Before the modern globe-earth model emerged in the early modern period, humanity understood the cosmos through a singular, enclosed, living world—Earth as the center of creation, not one object among many. There was one world, not a universe of worlds.
1. One Earth, Not Many Worlds
In antiquity, “planet” did not mean physical worlds. The Greek word planētēs means “wanderer.” These were moving lights, not solid places.
- Aristotle, On the Heavens (4th century BC):
“The Earth is the center of the universe… the heavenly bodies are carried in eternal motion around it.” - Plato, Timaeus:
The cosmos is a designed, ensouled structure, not an infinite void with many planets.
There was no concept of people living on Mars or Venus. The “planets” were signs, powers, and intelligences, not destinations.
2. The Planets as Spiritual Beings, Not Worlds
In Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and classical paganism, the wandering lights were often associated with spiritual entities—what later theology would call principalities or powers.
- Book of Enoch (c. 300–100 BC):
The stars are beings who transgressed, imprisoned in the heavens. - Church Fathers such as Origen and Tertullian:
The heavens contain orders of intelligences, not physical planets like Earth. - Paul the Apostle, Ephesians 6:12:
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world…”
In this worldview, the “planets” are authorities, not places—later demonized as fallen powers.
3. The Sun and Moon Within the World
Across ancient cultures, the sun and moon are within the created order, not distant stars.
- Genesis 1:
The sun and moon are placed in the firmament, to rule day and night—never described as massive burning spheres. - Enoch, Jubilees, and Psalms describe paths, gates, and courses for the sun and moon—suggesting local motion, not deep space.
- Medieval cosmology (Ptolemaic):
The luminaries move in nested heavens, not infinite vacuum.
The idea of the sun as a distant star does not appear until the Copernican era and is absent from sacred texts.
4. The Firmament and the Enclosed World
Virtually every ancient civilization shared the concept of a solid or ordered boundary above:
- Hebrew raqia
- Babylonian cosmic dome
- Egyptian Nut
- Greek crystalline spheres
This wasn’t “primitive ignorance”; it was a symbolic-metaphysical model where heaven and earth were structurally linked.
5. When the Globe Replaced the Sacred World
The globe-earth model became dominant only after:
- The Copernican Revolution
- The Enlightenment
- The removal of spiritual meaning from the cosmos
The universe transformed from a meaning-filled creation into a mechanical system.
As historian Mircea Eliade wrote:
“Modern man lives in a desacralized cosmos… unlike archaic man, for whom the world was alive and holy.”
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