table proves to liiin that the earth is flat, and its dimensions prove that the earth is twice as long as broad; its four corners symbolize the four seasons; the twelve loaves of bread, the twelve months; the hollow about the table proves that the ocean surrounds the earth. To account for the movement of the sun, Cosmas suggests that at the north of the earth is a great mountain, and that at night the sun is carried behind this; but some of the commentators ventured to express a doubt here; they thought that the sun was pushed into a great pit at night and pulled out in the morning.
Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's summing up of his great argument. He declares, "We say therefore with Isaiah that the form of the heaven that embraces the universe is that of a vault, with Job that it is joined to the earth, and with Moses that the length of the earth is greater than its breadth." The treatise closes with rapturous assertions that not only Moses and the prophets, but also angels and apostles, agree to the truth of his doctrine, and that at the last day God will condemn all who do not accept it.
Although this theory was universally considered as drawn from Scripture, it was really, as we have seen, the result of an evolution of theological thought begun long before the texts on which it nominally rested were written. It was not at all strange that Cosmas, Egyptian as he was, should have received this old Nile-born doctrine, as we see it indicated to-day in the structure of Egyptian temples, and that he should have developed it by the aid of the Jewish Scriptures. But the theological world knew nothing of its more remote pagan evolution; it was received as virtually inspired, and was soon regarded as a fortress of scriptural truth. Some of the foremost men in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing it with new texts and throwing about it new outworks of theological reasoning; the great body of the faithful considered it a direct gift from the Almighty.[1]
- ↑ For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with those of Lactantius, Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and others, see Schoell, Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol. vii, p. 3*7. The main scriptural passages referred to are as follows: (1) Isaiah xl, 22; (2) Genesis i, 6; (3) Genesis vii, 11; (4) Exodus xxiv, 10; (5) Job xxvi, 11, and xxxvii, 18; (6) Psalm cxlviii, 4, and civ, 9; (7) Ezekiel i, 22-26. For Cosmas's theory see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, Paris, 1706, vol. ii, p. 188; also pp. 298, 299. The text is illustrated with engravings showing walls and solid vault (firmament), with the whole apparatus of "fountains of the great deep," "windows of heaven," angels, and the mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For reduction of one of them see Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, p. 98; also article "Maps," in Knight's Dictionary of Mechanics, New York, 1875. For a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist, de la Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited in De Morgan, Paradoxes, 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see Montfaucon)
