Hristiyan Topografyası: Çadır ve Evrenin Sureti

...the figure of the universe can best be learned from a study of the structure and furniture of the Tabernacle which Moses prepared in the wilderness. This wonderful conception did not originate with himself. Some of the Christian Fathers who preceded him had entertained it in a vague and general way, believing it might be warranted by the expressions in Hebrews, ix, 23 and 24, where the Tabernacle and its contents are said to be patterns (ὑποδείγματα) and antitypes or figures of the true (ἀντίτυπα τῶν ἀληθινῶν). It was left to Cosmas to develop the conception and work it out into all its details.

So he explains again and again that the division of the Tabernacle into two places, by means of the veil, typified the division of the universe into two worlds—an upper and a lower, by means of the firmament. The table of shew-bread, again, with its waved border, represented the earth surrounded by the ocean, while its other parts and the things upon it symbolized each some object or other in the natural world. Now, as the table was twice as long as it was broad, and was placed lengthwise from east to west, and breadthwise from north to south, from this we learn that the earth is a rectangular plane which extends in length from east to west, and in breadth from north to south, and is twice as long as it is broad. The ocean, he further gives us to know, is unnavigable, and, while encompassing this earth of ours, is itself encompassed by another earth, which had been the seat of Paradise and the abode of man until the Ark, floating on the billows of the Flood, wafted Noah and his family over into this earth.

The heavens come downward to us in four walls, which, at their lower sides, are welded to the four sides of the earth beyond ocean, each to each. The upper side of the northern wall, at the summit of heaven, curves round and over, till it unites with the upper side of the southern wall, and thus forms, in the shape of an oblong vault, the canopy of heaven, which Cosmas likens to the vaulted roof of a bathroom. This vast rectangular hall is divided at the middle into two stories by the firmament, which thus serves as a ceiling for the lower story and a floor for the upper. The lower story is this world, where men and angels have their abode until the Resurrection, and the story above is heaven—the place of the future state.

As to the position of the earth in the scheme of things, Scripture left Cosmas in no doubt. The Psalmist had declared that the Creator had founded the earth upon its own stability; Job, that He had hanged it upon nothing; and Isaiah, that, while heaven was His throne, the earth was His footstool. Clearly, therefore, the place of the earth was at the bottom of the universe—a position to which it must have naturally sunk at the very instant of its creation. What then can be more absurd than the Pagan doctrine that the earth is in the middle of the universe? Were it in the middle, there must be something below it as well as above it; but there is nothing below it, since we learn from Genesis that God made heaven and earth, and nothing else beyond these. Here then the Pagans are at war with divine Scripture; but, not content with this, they are at war also with common sense itself and the very laws of nature, declaring, as they do, that the earth is a central sphere, and that there are Antipodes, who must be standing head-downward and on whom the rain must fall up.

Referring to the figure of the world as thus conceived by Cosmas, Sir Henry Yule with grim humour remarked that "one of the huge receptacles in which female travellers of our day carry their dresses, forms a perfect model of the Kosmos of Kosmas". The theory, again, by which Cosmas accounts for the vicissitudes of day and night is no less preposterous than his idea of the figure of the world. The Pagan theory that the earth is spherical and placed in the centre of the universe, with the heavenly bodies revolving round it, accounted satisfactorily for the disappearance of the sun during the night; but where could Cosmas, in whose philosophy there was neither a spherical earth nor any under-world, find a place for the great orb of light when no longer visible? The problem did not baffle his ingenuity. Calling to his aid the words of Solomon, which declared that the sun on rising turned first towards the south and then towards the north, where he went down, and thence hastened to the place in which he arose, he made them the basis of the following extraordinary theory. The earth, he tells us, gradually rising up from the south, extends westward, until it culminates at last in a huge conical mountain situated somewhere in the far-away frozen north. Behind this immense cone, the sun at the close of day disappears from view, and leaves the world which we inhabit in darkness, until, having circled round the cone, he reappears in the east to give birth to a new day. According, moreover, as he is high or low during his nocturnal revolution, the nights vary in their length; while, owing to a slight obliquity in his motion, eclipses are produced. On the question of the magnitude of the great luminary Cosmas differed widely from the Pagan philosophers, and wrote his sixth book mainly to prove that, instead of its being, as they thought, many times larger than the earth, it was no more than the size of two only of the earth's climates or zones, those between the latitudes of Alexandria and Rhodes, and Rhodes and Constantinople, an extent of about 635 geographical miles. But the words of Solomon form by no means the only Scriptural warrant for taking this view of the order of nature, for the candlestick placed on the south of the table of shew-bread typified the sun shining upon the earth from the south towards the north, while the waved border which ran round the table typified the ocean surrounded by the outer earth, both of which were illuminated by the sun while circling round the gigantic mountain.

The Pagan theory which Cosmas especially detested, and made most frequently the subject of his scornful and violent invective, was that which maintained that the heavens were spherical and in constant revolution. He heaps text upon text to confute the advocates of this most pestilent doctrine, which, if admitted, would, he contended, abolish the future state and make the resurrection of Christ of no account. But while Cosmas regarded as impious the doctrine that the heavens revolve, he admitted the revolution of the celestial luminaries, which, he held, were propelled in their courses by the angels, who do not live in heaven but are restricted to the aerial spaces below the firmament, until the resurrection.

All these and other views no less absurd, though interesting, Cosmas states and re-states with the most wearisome pertinacity, and holding them to be most vital verities, sanctioned alike by common sense and the paramount authority of divine Scripture, denounces again and again those reprobate Christians who, instead of accepting them, prefer, through their perverse folly or downright wickedness, to adopt the miserable Pagan belief that earth and heaven are spherical, and that there are Antipodes on whom the rain must fall up.