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is the world round or flat?
It’s flat and it’s round and it’s carried on the backs of four elephants. On the back of a giant turtle.
Dr. Middos overheard Sir Columbus on the boat talking to his men, “I told you men, the world, she’s not a flat, she’s rrrrround!”
Are round and flat mutually exclusive?
Flat, and no bigger than the distance from Lakewood to Flatbush to Monsey to the Catskills via Monroe, BP and Willy. The rest of the world is of no consequence unless you are a tzioini or unless you have mishpoche in London or Manchester or Gateshead or Antwerp. Montreal and Toronto are bichlal of no consequence no matter how much family you have there. Kew Gardens Hills and the Five Towns/Farkockaway are considered satellites of the real world.
Creedmoor is a world by itself.
To be specific, it’s an oblate spheroid – slightly bulging at the sides, slightly flattened at the poles. When drawn to scale, it is closest to a perfect circle.
WUM: You are one of many discworld fans in the CR. Or at least one of two.
hee hee
Just out of curiosity, what does any of this have to do with the size of the Earth?
Just out of curiosity, what does any of this have to do with the size of the Earth?
He who knoweth not the shape of the Earth likewise knoweth not the difference between “shape” and “size”
The Skvere chasidim hold that the world is square!
Go to the American Museum of Natural History unclesam, and the division on earth [on the ground floor of the museum], will answer all of your questions + many more.
No need to wait another 9 weeks until Chol haMoed to go there.
FYI:- you can get there with B or C train.
ZeesKite
Because Mommy Said So
“The Skvere chasidim hold that the world is square!”
this perception mainly comes from the skver specticles. I can’t mock the size of them though…
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Circa 200 B.C.E.) not only proved that the Earth was round, but correctly calculated the circumference (about 24,000 miles). You can Google him to see how he did it. Chazal certainly new that the Earth was round.
The gemarah (AZ 40b), Yerushalmi (AZ 3:1), Zohar (Vayikra 10a)Midrash Rabbah (bamidbar 13:16) all maintain that the earth is round.
DH: As well as the Navi Yeshayahu.
The only Jewish source I have ever seen for a flat earth is the Ohr Hachaim on Parshas Bereishis.
I think Yehuda Levin and the NK nuts are flat-earthers.
Oh oh. Waxing on the profound again.
There’s something fascinating I heard in the name of the Gr”a. There’s a passuk about the Torah someting to the effect of ????? ???? ???, which is taken as face value to indicate that the Torah is longer than the world. Nu nu.
The Gr”a understands “midah” not to mean measurment, but ‘the measure’, the measuring stick.
Even the measuring stick, used to measure the Torah, is longer that the world.
The elementery schools teach that Columbus was a genius in a world of idiots that thought that the earth was flat while in actuallity he was the idiot that underestimated the size of the earth and couldn’t tell America apart from India.
They quote Rashi in Gittin as saying that the world is flat and I believe there is a T’shuvas Harashba that says so also. I have never seen it inside though I heard it’s a Machlokes in the Yerushalmi whether it’s flat or round. I once tried to give whether the Earth is flat or round as P’shat in the Machlokes in Megillah whether Hodu and Kush were on opposite ends of the Earth or next to each other (if they’re next to each other then ruling over from one to the other is ruling over the whole world if it’s round). We Pasken that it’s round, obviously.
Nu, that’s why they call it Flatbush.
Hodu = Hodu Lashem
Cush = cush in well, you know.
Hodu therefore refers to the mouth, which is in the head (elu pinu malei shira kayam…ein anachnu maspikim lehoidois)
Cush refers to something else that is round, albeit bifurcated.
Whichever way you look at it, Hodu and Cush are both related to round.
Therefore, the world is round.
“we pasken it is round”
Among the stranger piskei halacha I’ve heard. Do we also pasken that the sun is a star?
We pasken water is a liquid too.
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