US Library of Congress head, Daniel Boorstin (quoted above), like historians before him, simply followed the pattern of others without checking the facts.

His work also was soundly rejected by the Church Fathers, but liberal historians have usually claimed his view as typical of that of the Church Fathers. Next was sixth century Eastern Greek Christian, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who claimed the Earth was flat and lay beneath the heavens (consisting of a rectangular vaulted arch).

His views were considered heresy by the Church Fathers and his work was ignored until the Renaissance (at which time some humanists revived his writings as a model of good Latin, and of course, his flat Earth view also was revived). He rejected all the Greek philosophers, and in doing so also rejected a spherical Earth. The earliest of these flat-Earth promoters was the African Lactantius (AD 245-325), a professional rhetorician who converted to Christianity mid-life. Most of these were ignored by the Church, yet somehow their writings made it into early history books as being the “official Christian viewpoint.” Lactantius Yet, it was only a handful of so-called intellectual scholars throughout the centuries, claiming to represent the Church, who held to a flat Earth. During those centuries Christian faith and dogma suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so slowly, so painfully, and so scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers.” 1Ĭhristianity has often been held responsible for promoting the flat Earth theory. “A Europe-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia… afflicted the continent from AD 300 to at least 1300. In his book The Discoverers, author Daniel Boorstin stated:

However, a closer study of historical facts shows that this accusation is ill-founded.

And the Bible doesn't teach it.Ĭhristianity has often been accused of opposing science and hindering technology throughout history by superstitious ignorance. But neither history nor modern scholarship supports the claim that Christians ever widely believed that the Earth was flat. The ancient Greeks even calculated its circumference with surprising accuracy.Įvolutionists often falsely accuse creationists of believing in a flat Earth. Contrary to what most people think, the Earth was known to be spherical in ancient times.

Ancient cosmology theories flat earth