In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 King James Version
Which way is up?
Seems like a simple question. Just point. Heaven is up. Obvious.
For thousands of years, people believed that the world is flat. Absolutely convinced. It was not even a question. The ground — the earth — is here. The sky — heaven — is up. Just point. Obvious.
For thousands of years — tens of thousands of years — everybody, without exception, was wrong. The world is not flat. It is round.
Eventually, some people came to realize that the ground we live on — the earth — is round. A large round spherical body. Not everyone believed this. The people who studied the environment and saw the shadow of the earth on the moon during lunar eclipses, concluded that the earth was round like the sun and the moon. The people with knowledge and the people with power have known for two or three thousand years that the earth is round.
Until 400 years ago, people believed that the earth is at the center of the world, that not only the moon, but the sun, the planets and the stars moved in great circles around the earth. The possibility that the earth is moving was proposed almost 16 centuries ago by Aryabhata, a scholar in India. He stated that the earth is rotating on its axis.
The idea that the earth is a planet, moving in orbit around the sun, was proposed by Copernicus, published on his deathbed and shelved by the authorities. Several decades later, Galileo looked through the newly-invented device — the telescope — and saw evidence that the world up there is like the world down here. That, and other observations, convinced him that the idea proposed by Copernicus is correct: The earth is in orbit around the sun.
Which way is up?
In a flat world, up is simple and obvious. Heaven is up.
On a round earth, up is away from the center of the earth. Heaven is out there.
In a world of the Earth and other planets orbiting the Sun, which way is up? If Earth is in orbit around the Sun, then Earth — like the other planets — is in the sky, in heaven.
What does Genesis 1:1 mean, if Earth is in heaven?
Which way is up?
24 Shawwaal 1444
May 14, 2023
Which Way Is Up? 