The Flat Earth and the 'Common Understanding of the Day'

The Flat Earth and the "Common Understanding of the Day"
Sabbath School Q2 2020: How To Interpret Scripture - Week 9

Does the bible say the earth is flat?
In this video we discuss something called "the common understanding of the day." All we mean by this is that at different points in history, there are certain beliefs and understandings that are common to the people of that time.

And of course, most of the Hebrew bible was written before the third century B.C.E. and quite naturally, it expresses the common understanding of the day.

As an example of this, in Psalm 19:6, King David described the sun as being on a circuit in the sky, rather than the earth being on a circuit around the sun. It reads,

"It [the sun] rises at one end of the heavens and runs its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth."
[Psalm 19:6]

But we need to consider two things from here...the first one is that this description of the sun seeming to be moving across the sky was not David's main point. It is quite clear to see by reading the entire Psalm that David was rejoicing in the fact that the law of the Lord is perfect, blessing everything it shines on, just like the sun warms every point of the earth that it shines on.

Imagine, if the common understanding of the day was simply that the sun moves across the sky to warm the whole earth, but instead David communicated today's understanding concerning the nature of the universe, that the sun was really a very small star, the earth being just one of many planets orbiting the sun, which as a solar system is actually circling the center of the milky way galaxy, which is moving along with billions of other galaxies in our universe, which is only one of many universes...well, the point could still be made, that God's law is dependable and gives light to all it touches, but most would have missed the point because their world view apple cart would have been toppled. And what would be the advantage of toppling their apple cart if the common person of the day had no means of understanding astronomy in that way? The point David was making could be made using either the common understanding of his day or the common understanding of our day...but since he was writing with this ancient understanding himself, and his audience would have had the same ancient understanding, it would have been confusing and unproductive to make the point using our modern astronomy.
Ellen White said that inspiration is one hundred percent human and one hundred percent divine. She said that it is God who inspires the prophet, but the words belong to the prophet. In other words, unless God totally cancels out the prophets mind and works through the prophet as merely a robotic interface, He has to accommodate the prophet's cultural, scientific, and linguistic context in order to effectively use them to communicate messages of truth to people with similar contexts in a way that they would understand and gain the most from the messages.

Now, you may be thinking that knowledge has increased quite a bit in the 100 plus years since Ellen's passing. Our language, circumstances, understanding of science, understanding of history, use of technology, and many other aspects of our modern context has changes quite a bit in the past century.

Don't you wonder what God wants to say to us today? Since Jesus did not expect prophecy to cease (see John 16:12-13), maybe we shouldn't either!

For further study on the pioneers understanding of materialism, please read our study:

A Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist perspective on the Sabbath School lesson.