' Inventing Flat Earth: Columbus And Modern Historians?

Soumin Shin

“Interpreting the contemporary situation as reflecting the longue durée of the relationship between science and religion, the progressivists declared it a war” (36). The Church believed the earth was flat according to the historians, but it was a myth, explained by Jeffrey Burton Russell, the author of Inventing Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Russell, a former professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has published seventeen books in the field of history of theology. The achievements and the past studies of Russell prove his credibility as a historian, which specifically focused on the
 Medieval Ages, Christianity, and people’s perceptions. When writing this book, as a historian, Russell’s
Russell starts out the first chapter by describing that Christopher Columbus was painted as an explorer who debated with Churchmen to go on his voyage to prove the earth was round. However, Columbus actually argued that the earth was small enough for him to travel by sea. The second chapter portrays why Christians seemed as people who believed in the flat earth in the Medieval Ages when most scholars believed the earth was round, and few took the Bible as scientific evidence. Then on the third chapter, Russell continues with suggesting the reasons why the myths were popularized and accepted. The historians in the past wanted to emphasize the misunderstandings of the Christians regarding the flat earth to support their arguments on evolution. In the fourth chapter, Russel explains why the myths were still persistent, even though they were not correct. The works of Washington Irving and the humanists romanticized Columbus while describing the members of the church as objecting to Columbus’s voyage ignorantly, objecting to Columbus's assertion that the earth was round. The final chapter sums up the reasons for the persistence of the flat earth myth, which are that people are ethnocentric, and they repeat the same errors of fact when proving what is right or
Russell first provides evidence on what the past historians believed in, and then states his argument on whether the claims were accurate. Giving sufficient information helps the audience to understand the different perspectives of the past historians and to think about how the earth was believed to be flat, and but it was not true. While presenting a myriad of evidence, Russell organizes information into different chapters to separate it into relative topics. Therefore, Russell’s five different chapters revolve around the main idea of how the flat earth error has occurred while supporting the main