While every infidel
knows, this English mistranslation of the words of Isaiah, we have never found
one of them honest enough to refer to the only text in the book of Isaiah where
the prophet did speak about the shape of the earth. This is in Isaiah
40:22, where the prophet writes concerning the greatness and the magnitude of
God, “It is he that sitteth above the circle of the earth.” Again, we
must note that the word, “circle”, is a translation of a Hebrew word that
literally means “roundness”. The most literal translation from the Hebrew into
a vernacular text that we have found on this point is that of the modern
Swedish translation. In place of the word “circle”, the Swedish version uses
the word “rund”, which is a literal rendition of the ideas of Isaiah. (Harry
Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1936], 77)
In the King James version
of the New Testament there is an incorrect translation that makes this fish
appear as a whale. Jesus did not say that Jonah was three days and three nights
in the whale’s belly. The translators, in dealing with this passage in the
original Greek, used the word “whale” because it was the only sea creature they
knew that was big enough to suit them. The word, however, is “ketos”—and simply
means a monster of the deep. The Hebrew word for whale is “tannin”. The Old
Testament Scripture says that Jonah was swallowed by a great “dag”. The New
Testament says that he was picked up by a “ketos”, and nowhere does the original
writing say that this was a whale. (Ibid., 177-78)
