important for determining what reality is. Such failed doctrine shows no respect for what is true, or what is related to truth, especially during times when truth is not popular. Spherical earth depends on paganism, popularity, scoffing, indoctrination, nitpicking Scripture, etc. Flat earth reaches to the foundation of Christianity, opens understanding and extends to teachings regarding the spiritual realm as St. Justinian’s condemnations of Origen’s spiritual misconceptions reveal. Truly amazing!
Refutation of Robert Sungenis’ New Book “Flat Earth, Flat Wrong”
Robert Sungenis provides a list of 16 Fathers of the Church that he claims taught earth is a globe. The problem is, the list is provably inaccurate.
On the list is Arnobius. Wiki gives some insight.
“The work of Arnobius appears to have been written when he was a recent convert, for he does not possess a very extensive knowledge of Scripture. He knows nothing of the Old Testament, and only the life of Christ in the New, while he does not quote directly from the Gospels. He was much influenced by Lucretius and had read Plato. His statements concerning Greek and Roman mythology are based respectively on the Protrepticus of Clement of Alexandria, and on Cornelius Labeo, who belonged to the preceding generation and attempted to restore Neoplatonism.[10]”
Without knowledge of Scripture, any discussion of the shape of the earth by Arnobius would not be authoritative.
Sungenis lists St Athanasius as a globe earther, yet that claim is proven quite a stretch. Wiki places St. Athanasius with flat earthers and we can see its highly questionable that the saint taught earth is a globe. Below is a quote from St. Anthanasius and beyond that is an excerpt from Wiki.
Athanasius: but the earth is not supported upon itself, but is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the center of the universe. (Against the Heathen, Book I, Part I)
Diodorus of Tarsus, a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus’ opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism.[88] Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church and Archbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath the firmament.[89] Athanasius the Great, Church Father and Patriarch of Alexandria, expressed a similar view in Against the Heathen.[90]
Regarding Athanasius’ claim that earth is set on the waters (under the firmament) and not in space, we see that Sungenis has a problem because this description is of a flat earth, not a globe. But that St. Athanasius says the earth is “bound fast” also shows that he did not teach that the earth was a ball hanging in space. Scripture says the earth is with a foundation, bound to the firmament at the edges, firmly fixed, and even quotes God saying, “I have bound it (heaven and earth) like a square block of stone”.
Also on Sungenis’ list includes St. Cyril of Jerusalem as having taught the globe. Well, not so much, as we see below.
Wiki
“J.L.E. Dreyer, A History of Planetary
Systems’, (1906)” A limited preview is here, and Severian is on p.211-2
A contemporary of Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, lays great stress on the necessity of accepting as real the supercelestial waters 1, while a younger contemporary of Basil, Severianus, Bishop of Gabala, speaks out even more strongly and in more detail in his Six Orations on the Creation of the World,2, in which the cosmical system sketched in the first chapter of Genesis is explained. On the first day God made the heaven, not the one we see, but the one above that, the whole forming a house of two storeys with a roof in the middle and the waters above that.
1 Catechesis, ix., Opera, Oxford, 1703, p. 116.
2 Joh. Chrysostomi Opera, ed. Montfaucon, t. vii. (Paris, 1724), p. 436 sqq. Compare also the extracts given by Kosmas, pp. 320-325.
No glober teaches that there is a body of water above earth or in space.
Further explanation tells us:
The literal interpretation of the Bible was totally
followed by the leaders of the Syrian Church,
who accepted only the cosmogony of the Genesis.
Some contemporaries of Basil, Cyril of
Jerusalem and Severian of Gabala agreed with the
creation of the world according the Genesis.
The heaven is not a sphere, but a tent, a tabernacle,
a vault, or a curtain. The earth is flat and the
sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels
through the northern parts, hidden by a wall.
So, Sungenis’ claims about St. Cyril are definitely a problem as he is known to teach flat earth cosmogony: the firmament as a tent, like a tabernacle, etc. Such descriptions do not describe features of a globe.
Another Saint on Sungenis’ list of Fathers who taught that earth is a globe is St. Clement of Alexandria. Again, Sungenis’ information is inaccurate.
“Other notable Fathers of the Church who taught flat geocentric earth are Theophilus of Antioch in the second century and Clement of Alexandria in the third, based on the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, both taught that spread over the earth was a solid vault, “a firmament,” and they added the passage from Isaiah in which it is declared that the heavens are stretched out “like a curtain,” and again “like a tent to dwell in.”
–A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
by Andrew Dickson White
Historian
Another on Sungenis’ list is Eusebius.
While the following statement is not clear as to what he exactly believed, this is what historian Andrew Dickson White tells us about Eusebius: References below may add more information.
A few of the larger-minded fathers of the Church, influenced possibly by Pythagorean traditions, but certainly by Aristotle and Plato, were willing to accept this view (spherical earth), but the majority of them took fright at once. To them it seemed fraught with dangers to Scripture, by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture. Among the first who took up arms against it was Eusebius. In view of the New Testament texts indicating the immediately approaching, end of the world, he endeavoured to turn off this idea by bringing scientific studies into contempt. Speaking of investigators, he said, “It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labour, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things.” Basil of Caesarea declared it “a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan.” Lactantius referred to the ideas of those studying astronomy as “bad and senseless,” and opposed the doctrine of the earth’s sphericity both from Scripture and reason. St. John Chrysostom also exerted his influence against this scientific belief; and Ephraem Syrus, the greatest man of the old Syrian Church, widely known as the “lute of the Holy Ghost,” opposed it no less earnestly.
(27) For Eusebius, see the Proep. Ev., xv, 61. For Basil, see the
Hexaemeron, Hom. ix. For Lactantius, see his Inst. Div., lib. iii, cap.
3; also citations in Whewell , Hist. Induct. Sciences, London, 1857, vol.
i, p. 194, and in St. Martin, Histoire de la Geographie, pp. 216, 217.
For the views of St. John Chrysostom, Ephraem Syrus, and other great
churchmen, see Kretschmer as above, chap i.nklhlbl
Another Father on Sungenis’ list is Gregory Thaumaturgus, yet Gregory was a student of Origen, who was an ardent flat earther and who taught that the firmament was without doubt a solid structure above the earth through which rain passed. Although this isn’t exactly proof Gregory wasn’t a globe promoter, with the errors Sungenis has found himself immersed in already doesn’t bode well for his claim. Note the glowing sentiment of Gregory for Origen:
In his panegyric on Origen, Gregory describes the method employed by that master to win the confidence and esteem of those he wished to convert; how he mingled a persuasive candour with outbursts of temper and theological argument put cleverly at once and unexpectedly. Persuasive skill rather than bare reasoning, and evident sincerity and an ardent conviction were the means Origen used to make converts. Gregory took up at first the study of philosophy; theology was afterwards added, but his mind remained always inclined to philosophical study, so much so indeed that in his youth he cherished strongly the hope of demonstrating that the Christian religion was the only true and good philosophy. For seven years he underwent the mental and moral discipline of Origen (231 to 238 or 239).
Before leaving Palestine, Gregory delivered in presence of Origen a public farewell oration in which he returned thanks to the illustrious master he was leaving.
From Wiki
Also on Sungenis’ list is St. Jerome. And yet we have information from Wiki telling us that St. Jerome did believed in the flat earth.
“Greek gýros turns up in its transliterated form gyrus–present in Roman literature as early as Lucretius (mid-first century BC)–in the Latin versions of the Bible as well.27 St. Jerome (c. 340-420), the early Latin Church’s master linguist and Bible translator, began his work on the Old Testament by creating a standard version from the several unreliable Old Latin recensions then in existence, using as a valuable aid Origen’s fair copy of the Hexapla which he consulted in the library at Caesarea around 386 AD.28 The Old Latin recensions were based on the LXX and commonly rendered this same portion of Isa. 40:22a as “qui tenet gyrum terrae.”29 Later, when he prepared a new version from the Hebrew that would become part of the Vulgate, he kept the Old Latin reading, changing only the verb tenet, “dwells,” to sedet, “sits.”30 And in his Commentary on Isaiah, Jerome, who is regarded by critics today as a competent and careful scholar,31 specifically rejected the notion that in this verse the prophet is referring to a spherical earth.” 32
We also know that St. Jerome taught, based on Scripture, that Jerusalem is in the center of the earth; which is totally impossible on a globe.
The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout the “ages of faith” this was very generally accepted as a direct revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth’s form. St. Jerome, the greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth’s centre; in the ninth century Archbishop Rabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh century Hugh of St. Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging the Franks to the crusade, declared, “Jerusalem is the middle point of the earth”; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, declared, “As the heart in the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth,” – “so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre of the earth.” Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty, wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox.
Sungenis quotes St. Ambrose as though the Saint is teaching the spherical earth.
From Sungenis’ Book, The Consensus of the Fathers: Earth is a Sphere
Pg 97 Sungenis tries to infer Ambrose is a globe earther.
Ambrose:
“They ask us to concede to them the heaven turns on its axis with a swift motion, while the sphere of the earth remains motionless, so as to conclude the waters cannot stay above the heavens, because the axis of heaven as it revolved would cause these to flow off. They wish, in fact, that we grant them their premise and that our reply be based on their beliefs. In this way they would avoid the question of the existence of length and breadth and that height and depth, a fact which no one can comprehend except Him who is filled with the fullness of the Godhead, as the Apostle says.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Anyone with half a brain can see that St. Ambrose is saying that “they” (pagans) ask “us” (Catholics) to concede to them that heaven turns on its axis with a swift motion, while the sphere the earth remains motionless. And Ambrose tells us why. “so as to conclude the waters cannot stay above the heavens, because the axis of heaven as it revolved would cause these to flow off.”
This entire statement of St. Ambrose’s is his contention against the their globe and describes the firmament with the waters above. St. Ambrose is telling us about what “they” believe and what their purpose is in believing it. And yet, Sungenis has the word “sphere” in italics as if St. Ambrose is teaching the sphere himself. Sungenis sees the word “sphere” or “globe” and he jumps on the quote without discernment, which invariably destroys his argument. This is a common mistake by those who have a preconceived idea that earth is a globe.
St Ambrose goes on to say that pagans say all this about the sphere to avoid the question of the existence of length and breadth and height and depth (of earth) a fact which no on can fully comprehend, except God.
St Ambrose speaks of the firmament as well, saying that it is solid, something Sungenis somehow misses.
St Ambrose comments on Genesis 1:6, saying, “the specific solidity of this exterior firmament is meant” (Hexameron, FC 42.60).
The firmament and waters above earth are a deal killers for globe promoters and Sungenis prefers to sweep all this information under the globe.
Critique on Robert Sungenis’ Article Against Flat Earth
WED, JAN 18, 2017 8:36 PM
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