Christianity or Paganism?

Posted on April 20, 2010 by jewamongyou

There was a time when, in the Western world, Christendom closely paralleled white European collective identity.  More recently, it seems that almost every Christian denomination clamors for yet more non-white immigration in to white lands.
What passes for “faith” can be tricky business but many of us find it hard to believe that mere coincidence is at work when the geographical boundaries of major faiths just happen to coincide with ethnic boundaries – at least historically.  Even though many a Catholic Mexican will claim, with a straight face, that his faith in the Trinity is strictly his own conviction and irrelevant to the fact that Catholic Spaniards conquered his forebears hundreds of years ago.  The fact of the matter is that religion often goes hand in hand with ethnic identity.   In this context I find it rather pathetic that most Filipinos claim Catholicism as their own.  Ditto for so many Vietnamese.
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, would it be better for white nationalists to continue to consider themselves (even nominally) Christian or would it be better to reclaim pre-Christian European paganism as their own?  At least European paganism is 100% indigenous European – not partially imported from the Middle East like Christianity – and not prone to sabotaging white interests like Christianity.
Not by a long shot am I an expert on the topic of European paganism or Christianity so this post is really an invitation for others, more knowledgeable than I, to put their two cents in.

Posted in politics and attitudes of the pro-white movements | 13 Comments

Expert race hustler has change of heart

Posted on April 20, 2010 by jewamongyou

In a shocking move that some have criticized as a publicity stunt, long time race hustler Rev. Jesse Jackson has embraced white nationalism and made peace with white advocate Jared Taylor.
Mr. Taylor, at first skeptical, graciously accepted the Rev. Jackson’s heartfelt apologies for decades of political lynchings and monetary pogroms directed against white businesses and influential individuals.  “His sincerity seems genuine and he even purchased a copy of ‘paved with good intentions’ from us.”
Asked about his plans for the future, Rev. Jackson mused that he’ll probably put his talents to good use by extorting black businesses and then donating the proceeds to the white cause.  “It’s the right thing to do” he said.  “It will give me the chance to make amends and give back to the white community.”
Privately, Mr. Taylor seemed hesitant to accept donations of that nature.  However, he admitted that this would be better than having the reverend actually become white – which, it turned out, almost happened in the past.
In a separate interview, Rev. Jackson revealed a bizarre event from his past.  It seems that in 1986, both he and entertainer Michael Jackson (no relation) had checked into the same hospital.  Michael Jackson was simply trying to acquire pain pills and the Rev. Jackson was there for an experimental skin-lightening treatment.  A nurse accidentally switched their charts and the entertainer ended up with lighter skin while the reverend got the pain killers.  After taking the pain pills, the reverend became disoriented and forgot about his skin plans.  The entertainer never even noticed anything was amiss.  “You see”, explained Rev. Jackson, “back in 1986 I wanted to be a white man.  I’ve always wanted to be a white man.  By the time I realized my skin wasn’t getting any lighter, I’d also noticed there’s a lot of money to be made as a black race hustler.  Plus…  those pain killers were pretty good.”  He went on to explain that “after several decades of brisk business, all my friends and family are living comfortably; they’ve all got nice houses, fancy cars and mistresses.  My work in the black community is therefore done – oh, and I’ve also decided to change my ways.”

Thanks to Gaurav for the photo.
Posted in parody/satire | 6 Comments

On Armand Leroi

Posted on April 19, 2010 by jewamongyou

Once upon a time I was poking through my local library seeking something interesting to read.  A thick tome caught my attention – more, I admit,  out of morbid curiosity than any thirst to broaden my intellectual horizons.  The book was titled “Mutants” by an author I had never heard of: Armand Leroi.  So I checked it out and soon discovered I had stumbled upon both a treasure among books and a treasure among authors.
It didn’t take long for me to recognize that Prof. Leroi is probably far more intelligent than anybody else whose books I had previously read.  He described, in meticulous detail, how dozens of mutations might arise during the early phases of human development.  Though, admittedly, I did not understand every last thing that he wrote, still I found myself miniaturized to the size of single cells and even proteins where I could witness the most intimate accidents of nature as they unfolded before me.
Seeing things through Prof. Leroi’s eyes is like peering through a giant and powerful microscope.  Few secrets can withstand his gaze and they reveal themselves each in their turn.  Though he is a molecular biologist, I found myself comparing the depth of Prof. Leroi’s understanding to that of other authors (mostly anthropologists) and their stature was diminished to that of dust mites.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet,  I admire Prof. Leroi and so I was doubly pleased when he broached the subject of race:

I would like to know about variety.  Most of this book has been about the rare mutations that damage the body.  If I have mentioned variety, I have done so only in passing.  By variety I mean the normal variation in human appearance and attributes that we see in healthy people around us.  I mean the variety that can be found within the smallest Scottish hamlet, with its brown-, green- and blue-eyed inhabitants.  But I also mean the differences in form between populations of oeople who live near to each other, but are somehow distinct; short pygmies versus taller Bantu farmers, for example.  And I also mean the differences in skin colour, hair curliness and eye shape that distinguish – more or less – people who originate from different continents.  one of the things, then, that I want to know about is race.
Race has long been under siege.  Among scientists, geneticists have led the assault.  Their attack has been predicated on two empirical results that have emerged from the study of patterns of genetic variation across the globe.  The first was the discovery that most of the variety so abundantly visible in our genomes does not divide humanity along lines that correspond to the races of traditional and folk anthropology.  All genes come in different variants, even if most of those variants are ‘silent’ and do not affect the structure of the proteins they encode.  Inevitably, some variants are more common in some parts of the world than others.  But the ubiquity and rarity of most variant genes across the globe do not correspond to traditional racial boundaries.  Racial boundaries are usually held to be sharp; gene variant frequency changes are generally smooth.  Changes in variant frequencies are also inconsistent between one gene and another.  If there are lines to be drawn through humanity, most genes simply don’t show where they go.
The second discovery that caused, and causes, geneticists to doubt the existence of races is the ubiquity of genetic variation within even the smallest populations.  About 85 per cent of the global stock of genetic variation can be found within any country or population – Cambodians or Nigerians, say.  About another 8 per cent distinguish nations from each other – the Dutch from the Spanish – which leaves only a parltry 7 per cent or so to account for differences between continents or,  in the most generous interpretation of the term, ‘races’.  To be sure there are genetic differences between a Dutchman and a Dinka, but not many more than between any two natives of Delft.
… Generations of scientists have expounded these results much as I have here – and asserted that, as far as genetics is concerned, races do not exist.  They are reifications, social constructs, or else they are the remnants of discredited ideologies.
Most people have remained unconvinced.  They have absorbed the message that races are, somehow, not quite what they used to be.  Far better, then, to avoid the word and substitute ‘ethnicity’ or some similar term that comfortably conflates cultural and physical variety… I suspect that the reason the lesson of genetics has been so widely ignored is that it seems to contradict the evidence of our eyes.  If races don’t exist, then why does a moment’s glance at a stranger’s face serve to identify the continent, perhaps even the country, from which he or his family came?
The answer to this question must lie in that 7 per cent – paltry though it is – of global genetic variation that distinguishes people in different parts of the world.  Seven per cent is a small part of global genetic variation, but it is large enough to imply the existence of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of genetic polymorphisms that are common, even ubiquitous, on one continent but rare, or even absent, on another.
… Forensic anthropologists in the United States and Britain are quite adept at telling whether a given skull, perhaps evidence of some foul deed, once belonged to someone of African or European ancestry.  That they can do so after decades, even centuries, of co-existence, not to mention generous amounts of admixture, suggests that our differences are not, as is often said, merely skin deep, but extend to our skulls – if not to what they contain.

Leroi then goes on to explain why the study of human genetic variation (which some of us call “H.B.D.”) is important.  What I did notice – and this may not be obvious from what I quoted above – is that Leroi makes enough statements that seem to deny the validity of race to keep him out of trouble.  If leftists come after him with torches and pitchforks, he can always defend himself by quoting one of those statements and the angry, ignorant mob might leave him alone to pursue some other hapless intellectual.  I, for one, was not fooled; it was obvious to me that Leroi is too brilliant to be a race-denier.   After reading his book, I never once doubted that this was the case.  Only later did I bother to look up online sources and found copious material supporting this impression.  here,  here and here for example.  So it seems that, since writing his book, Prof. Leroi has taken a more outspoken and courageous stance.  While I don’t imagine he is a white nationalist (though we can never really know for sure), his writings should be studied and his contributions recognized.

Posted in book/movie/video reviews and links, racial differences and how they manifest themselves/race science | 3 Comments

Bono's take on Africa

Posted on April 18, 2010 by jewamongyou

According to guest columnist Bono in the New York Times, Africa is on the cusp of a new era.   His recent travels there brought him face to face with men and women who inspired him with awe:

John Githongo, Kenya’s famous whistleblower, has had to leave his country in a hurry a couple of times; he was hired by his government to clean things up and then did his job too well…
DJ Rowbow, a Mike Tyson doppelgänger. His station, Ghetto Radio, was a voice of reason when the volcano of ethnic tension was exploding in Kenya in 2008…
Youssou N’Dour — maybe the greatest singer on earth — owns a newspaper and is in the middle of a complicated deal to buy a TV station…
Luisa Diogo, the country’s (Mozambique) former prime minister, who is now the matriarch in this mesmerizing stretch of eastern Africa…
Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese entrepreneur who made a fortune in mobile phones.

He refers to Nelson Mandela as “Madiba, the great Nelson Mandela — the person who, along with Desmond Tutu and the Edge, I consider to be my boss.”
All this leaves me wondering, if Africa so overflows with exceptional people such as these, does this mean it will soon cease hemorrhaging excess males to the rest of the world?  Does it mean Western governments will soon cease looting their working populations in order to send enormous sums of foreign aid to that continent?  Does it mean that “African” will soon cease being a synonym for “disadvantaged” or “victimized”?  As a matter of fact, the author does address foreign aid; he calls for a new kind of foreign aid – which he calls “smart aid that aims to put itself out of business in a generation or two.”  Oh joy!  We can look forward to a self-sufficient Africa in merely forty or fifty years.  Let’s see, I’ll be…  very old by then.  Even my kids will be old by then.  How convenient that Bono’s new era for Africa won’t actually arrive until most of us are already dead from old age.  One wonders if, fifty years hence, leftists will still be singing the same tune.
This much is for sure, Africa is not going away.  Furthermore, those courageous Africans who risk their lives to battle corruption, fight disease, further education and reduce poverty have my utmost respect.  It is difficult enough to do these things in modern Western nations.  How much more so in darkest Africa.  If worthy and capable African leaders and activists need guidance and resources in order to improve their homelands and make them more habitable, then this is the sort of foreign aid we should be promoting – but only by free choice.  Not at the barrel of a gun in the form of taxes.

Posted in shenanigans of the Left and of non-white activists | 5 Comments

Let us stop supporting our enemies

Posted on April 16, 2010 by jewamongyou

It should be no secret, amongst white nationalists and race realists, that all major newspapers and magazines subscribe to a radical anti-white agenda.  The only reason this is not common knowledge is that the bias is extremely pervasive.  It is as common as the air we breath.  Nearly two generations of Americans have grown up so accustomed to anti-white bias that, on the rare occassions that it is missing, they sense something is wrong.  They will often instinctively describe the lack of anti-white bias as “racism”.
I don’t feel it necessary to cite specific examples; www.amren.com has hundreds, if not thousands, of such examples.  Once you learn to recognize the bias, it becomes difficult to read any newspaper or magazine without encountering it.  They speak of the “black community” and the “Hispanic community” but never the “white community” – even in areas where whites are a minority.  They speak of “people of color” but never “people of light”.  They speak of “minority (i.e. non-white) rights but never “white rights”.  They hide the racial identity of non-white criminals whenever possible but go out of their way to publicize white criminals – and to make false claims that whites are more likely to be serial killers or sexual predators.  They sugar-coat statistics that reveal the ugly truth about black on white crime and use misleading wording to caste the blame on whites.
One would think that at least those elite few who attending our last American Renaissance conference would appreciate the perversity of giving money to those who work toward our demise.  Alas, even there I beheld one man in possession of a brand new “Washington Post” (sometimes called the “Washington Compost”).  I did not actually see the man in question purchase the abomination – so I’ll judge him favorably and assume he stole it from a sleeping homeless person on a bench.  Nevertheless, to show up at our august conference with such a publication should be no more acceptable than to show up at church (or synagogue) with Hustler magazine.
Purchase those publications if you must – if your job depends on it, for example – but we should bear in mind that all the blogging and posting in the world will not make any difference if we don’t put our money where our mouths are.  Most of us can get our news and entertainment for free online.  In fact, there are enough white-friendly or neutral online publications to keep us occupied and entertained all day long.  We should not feed those who persecute us any more than we have to.  So let us please refrain from giving our money to those scoundrels!  If you already have subscriptions to newspapers or magazines, cancel them and tell them why!  But let us not stop there.  Let us explain this to our friends and family as well.  Every revolution must start with some sort of action.  Why not start this one with a boycott of newspapers and magazines?

Posted in examples of propaganda, politics and attitudes of the pro-white movements | 19 Comments

Jews in turbans

Posted on April 15, 2010 by jewamongyou

I’ve always had a fondness for turbans in general. It turns out that they had been worn by Jews for a very long time.  Just from my years of Talmud study, I got the impression that ancient Babylonian Jews crowned their heads with this noble garment; it just seemed to me it would be a natural part of their culture.  Or perhaps I had come across specific mentions of the practice.  I can’t remember for sure.  But somebody else has done the research for me:

Newcomers to Hebrew have to learn that the Hebrew word for “to wear” (labash) can be used for most garments, but a different verb must be used to indicate the wearing of a hat: habash. The verb actually means “to wrap” (and is the root of the word for “bandage” for example). Its origin dates back to a time when the only thing a well-dressed Jew would be likely to be wearing on his head was a turban, a long piece of cloth that would have to be wrapped around the head.
It appears that among the Jews of Babylonia the turban was felt to have special spiritual efficacy. It is told of one rabbi for whom the astrologers had foretold a life of crime, that as a counter-measure his mother insisted on his wearing a turban at all times. Once during his childhood, when it accidentally unravelled, he found himself unable to resist the temptation to take a bite at someone else’s dates.
In general it seems that the turban was viewed as the distinctive mark of Torah scholars, who saw their wearing such a head-covering as a sign of special piety.

I happen to have some old photos/sketches of Iraqi “hakhamim” (the Sephardic/Oriental equivalent of “rabbis”) and I’ve scanned them in.  If anybody wants to see more, just let me know:

It seems that the tradition, amongst Babylonian Jews, of wearing turbans started in distant antiquity and continued uninterrupted until the early, or mid 20th century.  The final death blow to this tradition was the relocation of almost all Iraqi Jews to Israel, where their ancient and priceless culture was mindlessly thrown into the blender.  It is doubtful if there are any living Iraqi Jews today who remember the particulars of the preparation and wearing of turbans.  It could be that the particulars were recorded in a book at some point but I’m not familiar with any such book.  If not, turban historians will have little to go on.  What a pity.

 

 

Posted in Jewish stuff and Israel | 13 Comments

Racial awareness for those invested in diversity

Posted on April 14, 2010 by jewamongyou

My own path to racial awareness, though somewhat smooth, had its challenges.  For one, the vast majority of race realists are white and most of the intellectual infrastructure of the race realist movement is built upon the assumption that its adherents are white.  Though marginally “white” myself, my children (their mother being an Indian Jew) are certainly not white.  Of course I see no contradiction in being a race realist/white nationalist and, at the same time being very close to non-whites in my personal life – even, some might say, as close as my own swarthy skin (more so in my younger years).  This is because I hold no animosity toward non-whites.  I have never been victimized by violent racist Indians and most of my experiences with Indians have been positive (even with tech support).  Maybe a sojourn in India would give me a different perspective.
As for my experiences with blacks, I am mature enough to refrain from harboring ill feelings toward individual blacks until they give me reason to do so.  I see plenty of reason to be cautious of them as a group but no reason to poison my heart with hatred and violent thoughts.  This would hurt me more than them.
As it stands, blacks hold a special place vis-a’-vis race realists due to their high levels of crime against whites and Asians and their overall high time-preference.  So I sometimes wonder, in a parallel universe where I’d married a black woman instead of an Indian Jewish one, would I still have been capable of reaching the racial insights I now have?  In general, is it possible for the human psyche to allow one to hold race realist convictions on the one hand and still love his black children on the other?  If so, would such a person be an outcast amongst other race realists and, especially, amongst white nationalists?  Would attitudes toward such a person be different if she were a woman as opposed to a man?
A couple of Amren conferences ago, Fred Reed was invited to talk about Mexico, where he resides.  During the question and answer session, one attendee verbally attacked Reed for being married to a Mexican woman who is not even clearly non-white.  Many of us booed the “questioner” for his rudeness.  Here is Reed’s account:

If the latter means people who want to exterminate this or that group, I encountered none. The closest anyone came was an overwrought dingaling who, in question and answer, denounced me as a race traitor for having married Violeta, my Mexican wife. I considered an appropriate but anatomically unorthodox repositioning of my microphone. However, the audience told him to sit down and shut up. Later a dozen people apologized for his behavior, and I met a fair number of men who had Chinese, Mexican, and Colombian wives. Race traitors all, I suppose.

Reed’s “Mexican” wife might actually be of Mediterranean ancestry or perhaps she’s a bit of a Mestizo.  Either way, it is doubtful if Reed would have even attended the conference had his wife been black.   If he had, there might have been more than just one “dingaling” to raise objections.
People make mistakes in their younger years.  Some have been known to make mistakes in their later years too.  Given the chance to live my life over again, I certainly would not have married that Indian Jewess; we have been happily divorced for many years now.  But marry her I did and I do love my children.  It would not be fair for me to expect another person, who had committed indiscretions with a black, to disown his children.   Each of us has done what we’ve done in the past and now we must make the most of it.
I have a good relationship with my children and I teach them what I know about race though I get mixed results.  To any enlightened readers out there who have begotten children through miscegenation, I urge you to teach your non-white children the truth about race.  There is nothing hateful about the truth and teaching them the virtues of white civilization will not hurt their self-esteem.  This would apply to any non-white readers as well.  In a perfect world, non-whites would teach their children to refrain from dating whites so that whites would date exclusively amongst themselves.  Alas, these days it probably would make no difference to the white race; the white in question would probably just move on to another non-white to date.  However there is still the principle of the matter: teach your children to refrain from miscegenation!

Posted in politics and attitudes of the pro-white movements | 19 Comments

The hidden hatchet

Posted on April 14, 2010 by jewamongyou

This post is merely an account of an interesting thing that took place recently.  I happened to notice that some people across the street (who I do not know) had put out some outdoor furniture including a recliner and some chairs.  There was a sign on them stating they were free for the taking.  I figured it would be nice to have them with summer on the way, so I dragged them back home.
The recliner had a thin mattress over it and, not wanting it to get ruined in the rain, I removed it to keep it indoors until the weather improved.  Lo and behold… this is what was hidden inside the recliner:

Yes that’s right.  There was a hatchet hidden inside the recliner!  Which of you can come up with an explanation for that?  No, there was no blood on the hatchet that I could see.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Vigilante justice at the hands of police

Posted on April 13, 2010 by jewamongyou

Eve Carson was just one of the many beautiful young white women murdered by young black men.  Leftists like to cheapen the lives of victims like Eve by reminding us that the victims of young black male criminals are chiefly other young black males, that the growing roster of dead white women only represent people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and that we should read nothing into it.  Those leftists have little to say about black women murdered by white men – because such crimes are a great rarity; interracial violence is overwhelmingly black against white and has been so for as long as most Americans have been alive (if not much longer).
Of course, the above facts are common knowledge amongst white nationalists and race realists.  I suspect that there is another class of Americans that is aware of this phenomenon: urban police officers.  It wouldn’t surprise me if a great many police officers, while not actually race-conscious, are acutely aware of the lopsided nature of interracial crime.
I would be surprised if this knowledge did not cause anger and resentment among police officers.  Then we read something like this:

Lawyers for one of two suspects accused in the 2008 killing of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill student body president Eve Carson said their client was beaten by police when he was arrested. Suspect Demario Atwater was assaulted by Durham police while he was laying on the sidewalk and while handcuffed in a police car, according to court documents filed Monday by his attorneys.

This is one of those cases where, at first glance, the libertarian in me disagrees with the white nationalist in me.  On the one hand, the police are agents of the State and so they should be kept on a tight leash.  On the other hand, given the opportunity I would probably beat the “suspect” himself if I was reasonably certain he was the perpetrator.  Of course he might not be the perpetrator; this is what trials, lawyers, judges and juries are for.  But look what has become of our “justice” system and consider the frustration of many cops:

I think that a lot of that “final retribution” talk is our way of expressing our frustration with a criminal justice system that leaves murderers and child abusers on the streets. It’s a way to cleanse our spirit and voice our feelings in a context and atmosphere that other cops will understand. Cops, especially guy cops, are often accused of not sharing their feelings. We’re told that we don’t like to talk about being depressed or frustrated. But that’s not my experience. I’ve heard many cops open up and say “I’m going to kill every single one of those motherf****** before I go out,” and other cops will support them, me included. How much more open than that can you be about your feelings. We just can’t share those feelings with the public because most of the public, victims of violent crime excluded, would never understand our level of frustration.

The frustration expressed above is at criminals in general.  Can there be any doubt that this frustration is increased when a white officer is confronted with interracial crime against his own race?  I suspect that years of police work would serve to dull the effects of anti-white propaganda even to the point where a white officer might feel more kinship with a white who was victimized by somebody of another race than the victim of an intraracial crime.
I think an underlying issue here is that even though a police officer is acting as an agent of the State, at the same time can he not also act as an individual?  Is he expected to cast aside his human baggage and become a by-the-book automaton?  Do we not, as moral humans, have duties and rights of our own and what becomes of those duties and rights when we put on a badge?  It seems to me that any decent person, when confronted with a dangerous criminal – who he knows just committed a heinous crime – has a duty to mete out punishment to the best of his ability when can be reasonably certain that otherwise the criminal will continue to pose a danger to others and not be adequately punished.  Many millions of people all over the world would agree with me.  Most Americans used to agree with me on this as well – but something has changed.  Americans have become too “civilized” for vigilante justice.  As a result, sociopaths and savages run loose in our society.  Because of massive third world immigration and differential birth rates, things are only going to get worse.  At some point, Americans will have to revert to their earlier mentality regarding vigilantism or face grave consequences.  The question is should police officers participate in this aspect of crime-fighting?

Posted in activism, libertarian thought | 8 Comments

The flat Earth of the ancients

Posted on April 11, 2010 by jewamongyou

Evidence that the ancient Jewish sages held the Earth to be flat

Seder Rabbah of Bereshith page 17:

The length of the Earth is a journey of 500 years, the width of the Earth is 500 years and its thickness is 500 years.  But some say it is round.

Shemoth Rabbah page 15 (also found in chapter six of Pirqe R. Eli’ezer):

The Holy One blessed be He created 365 windows in the heavens, 183 in the East and 183 (sic) in the West, some He created for the Sun and some He created for the Moon.

Baraitha of Mazaloth chapter 8 (also found in chapter six of Pirqe R. Eli’ezer):

How so was this?  Sometimes she (the Sun) takes a Northerly route – which is the longer one – and sometimes she takes the Southerly route – which is the shorter one.

In other words the Sun, in any event, is embedded in its own “heaven”.  This “heaven” is like a dome that covers the Earth.  If so, at the ends of the Earth, the “heaven” is much lower.  Therefore, when the Sun circles close to the ends (which is only in the South for they knew nothing of the Southern hemisphere, where it appears in the North) it has a shorter distance to go.  The closer it gets to the center of its “heaven”, the higher it gets.

Wayiqra Rabba chapter 31, paragraph 9:

Said R. Levi, every day, the Holy One blessed be He sits in judgment over the sphere of the Sun and the Moon, for they do not wish to go out to illuminate the Earth.

We should ask from where do they need to “go out”?  Does not the Sun continuously shine upon the Earth without interruption?  But this makes sense to those who believe the Earth is flat.
Pirqe R. Eli’ezer chapter three:

The lower rods of the heavens are anchored to the waters of the ocean, for the waters of the ocean are between the ends of the Earth and the ends of the ocean, and the ends of the heavens are spread over the waters of the ocean… the insides of the heavens rise upward, their sphere is like a spread tent, its ends downward and its insides upward.  All humans dwell underneath it.  This is what the heavens are like, their ends downward and their insides upward like a tent.

Pirqe R. Eli’ezer chapter 51:

When the Sun is about to set in the West and it washes in the waters of the ocean… so do the waters of the ocean extinguish the flames of the Sun and it has no luster and no flames all night until it comes to the East and it bathes in a river of fire.

Midrash Shemuel chapter 31:

The rabbis say “from when the Sun rises until the entire sphere is full of it.”

From here it is implied that there is a sphere only on one side of the Earth for if not so, the sphere would never be full of the light of the Sun – because there would always be a dark side.
Babba Bathra page 25:b:

R. Eli’ezer says, “the Earth is similar to an achsadrah.  The North side is not enclosed and when the Sun reaches the Northwest corner, it is forced (?) and rises above the heavens”.  R. Yehoshua’ says, “the Earth is similar to ‘quba’ (completely enclosed) and the North side is enclosed.  When the Sun reaches the Northwest corner, it circles around behind the dome…”

Baraitha of Shemuel haQatan (at the beginning):

The heavens are made like a dome, wide like a tent, its length… from the North it is not enclosed, and it is square like an achsadrah… and from the South it is round like an oven… East and West like a building on the Earth.


Pesahim 94:b:

The wise men of Israel say, “during the day the Sun is beneath the heavens and at night it is above the heavens.”

In other words the heavens are opaque and therefore, when the Sun is above them, we are in the dark.  When it is beneath them, we have light.  But according to this there would never be light on the other side of the Earth, as you can see from the diagram above.
Ibid.:

…and the wise men of the nations of the world say, “during the day the Sun advances beneath the heavens while at night (it advances) beneath the Earth.”  Said Ribbi, “their opinion makes more sense than ours, for during the day the spring waters are cold and during the night they are hot.“

Let us consider well the words of Ribbi.  He believes that since spring water is hotter during the night, this is a sign that the path of the Sun passes underground and heats those waters – which is not the case during the day, when its path takes it above the heavens so that it is far from the spring waters.  Therefore, during the day, those waters are cold.  It is not difficult to understand the point I’m making here.  We need only compare the globe of the Earth with the globe of the planet Mercury:
1)      Earth is about 150,000,000 Km from the Sun.  Mercury is only about 58,000,000 Km from the Sun.
2)      The diameter of Earth, at the equator, is about 12,755 Km. Mercury’s diameter is only about 4,880 Km.
3)      Earth constantly revolves so that no side receives direct heat from the Sun more than one day at a time.  Mercury revolves so slowly that each side receives direct sunlight for about three years at a time.
In spite of all this, the night side of Mercury endures temperatures as low as –150 degrees Celsius while the day side is hot enough to melt lead – over 400 degrees Celsius.
 
It is not difficult to understand from this that in order for there to be a situation that allowed the heat of the Sun to influence spring water to any measurable degree, the Earth would have to be extremely thin and near enough to the Sun that even rocks, on the day side, would melt.  This kind of thinness is only possible to consider in an Earth that is flat.
If so, how could Ribbi perceive such temperature fluctuations in spring water?  We must remember that in his days they did not have thermometers and that when the air is cold outside, those waters might feel warmer in comparison.  When the air is hot outside, those waters might feel cooler in comparison.  In fact, a contemporary of ours has already done this experiment and checked the temperature of spring water both by day and by night and found no difference.

Ibid.:
…R. Nathan says, “during the summer, the Sun travels through the higher part of the heavens and this is why the entire world is hot and the springs are cold.  During the winter, the Sun travels through the lower part of the heavens and this is why the entire world is cold and the springs are hot.”
We can understand this through the diagram above that relates to the Baraitha of Mazaloth.
Bereshith Rabbah 6:8:

How do the wheels of the Sun and the Moon set?  R. Yehudah ben R. La’ai and the (other) sages (dispute this).  R. Yehudah says behind the dome and above it.  The sages say behind the dome and beneath it.  Says R. Yohanan, “the words of R. Yehudah ben La’ai make more sense for he said behind the dome and above it during the summer when the whole world is hot and the springs are cold.  Rather than the sages who say behind the dome and beneath it during the winter when the whole world is cold and the springs are warm.  Said R. Shim’on ben Yohai, “we don’t know…”

The opinion of R. Yehudah is the same as that of R. Eli’ezer and R. Yehoshua’ above.  The opinion of the sages is the same as that of Ribbi.
I wanted to share this with you mainly because I think it is interesting to explore how the ancients viewed their world.  Also I wanted to show how difficult it would be for any rational person to claim that the words of the sages must always be true.  Later rabbis knew the limitations on their scientific knowledge though they did not mention them much.

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