When was it first known that the earth was round?

This belief is dying but for a long time people thought that it was the voyage of Columbus that taught us the world is round.

The second wrong theory which has been known by educated people for many many centuries if not millennia is that ancient Greeks first discovered this.

5th century B.C.

In the 5th century B.C., Empedocles and Anaxagoras offered arguments for the spherical nature of the Earth. During a lunar eclipse, when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, they identified the shadow of the Earth on the moon. As the shadow moves across the moon it is clearly round.

Did the Bible predict this first ,yes!

Here is Isaiah 40:22

כב הַיּשֵׁב֙ עַל־ח֣וּג הָאָ֔רֶץ וְיֹֽשְׁבֶ֖יהָ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֑ים הַנּוֹטֶ֚ה כַדֹּק֙ שָׁמַ֔יִם וַיִּמְתָּחֵ֥ם כָּאֹ֖הֶל לָשָֽׁבֶת:

“And he sits above the circle of the earth and whose dwellers are like grasshoppers and who stretched out like a curtain the heavens and were stretched out like a tent to dwell”

Here is the Tree of Life translation

“He sits above the circle of the earth—
its inhabitants are like grasshoppers—
He stretches out the skies like a curtain,
spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”

The precise word use for circle is Chug

חוּג	class, group activity ; group, circle (of people) ; (geography) tropic, sphere

So could this have been written after the Greeks discovered the earth was round? That depends when you date Isaiah and of coarse the secular scholars always like to late date things.So lets talk about dating for a bit here.

The most basic is that Yeshayahu ben Amoz lived in the 8th century BCE using Isaiah chapter one it looks like Isaiah may have been born in maybe 770’s BCE and died in the maybe 700’s or 690’s BCE ,some place him 20 or 30 years younger but that is not important.You would have to place the book of Isaiah in the 400’s BCE for the Bible to not have been first in saying the earth is round.

This is from Wikipedia

“Another widely held view is that parts of the first half of the book (chapters 1–39) originated with the historical prophet, interspersed with prose commentaries written in the time of King Josiah 100 years later, and that the remainder of the book dates from immediately before and immediately after the end of the exile in Babylon, almost two centuries after the time of the historical prophet, and perhaps these later chapters represent the work of an ongoing school of prophets who prophesied in accordance with his prophecies”

So here another theory by academia is put forward however this still puts Isaiah’s later chapters in 500’s BCE ,so well before the Greek discovery.And not to mention in ancient times writings spread slow and it have taken time for scientific knowledge to get from the Hellenistic world to the Middle East.Also Isaiah has no Aramaic in it ,the much later written Daniel and Ezra have Aramaic parts so a late dating of Isaiah is further unlikely.Post Babylonian exile books often have some Aramaic so I feel this points toward a 8 century BC writing of Isaiah.

Also the prophet Isaiah is concerned with the repentance of Judah and the book of Isaiah unlike Daniel does not seem to know of the exile.

Isaiah speaks of the destruction of Judah if repentance is failed and it’s restoration in the Messianic times.Isaiah does not seem to know that Babylon caused the exile.

This is why you should never believe in late dating of the prophets,because why would prophets speak of irrelevant things of the times.

For instance a American politician might say that if America does not change or reform then America will fall but would the same person at the same time say that if the British empire does not change it will fall? Of coarse not, because the British Empire already fell in the late 40’s after Indian independence.If secular historians are right and the prophectic books of the Bible were written as late as they say than why are the prophets talking about what they are talking about.If Daniel was written in the time of the Seleucid Empire as the secular historians say then why is Daniel always talking about Babylon ,a Empire that fell 250 years after the rise of Alexander.If Isaiah were written in the exile than why does Isaiah not know that Babylon conquered Judah then.

In Isaiah 14 ,he speaks to the arrogance of the King of Babylon in the future tense but if Isaiah was written late than it would either be in the present tense or the future tense,knowing that Cyrus the great toppled Babylon.Isaiah in Isaiah 14 never calls the King of Babylon Nevukhadnetzar or Nebuchanezzar ( Akkadian name,Nabu-Kadurri-usur) .So it is obvious that the writing of Isaiah was pre exilic!

So can we agree that Isaiah or Yeshayahu was 8th century BCE!