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What Did Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, and Christopher Columbus Have In

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What Did Pythagoras, Eratosthenes, and Christopher Columbus Have In 24 SSeeccttiioonn AA APRIL 2008 The Woodside News THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE BY WILLIAM T. PELLETIER, PH.D [WOODSIDE NEWS COLUMNIST] Circle of the Earth is a globe and intended to Eratosthenes then reasoned the CALCULATE THE CIRCUMFERENCE suggest this. circumference of the earth should be This is a good home school or family sci- reader sent me this ques- Contrary to what is 50 times the distance from Syene to ence project. All you have to do is meas- Ation: commonly taught in govern- Alexandria which was 5,000 stadia or ure the length of noon shadows cast by “In the Bible, the earth is ment schools, Columbus 500 miles. Thus he calculated the cir- distant poles on a longitudinal arc and do called a circle. I read somewhere and many mariners of his cumference to be 25,000 miles. The some simple trigonometry like that ancient Hebrews believed time knew the earth was a actual value is 24, 901 miles—less than Eratosthenes did 22 centuries ago. It the earth was a flat disk floating globe. Pythagoras, of half a percent error! would simplify things to make it a joint under a dome they thought of as Pythagorean Theorem fame 150 years later Posidonius doubted project with someone else several hun- WILLIAM T. PELLETIER 2 2 2 sky. I’ve also heard that the PH.D. (a + b = c for a right trian- Eratosthenes’ result and made his own dred miles directly north or south of you. Hebrew word used for circle is gle), was a Greek mathe- computation of 18,000 miles. Measure the length of a vertical different from the Hebrew word matician and philosopher of Eratosthenes’ pole’s shadow at “local” noon. Do this th for sphere, or ball. I’ve also heard that the the 6 century B.C. He’s the earliest value by measuring the shadow every minute Hebrew word used for circle also means we know of who thought the earth leading up to and past noon. Shadow sphere. This is somewhat confusing. Both was round, rotated on an axis, length measurements should decrease myself, and a man I work with are won- and orbited a central point. and then start to increase. The short- dering about this. I won- est length is that for local noon. dered if you could shed some Calculate the sun’s angle A light on this.” from vertical by tan (A) = (shad- My correspondent is ow length) / (pole height). referring to Isaiah 40:22: The difference between It is He who sits above the the two angles at your two circle of the earth, and its distant locations (meas- inhabitants are like ured on the same day) will grasshoppers, who stretches be the central angle C you out the heavens like a cur- use to calculate the earth’s tain and spreads them out circumference. If D is the like a tent to dwell in. distance between the The transliterated points at which you meas- Hebrew word for circle is chug or khoog, ure the sun’s angle, then and it is usually translated circle, circuit, What did Earth’s circumference = 360 or compass. It only appears two other x D / C where the central times in the Bible ( Job 22:14 and angle C is measured in degrees. Proverbs 8:27), so there’s not a lot of Pythagoras, If you do this project, email context available to determine a pre- your data and results to me. It will cise meaning. Eratosthenes, be interesting to see how close we can get to the true value. I’ll post I think the essence of the word is M PH .CO OTO LICKR “round”. This is certainly consistent with BY PIXEMONKEY ON F results and commentary on the what we know of the earth today, but I and Christopher Bible-Science Guy blog. wouldn’t try to put a lot of technical was commonly accepted during the weight into the word. We don’t know Columbus have Middle Ages, but Columbus used Email Dr. Pelletier at much about the word, and we don’t know Posidonius’ smaller value to persuade [email protected]. how much Isaiah knew in 700 B.C. in common with his investors that he could sail west Read the Bible-Science Guy blog at It is certainly the case that the from Europe to Asia in short order. blog.woodside.tv/blog/Bill_Pelletier Holy Spirit inspired Isaiah to make an ©2008 William T. Pelletier accurate statement about the shape of the prophet the earth – when viewed from a dis- tance it’s circular (He sits above the cir- Isaiah? cle of the earth). Only a sphere projects a circular image in every direction. This is one of those cases where Pythagoras was also a fine musician the Bible hints at a truth without being (played the lyre), and he initiated the explicit. mathematical theory of music. Eratosthenes (276-194 B.C.) was EARTH’S SHAPE a Greek mathematician, geographer, Earth’s shape is not a hard thing to fig- and astronomer from Cyrene, North ure out. The masts of ships gradually Africa (now Libya). He was the direc- appearing over the horizon followed by tor of Alexandria’s great library. He’s the ship imply it’s a globe. called the father of geography (literal- During a lunar eclipse, the moon ly, earth writing) because he was the moves through the earth’s shadow first to coin the word with his book from the sun. The edge of the shadow Geography. He developed a latitude is always circular, as many of us per- and longitude system and published a sonally witnessed this past February 20 map of the world. He was also the first during the lunar eclipse of the full to calculate the circumference of the moon. The circular shadow shows that earth around 240 B.C. the earth must be spherical. Any observant thinker would con- CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE EARTH clude the earth is a globe, and certain- Eratosthenes knew the sun at the sum- ly many have understood this through- mer solstice was directly above Syene out the 6,000 years of history. (now Aswan) in southern Egypt because I’m sure Adam and the pre-Flood its reflection was visible at the bottom of patriarchs knew the earth was a globe a well. He measured the angle of the sun (they were very smart guys), and prob- from vertical at Alexandria (almost O ably Abraham’s culture did too. I sus- directly north of Syene) to be 7.2 at pect the wise men of Daniel’s time noon on the summer solstice. This knew also, as did the magi who visited equals the angle at the center of the Jesus. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised earth from Syene to Alexandria, and it is th O to find out that Isaiah knew the earth 1/50 of a full circle of 360 ..
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