Friday, April 11, 2014

Oceanus


It's fashionable in some "scholarly" circles to claim that Scripture assumes an antiquated cosmography in which there's one central continent encircled by an ocean. Let's examine that claim for a moment.

What was the observational experience of people living in the Levant?  The Mediterranean is ocean they were acquainted with. 

Is the Levant a central landmass surround by the ocean? Just the opposite: a central ocean surrounded by land, viz. coastal countries, as well as landlocked countries further inland. 

In addition, liberals and outright unbelievers think Israel borrowed her cosmographical ideas from the major civilizations surrounding her. 

But Egypt, Ras Shamra, and Philistia (to name a few) are Levantine civilizations. 

Surely ancient Mediterranean mariners didn't think the Mediterranean was boundless. Both for purposes of trade and navel warfare, they knew that it was encircled by coastal countries. Some countries had fleets which crossed the Mediterranean to invade other Levantine countries, or import and export goods. The Mediterranean was well-explored. 

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