DOES THE EARTH MOVE AND WILL THE STARS FALL?

Astronomers have also weighed in on the subject of the accuracy of some statements in the Bible. Here are two typical astronomical objections:

A. There are five places in the Old Testament where it says the earth is fixed in place and immovable.

1. All five passages are poetic, not prose and certainly not meant to be scientific statements by any means. Adjacent verses in these passages have God dressed in strength, the rivers talking, the earth is told to rejoice, and the trees singing for joy. Only a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist or a scientific atheist would understand these statements in a literal sense.

2. “Fixed”(kun) = formed, prepared or established.

3. Not to be “moved” (mot) = not fallen into decay, not be out of their course, not removed, not slipped , fallen or shaken.

“The Lord's act of creation is thus to bring order out of chaos and thus to fashion within and among the chaos of the universe, a safe and trustworthy space in which life can flourish.”

The Book of Psalms, New International Commentary on the Old Testament

B. Stars falling from the sky are given as signs of the Second Coming, but even if one of the many stars in the cosmos actually fell on the earth, it would totally demolish it. 

This objection comes from the noted astronomer and TV personality Neil deGrasse Tyson.

1. These are all apocalyptic passages in the Bible, which seldom contain literal language.

2. On many occasions in the Bible, stars are used as symbols for spiritual forces (Daniel 8:10; Revelation 1:20, 9:1, 12:4) and that may very well be what is referred to.

3. Parallel passages use other poetic and phenomenological language (according to how it will appear to an observer) to describe the same event: light was darkened (Revelation 8:10-12), the sky vanished (Revelation 6:14), the host of heaven will rot away and the skies be gathered as a scroll (Isaiah 34:4), and stars will not give their light (Isaiah 13:10).

4. But if you want to get more literal, in biblical parlance, the stars were any heavenly bodies other than the sun and moon. The term thus included meteorites and comets, which can fall to the earth without totally destroying it.

To give Tyson credit, he also states that you should not try to go around making scientific statements built primarily around biblical passages whose main intent is totally different. I would agree with that. Nevertheless, when understood properly, those passages shouldn't contradict firmly established scientific findings.