In a recent online conversation about biblical views on creation, I was struck by an interesting and almost paradoxical truth. And the truth is this: There is a strange point of agreement between current thinking in science, the Flat Earthers, and the text of the Old Testament - And the connected truth is that none of these viewpoints see the Sun as the centre of the universe.
OK, perhaps it seems like a false point of agreement. After all, the Bible and Flat Earthers talk about a Sun and Moon that go around the earth, whereas science talks about a solar system where the Earth goes around the Sun. However, I think there is a deeper sense of agreement to be found, particularly between the Genesis account of creation and our modern scientific understanding. Genesis does not discuss a centre of the universe as such, rather it simply describes the Moon, stars and Sun as lights in the sky. It has no point to make about absolute position, only the position relative to the ground we walk on, relative to the viewpoint of the human observer.
In addition, it makes no comment about the Earth being specifically flat. this is partly because Hebrew has no language to speak of a ‘planet’ Earth: It simply speaks of the ground beneath us and the sky above. But it is also because the specific notion of 'flatness' is absent from the description.
As we read the text of Genesis 1, we might interpret the ground as being flat or level, because that is a traditional interpretation. The language of flatness was available to the writer, but that language is not used in Genesis 1. In fact, we are far more likely today to use idioms like ‘get my feet back on level ground’ or ‘lying flat on the ground’ than the scribes of the Bible ever did.
Genesis speaks of waters above and below, and it speaks of expanses, vaults or as some translations suggest, perhaps a dome, but nothing flat. It is only when we are battling between a universe with the Earth as its centre, and a universe with the Sun at its centre, that the text of Genesis feels out of place.
There is a tendency these days to seek conflict, even when that conflict does not exist. It is easy to forget, when people argue about the disagreements between science and religion, that we no longer live in a world where scientists see the Sun as the centre of our universe. That was only a brief and passing step along the way to where we are today.
Now we know that our Sun is just another star, like all the other stars in the sky; like all the other lights that fill our night sky. Yes, we have moved from the Sun moving around the earth to the earth moving around the Sun, but in the vastness of the universe, that is a minor detail. Once we take on a universe where the earth beneath our feet is like the earth of any other terrestrial planet, spinning around any other star, in any other galaxy, that conflict should begin to dissipate.
We stand on ground like that of any other rock at any distance from the centre of the universe and at any moment since the big bang. In this light that view of a universe in Genesis 1, seen by humans standing on the ground with their eyes fixed upon the mysterious lights in the sky, seems as true now as it did, thousands of years ago when Genesis 1 was first written down.
