The Bible doesn’t specifically side with one or the other, and people often take scriptures out of context, like 1 Chronicles 16:30, to suggest that the Earth is explicitly flat or round. I believe in a round Earth because the flat Earth model has observable, testable scientific problems. I don’t get how the day-and-night cycle, like time zones (it’s night in Asia when it’s daytime in the Americas), works on a flat Earth.

The Moon reflects the Sun’s light. It can’t do that if the whole Earth experiences night and day at the same time, because we wouldn’t be able to see the Moon if the Sun sets beneath the Earth at night. Also, the seasons are opposite in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres because of Earth’s tilt. Wouldn’t a flat disk cause a consistent global climate? In addition, how do eclipses work in the Flat Earth model? I’m sure a flat-earth believer has answers to those questions, but I don’t see any flaws in the round-earth model that need fixing in the first place.

A Biblical look:
1 Chronicles 16:30 [NLT] Let all the earth tremble before him. The world stands firm and cannot be shaken.

1 Chronicles 16:30 says the earth can’t be shaken, yet we know the earth moves during quakes, so this is obviously not meant to be literal. Therefore, it can’t be used to suggest the Earth can’t move around the Sun or self-rotate daily. Also, 1 Chronicles 16:7-36 is a song of praise. It says so in verse 7.

1 Chronicles 16:7 On that day David gave to Asaph and his fellow Levites this song of thanksgiving to the Lord:

Things written in the Bible aren’t always meant to be applied literally; sometimes similes, metaphors, parables, and allegories are used, so context matters. For example, 1 Chronicles 16:15 says, “Remember his covenant forever—the commitment he made to a thousand generations.” We know that God’s people weren’t going to stop being in a covenant after exactly 1000 generations; it’s an expression. Also, “33 Let the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth.” We know trees don’t sing; it’s an expression.

Several scriptures are used like this to support things like a flat Earth. Isaiah 40:22, for example, refers to the Earth as a “circle,” as in Isaiah 40:22.

Isaiah 40:22 God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them.

Notice the similes in the verse. People are compared to grasshoppers and the heavens are compared to a curtain. Other scriptures use the same kind of similes, comparing humans to grasshoppers (Num 13:33), as well as the heavens to a curtain both in Isaiah (Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 44:24; Isaiah 45:12; Isaiah 51:13) and other Old Testament books like Job (Job 9:8), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 10:12; Jeremiah 51:15), and Zechariah (Zechariah 12:1).

The skies are not a literal curtain, nor are we grasshoppers. Both spheres and circles are round, so this doesn’t mean the Earth is a flat disk. These passages express God’s power and authority over creation by using similes that compare large-scale aspects of nature to things humans can access more directly, like curtains and grasshoppers. The purpose of the passages is to display God’s glory, not to give us scientific data about reality.

Scientifically interpreting the Bible:
The Bible reflects the cosmology understood by those who lived when its various parts were written. The Bible often uses phenomenological language to describe astronomical events we understand more scientifically today. We still use phenomenological language today when we say the Sun “sets” and “rises”, or talk about shooting “stars” which are actually comets. The phrase “fiery serpents” used in Numbers 21:6 refers to venomous snakes because venom’s side effects include an internal burning sensation; thus, the serpents are not on fire, but the venom felt like fire when in the victim’s bloodstream. In the Gospels, when talking about Jesus’ ascension to heaven, it says he went “up”. What does going “up” mean on a globe that’s spinning on its axis, while orbiting the Sun, while our solar system is spinning around with the rest of our galaxy? Jesus’ ascension “upwards” is framed in the context of what we would see from Earth’s surface.

Ancient Cosmology:
Even if some verses allude to a flat earth because many Near Eastern cosmologies believed that, this doesn’t mean that picture fully represents reality. This was the easiest way to explain things to people at the time in a framework they understood, since they didn’t have as many details about things like DNA, microbes, advanced chemistry, etc. Should a person who has a kid through artificial methods reject the existence of their child, who spent his first few days as an embryo growing in a lab instead of being “knitted by God in the womb”, as a literalist reading of Psalm 139 would demand? God still made the child because He made the biological rules governing cells, genetics, conception, development, and birth, even if they didn’t happen in the natural way. It’s very possible that the authors of the Old Testament and the New Testament had differing cosmologies. The ancient Greek mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes recorded the circumference of the Earth in the 2nd Century BC, and the New Testament was written about 100 years after that.

Why I believe in a round Earth:
For the Moon to be visible from the shaded side of the Earth (the people experiencing night), the Sun’s light has to reflect off it. With a spherical Earth, the Sun can hit the Moon without lighting the dark side of the Earth, because a sphere has an infinite number of omnidirectional faces. On a flat Earth, the Sun would have to illuminate the whole Earth at once, or not, because it is a disk with one face on top and another on the bottom. So everyone around the world would have to experience night and day at the same time, but we know that isn’t true. An American can have a live video call with someone in Asia and see that the world doesn’t work that way; that’s why we have time zones. Some flat earth models suggest an invisible force cuts halfway through the earth and blocks the Sun on one side, but that force would also block the Sun’s light from hitting the Moon, so how would the people on the night side see the Moon if the Sun’s light is blocked?

Others argue the Moon emits its own light. How can the Moon be an emitter of light if it has a surface shadow? An object that emits light can’t receive shadows. If you hold your phone up to a lit lamp and put your hand in front of it while the screen is off, your hand makes a shadow on the phone screen. However, the shadow isn’t there when your phone is fully bright. This is why the Moon has phases: the lit portion reflects the Sun’s light. The Moon has phases because of its position relative to the Sun. The lit side is facing an external light source (the Sun), and the other side is dark. When it’s directly across from the Sun, it gets direct Sunlight and appears as a full Moon from Earth’s perspective. When it’s on the same side as the Sun, it isn’t visible from Earth because we are looking at the Moon’s dark side, which faces away from the Sun. Between those, it has all the other phases like half, crescent, waxing, and waning, which are created as the Moon moves around the Earth and catches the Sun’s light from different angles. Many ancient Near East cultures, including the Israelites, would have understood this because they used the Moon as a clock to measure each month.

Eclipses occur when the Sun’s light toward the Moon is blocked by either the Earth (lunar eclipse) or by the Moon from reaching a portion of the Earth (solar eclipse). In a Lunar eclipse, Earth casts its shadow on the Moon, and at the right angle, some red-shifted light can reach the Moon, making it look like a blood Moon. In a solar eclipse, the Moon blocks the Sun and casts a shadow on the Earth. The shadow is too small to cover the whole planet, and in fact, it covers a small region of the lit (daylight) area of the planet. Therefore, the entire Earth doesn’t experience this all at once; only specific points on Earth that are experiencing daytime do. This means people only experience it during the day, and only people in particular locations experience a full eclipse. So when America gets a solar eclipse, it’s not visible in Asia because it’s night. Also, it would only be visible in some areas of the Americas because the Moon isn’t big enough to cast an all-encompassing shadow. During the 2017 solar eclipse over the US, people who drove to places like Kentucky could see a total eclipse, but in Michigan, where I was, it was only partial.

Moreover, Earth’s tilt creates opposite seasons in each hemisphere. When it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere. One can look up the weather in different parts of the world. Latitude determines the basic climate. Those on the equator have two seasons, wet and dry. Places north of the Arctic and south of the Antarctic Circle experience extreme cold climates. Between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and the Arctic and Antarctic, a gradient of four-season climates exists. At the poles, it’s night for 6 months during winter and 6 months of daylight during summer. This is evident in photos or videos from places like far northern Canada and Alaska. In the summer, these places have daylight at 1:00 am; in the winter, it’s dark outside in the afternoon. The flat Earth model only has one pole, Antarctica at the center (South Pole), and an ice edge (instead of the North Pole). Why would the edge and center of a disk have the same climate while the middle was the opposite? With poles on a sphere, it makes sense because they are symmetrical mirrors of one another, so they both experience 6 months of day/night each, in opposition because of the tilt.

One last interesting note:
The Earth’s curvature hindered meteorologists from tracking tornado formation in the past. This is because radar towers are really high off the ground, and if a tornado forms too far away, the radars can’t detect it because of the curvature of the Earth. They have newer, better radars now that are much closer to the ground and use dual-polarization. Check out this PBS NOVA Special on Deadly Tornadoes in Oklahoma. They mention how Earth’s curve affects tornado tracking at 43:40.

More resources:
Myths about Christianity and Science

An Article on recognizing the bible’s cultural context first:
“The most significant conclusion from this journey of discovery is that the Bible is culturally bound: it was written in a language, to a people, at a time. While it’s meaning transcends those boundaries, the written form must be translated, contextualised, and applied to today’s problems.”
Read More

Some sources about the bible and the flat earth:
AIG – Does the Bible Teach Flat Earth
Who Invented Flat Earth?
Does the Moon Give Light?
ICR – Moon Rules