Alexander Gleason’s 1893 Flat Earth Book: Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?
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In 1893, America seemed to be moving rapidly toward a new century. Alexander Gleason’s 1893 Flat Earth Book appeared during this remarkable period of political upheaval, technological change, scientific debate, and intense discussion over the authority of Scripture.
In Chicago, the World's Columbian Exposition opened its gates to millions of visitors. Vast exhibition halls displayed machinery, transportation, industry, inventions and electrical technology on a scale many Americans had never witnessed. At night, electric illumination transformed the fairgrounds into a spectacle of light, while exhibits devoted to electricity, manufacturing and engineering offered visitors a glimpse of what many believed the future might hold.
About 27 million people visited the exposition during its May-through-October run, an extraordinary number for the period. The fair became one of the most visible demonstrations of American industrial and technological confidence at the end of the nineteenth century.
The country was also entering a period of serious political and economic upheaval. Grover Cleveland had just defeated incumbent President Benjamin Harrison and returned to the White House, while the newly organized People's Party demonstrated that a substantial number of Americans were willing to challenge the country's established political order.
That same year, the Panic of 1893 deepened anxieties over banks, currency, employment, gold, silver and the direction of the American economy. It became one of the most severe financial crises of the Gilded Age.
Behind those highly visible events, another debate was unfolding. What authority should the Bible hold in an age of expanding scientific theories? How should Christians respond to evolutionary theory, new interpretations of geology and increasingly influential forms of historical or "higher" biblical criticism? Could Scripture and modern scientific thought be reconciled—and if they appeared to disagree, what exactly was in error: Scripture, scientific theory, or the human interpretation of one or both?
Those questions were no longer confined to universities and seminaries.
By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, American religious thinkers were openly confronting the theological implications of Darwin's evolutionary theory, while questions concerning the historical interpretation and accuracy of biblical texts were becoming increasingly important within Protestant Christianity. From the 1890s onward, those disputes contributed to an expanding divide between modernist and more conservative Protestant approaches.
It was into this world that Buffalo author, inventor and cartographer Alexander Gleason released the greatly expanded second edition of a remarkable book:
Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?
Its subtitle made the central question unmistakable:
Does Modern Science and the Bible Agree?
For Gleason, that was not simply an attention-grabbing phrase. It was the central question around which much of the book was constructed.
And while his famous 1892 New Standard Map of the World would ultimately become the artifact most closely associated with his name, Gleason's 1893 book reveals something the map alone cannot.
The map shows the world Gleason wanted readers to see. The book explains why he believed it should be seen that way.
Alexander Gleason Before the 1893 Book
Alexander Gleason lived and worked in Buffalo, New York, during an extraordinary period in the city's development.
Buffalo's position at the eastern end of Lake Erie and its connection to the Erie Canal had helped transform it into an important transportation, manufacturing and commercial center. Great Lakes shipping, canal traffic and rapidly expanding railroad networks tied the city to markets throughout the United States.
That environment is worth remembering when considering Gleason.
He was not simply producing religious arguments detached from technical subjects.
His surviving work reveals a strong interest in measurement, geography, astronomy, chronology, surveying, timekeeping, navigation, diagrams and mechanical demonstration.
His relationship with Seventh-day Adventism also requires historical care. Gleason clearly had a longstanding connection with Adventist thought and demonstrated extensive familiarity with Adventist doctrine. An historical study preserved in the General Conference Archives states that Gleason's writings show him to have been a dedicated student of church doctrine while also noting that Gleason himself does not state whether he was formally a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
That distinction is important.
What is unmistakable from his writings is that Gleason approached questions concerning the Earth, astronomy and nature from a biblical worldview. Scripture was not merely one source among many in his reasoning. Gleason regarded it as an authoritative standard against which other claims could be examined.
A version of Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? appeared in 1890.
Then came an important sequence:
1890 — Earlier edition of the book
1892 — New Standard Map of the World
1893 — Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, of the book
The 1893 title material states that the work had been rewritten, revised and enlarged.
Library of Congress bibliographic records identify the 1893 work as the Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, published in Buffalo by the Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Company, with xix preliminary pages followed by 402 numbered pages.
That chronology matters because Gleason's book and map should not be viewed as unrelated historical curiosities. They belonged to a larger body of work through which Gleason attempted to explain geography, astronomy, Scripture and the physical structure of the world as parts of one coherent system.
Alexander Gleason’s 1893 Flat Earth Book
The complete historical title is considerably longer than the shortened form by which the book is generally known:
Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? In Two Parts: Does Modern Science and the Bible Agree? Also, an Accurate Chronology of All Past Time, Containing a Classification of All the Eclipses from Creation.
The 1893 edition identifies itself as the Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Library of Congress records describe the edition as xix preliminary pages followed by 402 numbered pages, with illustrations, a map, colored plates and portraits.
Its size alone reveals something important about the work. This was not simply a short pamphlet declaring that the Earth was flat. Gleason attempted something considerably broader.
The book moves through questions involving:
biblical inspiration and interpretation;
prophecy;
creation;
chronology;
geology;
astronomy;
eclipses;
the Sun, Moon and stars;
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Tycho Brahe;
water level and curvature;
horizon observations;
navigation and longitude;
circumnavigation;
Polaris;
perspective;
Antarctic exploration;
geographical measurement;
and ultimately the physical shape and motion of the Earth.
Gleason's 1893 edition therefore functions as a large theological, chronological and cosmological argument rather than simply a collection of flat-earth claims. He even dedicated the revised work in part to "Honest Skeptics" and those seeking what he regarded as demonstrated truth. Those words help reveal how Gleason wanted the book to be approached.
He did not present himself as asking readers merely to accept his conclusions because he asserted them. He wanted them to consider Scripture, historical sources, observation, diagrams, calculations and physical arguments and then decide whether the accepted model of the world had been sufficiently demonstrated.
Whether a modern reader accepts his conclusions is a separate question. Historically, what matters first is understanding how Gleason believed the case should be made.
America in 1893: The World in Which Gleason Was Writing
Understanding Gleason's book requires more than opening directly to his arguments concerning water, curvature or the Sun. The title itself tells us to look beyond them.
Does Modern Science and the Bible Agree?
That question placed Gleason's work inside one of the larger intellectual debates of his age.
A Nation in Political and Economic Upheaval
Gleason's expanded book appeared immediately after a consequential presidential election.
In 1892, Democrat Grover Cleveland defeated Republican President Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland received 277 electoral votes, Harrison received 145, and James B. Weaver of the People's Party received 22. Weaver's Populist campaign also captured more than 8 percent of the popular vote, an unusually strong showing for a third-party candidate.
The People's Party had grown from widespread dissatisfaction among farmers and other Americans concerned about banking, railroad power, monetary policy, agricultural distress and the concentration of economic influence.
Then came the Panic of 1893.
Economic activity weakened, financial uncertainty intensified and banks came under serious pressure. Falling U.S. Treasury gold reserves contributed to fears over the monetary system, while bank withdrawals and business failures intensified the crisis.
The political struggle over gold and silver became particularly intense.
None of this proves that the political or economic turmoil of the period caused Gleason's cosmological beliefs. There is no basis for making that claim. But it does help us understand the broader America in which he was publishing.
Americans were openly debating institutions, authority, concentrated power, accepted expertise and competing explanations of how their country should operate. Gleason's challenge was directed toward a very different subject. But his book likewise asked readers to question an established framework and examine for themselves whether the accepted explanation of the world was justified.
Technology and Scientific Authority Were Expanding
At the same time, Americans were witnessing increasingly dramatic demonstrations of what engineering, machinery and applied science could accomplish. Few events represented that confidence more visibly than the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The exposition brought together exhibits involving industry, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, engineering, electricity and science.
About 27 million people visited the fair between May and October 1893. Electric illumination was among its most memorable attractions. For many visitors, technologies that had previously seemed distant or experimental could now be seen operating on an enormous public stage.
The contrast with Gleason is fascinating precisely because he cannot accurately be reduced to someone who simply rejected technology, measurement or experimentation. His own work depended heavily upon them.
He used engraved diagrams. He employed calculations. He discussed surveying and navigation. He appealed repeatedly to physical observation. He worked with professional printers and engravers. And his 1892 map became the basis for a mechanical time-chart for which he sought a United States patent.
The application for that patent was filed on August 15, 1892. U.S. Patent No. 497,917 was granted to Alexander Gleason on May 23, 1893. In the patent specification, Gleason explicitly described mechanical devices and geographical illustrations intended for use on a flat circular map of the world. The design incorporated movable indicating arms that could be used in connection with longitude and time.
That makes the historical situation more complicated—and more interesting—than a simple contest between "science" and "religion." Gleason was not rejecting observation, mathematics, mechanical devices or practical investigation. He was disputing how particular observations should be interpreted and whether the prevailing astronomical model deserved the authority that had been assigned to it.
The Bible, Darwinism and the Question of Authority
The religious environment of the late nineteenth century is even more important to understanding Gleason.
American Protestant culture had long given extraordinary authority to Scripture.
But the intellectual environment was changing. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species had appeared in 1859. Its reception in the United States developed gradually. By the 1870s, American religious leaders and thinkers were increasingly considering the theological implications of Darwin's theory. By the end of the nineteenth century, the subject was reaching a broader American Christian audience.
At roughly the same time, new approaches to biblical scholarship were becoming increasingly influential. Methods frequently grouped under the term higher criticism examined biblical writings through historical questions involving authorship, composition, sources, textual development and the circumstances in which particular books were written.
For Christians who understood Scripture principally as divinely inspired revelation, some of those approaches raised serious questions concerning biblical authority and historical reliability. Geology raised other questions concerning the history and age of the Earth. Evolutionary theory raised questions concerning creation and the development of living organisms. Astronomy operated within a heliocentric framework in which the Earth was understood as a rotating globe orbiting the Sun.
Christians did not respond to these developments in a single way. Some believed new scientific theories could be incorporated into Christian theology and developed interpretations of Scripture they regarded as compatible with them. Many questioned those theories, challenged particular interpretations of them, or maintained that Scripture should remain the controlling authority when an apparent conflict emerged.
During the period beginning in the 1890s and extending into the early twentieth century, these differing approaches contributed to the growing divide between modernist and more conservative forms of American Protestantism.
Gleason belonged decidedly toward the side that insisted upon the authority of Scripture.
For him, however, the question was not simply:
Should science defeat the Bible?
Nor was it simply:
Should the Bible defeat genuine observation?
His reasoning was based on the premise that truth could not ultimately contradict truth.
If Scripture represented revealed truth and the physical world represented God's creation, Gleason believed accurate observations of nature should ultimately agree with Scripture.
If an apparent contradiction existed, he believed the error therefore had to lie in human interpretation—the interpretation of Scripture, the interpretation of nature, or both.
Seen in that historical setting, the subtitle of his book becomes much more significant:
Does Modern Science and the Bible Agree?
Gleason was participating in a much broader late-nineteenth-century debate over what counted as knowledge and which authority should govern when competing claims appeared to conflict.
Why Gleason Begins With the Bible
This historical background helps explain one of the most important structural features of Gleason's book. He does not begin by asking whether a canal curves. He begins with the Bible. That organization was intentional. Before asking readers to reconsider the physical form of the Earth, Gleason first attempts to establish the reliability and authority of Scripture through biblical history, prophecy, chronology and related arguments.
The first part of the book therefore establishes much of the theological, historical and chronological framework for what follows. This distinction is essential to understanding Gleason fairly. For him, biblical passages concerning the Earth were not decorative religious references attached afterward to a geographical theory. They were evidence.
Gleason regarded biblical descriptions of an established or unmoving Earth, the foundations of the Earth, the heavens above and related passages as statements that deserved consideration when discussing physical cosmology.
Gleason's own method leaned more strongly toward a direct physical interpretation.
Once the biblical and historical foundation had been established to his satisfaction, he moved into the question most closely associated with his name:
Is the Earth a Globe?
Gleason's Case Against the Accepted Model
Part II of the book begins with Chapter XIII: "Demonstrated Evidences that the Earth is Not a Globe." From there Gleason enters the material that most modern readers associate with him. His arguments are varied, but several recurring subjects organize much of his case.
Water, Level and Curvature
Water was foundational to Gleason's reasoning. He repeatedly treated large bodies of standing or slowly moving water as natural test surfaces. If water seeks its own level, he asked, what should happen over long distances if the surface of the Earth is curved?
He examined canals, lakes and surveys and attempted to compare observed level surfaces with the amount of curvature he believed should be present on a globe of roughly 25,000 miles in circumference. Among the geographical examples important to Gleason were the Erie Canal, Lake Erie and the Niagara River region. His interest in those locations was not abstract. Historical material concerning Gleason notes that he conducted experiments on the waters of Lake Erie and the Niagara River. Gleason regarded the apparently level character of those waters as evidence supporting his position.
Modern geodesy defines “level” differently from a perfectly straight, flat plane extending across long distances. Instead, a level surface follows Earth’s gravity field. Because gravity points toward Earth from every location, a level surface can gradually curve while still remaining level at every point.
NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey uses the term “geoid” for the gravity-based reference surface that closely matches average global sea level. This highlights an important difference between Gleason’s interpretation and modern geodesy. The disagreement is not simply over whether water appears level. It is over what “level” means when that surface is measured across very large distances.
The Horizon and Long-Distance Visibility
Gleason also devoted considerable attention to the horizon. He examined situations in which distant land, ships or other objects appeared visible at distances he believed were incompatible with expected curvature. This type of reasoning had already become important within nineteenth-century literature.
To Gleason, sufficiently long-distance visibility suggested that the surface between an observer and a distant object was not curving away as the globe model predicted.
Conventional explanations involve several factors, including observer elevation, geometric horizon distance and atmospheric refraction. Gleason questioned whether such explanations adequately accounted for the observations presented by flat-earth writers.
Whatever conclusion a modern reader reaches, the method itself is historically revealing.
Gleason continually attempted to compare:
prediction
with
observation.
Sunrise, Sunset and a Moving Sun
The Sun presented another major challenge within Gleason's alternative system.
If the Earth remained stationary, the familiar daily movement of the heavens required an explanation different from the one offered by conventional astronomy.
Gleason therefore examined subjects including:
sunrise and sunset;
the apparent movement of the Sun;
solar altitude;
the midnight Sun;
the distribution of sunlight;
latitude;
and the relationship between the Sun's path and the polar center.
His system placed the Earth at rest while the Sun moved above it. This differed fundamentally from mainstream nineteenth-century astronomy, which understood Earth's rotation as the primary explanation for the apparent daily movement of the Sun across the sky.
To Gleason, however, ordinary visual experience carried considerable evidentiary weight.
The ground appeared stationary. The Sun appeared to move. The horizon appeared level.
Large bodies of water appeared flat. Rather than beginning with the accepted astronomical model and interpreting those appearances through it, Gleason attempted to begin with the appearances themselves and reason outward from them. That method connects him directly to a broader nineteenth-century tradition known as Zetetic astronomy.
Observation, Experiment and the Zetetic Tradition
Modern flat-earth literature did not begin with Alexander Gleason. One of the most influential nineteenth-century writers associated with the movement was the English author Samuel Birley Rowbotham, who published under the name “Parallax.”
Rowbotham promoted what he called Zetetic Astronomy. The word “zetetic” comes from the idea of seeking or investigating. In practice, Rowbotham used it to describe an approach that he believed should begin with direct observation and experiment, rather than beginning with an accepted theory and then interpreting what was observed through that theory.
Put more simply, the Zetetic approach was meant to be: investigate first, draw conclusions afterward.
Rowbotham argued that questions about the Earth should be approached in that way, and his writings went on to influence a number of later flat-earth authors. The Library of Congress identifies him as an important nineteenth-century advocate whose work helped shape later flat-earth literature.
A historical study preserved in the Adventist archives makes the connection to Gleason more directly. It notes that a number of later flat-earth advocates, including Alexander Gleason, drew from Rowbotham’s work and sometimes referred to themselves as “zetetic philosophers.” That influence is easy to see in Gleason’s writing.
Rather than making a single argument and leaving it there, Gleason filled his book with calculations, diagrams, quotations, astronomical discussions, geographical examples, historical material and challenges to conventional explanations.
He examined subjects ranging from:
Copernican astronomy;
eclipses;
curvature;
canals;
ships at sea;
horizon lines;
sunrise and sunset;
the midnight polar Sun;
solar altitude;
Antarctic geography;
Polaris;
circumnavigation;
longitude;
perspective;
astronomical observations;
and geographical measurements north and south of the equator.
Taken together, these subjects show what Gleason was trying to do. He was not simply saying that the Earth looked flat to him. He was attempting to build an entire explanatory system around what he believed observation, experiment, geography, astronomy and Scripture were telling him.
Whether a reader agrees with his conclusions or not, that broader effort is important to understanding Gleason historically. His book was an attempt to bring many different kinds of evidence together and make them fit within one view of the world.
The Book Behind Gleason's Famous 1892 Flat Earth Map
That brings us back to the artifact for which Gleason is best remembered.
One year before the expanded edition appeared, Gleason published his 1892 New Standard Map of the World. Today it has become one of the most recognizable historical flat world maps and an important example of the use of a North Pole-centered circular world map within alternative cosmology.
But reading the 1893 book changes the way the map can be understood. Its circular geography is no longer merely an unusual visual design. Its center matters. Its treatment of longitude matters. Its relationship to time matters. Its polar orientation matters.
Its relationship to the apparent movement of the Sun matters. And Gleason's larger interest in navigation, measurement and world time becomes much easier to understand.
His patent provides additional evidence of this technical connection. U.S. Patent No. 497,917 describes a time-chart employing a flat circular world map and mechanical indicating arms. The patent application was filed in August 1892 and granted in May 1893. Yet the larger intellectual framework surrounding that map is found in Gleason's written work.
If Gleason's map is the picture, his book is the argument behind it.
Readers primarily interested in the cartographic artifact can explore our separate history
of Gleason's 1892 New Standard Map of the World, including its projection, time dial, patent, design and historical significance.
That separation is intentional. The map deserves its own history. The book deserves its own. Together they reveal considerably more about Alexander Gleason than either artifact can reveal alone.
Alexander Gleason and the Wider History of Flat Earth Literature
Gleason was also part of something larger than his own publications. By the late nineteenth century, writers on both sides of the Atlantic were publishing works that challenged conventional astronomy and argued for stationary or planar models of the Earth.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham had already developed an extensive British Zetetic tradition. William Carpenter published One Hundred Proofs That the Earth Is Not a Globe. Other authors produced books and pamphlets involving biblical cosmography, observational astronomy and alternative interpretations of geography. The Library of Congress today maintains an extensive research guide devoted to these works and their advocates, including Gleason, Rowbotham and a broader body of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literature.
Also in 1893, another American author produced one of the most visually extraordinary historical maps associated with the subject. Orlando Ferguson, of Hot Springs, South Dakota, published his Map of the Square and Stationary Earth. The Library of Congress records Ferguson's map as having been created and published in Hot Springs in 1893.
The two cartographic works could hardly look more different.
Gleason's map is circular, geometrical and closely connected to longitude, time and mechanical function. Ferguson's map is built within a square framework that accommodates his interpretation of the biblical “four corners of the Earth,” but the inhabited world inside the surrounding ice boundary is itself presented in a largely circular form. Ferguson's design is also far more heavily illustrated and surrounded by explicit biblical argument. Despite their very different visual approaches, the fact that both maps appeared from American authors within such a narrow historical period shows that biblical cosmology and alternative models of the Earth were being explored by more than one isolated writer.
That wider historical setting is one reason Gleason's book deserves attention today.
It preserves an unusually extensive example of late-nineteenth-century alternative cosmological literature during a period when American religion, scientific authority, industrial technology, publishing and popular culture were all changing rapidly.
What Gleason's Book Tells Us About 1893
More than 130 years later, Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? can be read for reasons extending well beyond the question printed on its cover. It tells us about a moment in American intellectual history. A moment when technological progress was being celebrated publicly on an enormous scale. A moment when electricity, machinery, railroads and industrial engineering were visibly reshaping American life. A moment of severe political and economic uncertainty. A moment when Darwinism, geology and new methods of biblical criticism were forcing Christians to think — and often defend — the relationship between Scripture, natural history and scientific authority. And a moment when increasingly accessible publishing technologies allowed individuals outside major universities and scientific institutions to circulate competing explanations of the world.
Gleason's response to that environment was distinctive.
He did not believe Scripture needed to retreat before modern astronomy. He believed the assumptions and interpretations of modern astronomy should themselves be examined. He appealed to Scripture because he regarded it as authoritative. He appealed to observation because he believed the physical creation would ultimately agree with its Creator. And he appealed to diagrams, measurements, geographical examples and practical investigation because he believed those forms of evidence could support the same conclusion.
Modern scientific consensus reaches different conclusions regarding Earth's shape, rotation, orbit and astronomical relationships. Gleason, however, presented his work as a serious examination of Scripture, observation, geography and astronomy, and he clearly believed the evidence he assembled supported his conclusions. Understanding the book therefore requires more than simply comparing it with modern scientific consensus.
It is also worth asking: Why did Gleason reason the way he did, what evidence did he consider persuasive, and how did he bring Scripture, observation and physical argument together into a single view of the world? Those questions allow the book to be examined on its own terms while also placing it within the remarkable scientific, religious and cultural debates of the late nineteenth century.
That is part of what makes Gleason's work so interesting more than 130 years later.
Reading Gleason Today
Historical works are often most valuable when they are allowed to remain what they actually were. We do not need to modernize Gleason's arguments. We do not need to ridicule them. And we do not need to treat every conclusion he printed in 1893 as independently verified fact. Instead, we can examine his work on its own historical terms.
We can read the Bible passages he selected. We can follow his calculations. We can inspect his diagrams. We can examine the observations he presented. We can compare his reasoning with both contemporary and later scientific explanations. We can place his map beside his written cosmology. And we can consider what his work reveals about enduring human questions concerning authority, observation, interpretation and belief.
That is what makes Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? worth preserving as a historical artifact. Not because every reader will arrive at the same conclusion. But because Gleason left behind an unusually detailed record of how one nineteenth-century American attempted to reconcile the physical world he believed he observed with the Scriptures.
Explore Alexander Gleason's Restored 1893 Book
For readers who want to examine Gleason's arguments directly rather than through a modern summary, ADVENTURE iDIAZ has carefully restored the complete 1893 Second Edition — Revised and Enlarged of Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe?
The ADVENTURE iDIAZ Restored Historical Digital Edition contains approximately 430 digital pages and preserves Gleason's original text, diagrams, tables, illustrations and historical character for modern reading, collecting and research.
Readers interested in the cartographic side of Gleason's work can also explore the restored edition of his famous 1892 New Standard Map of the World.
For a wider view of the historical literature and cartography surrounding Gleason and other authors, explore:
Together, these surviving books and maps allow an unusual intellectual world to be examined through the actual writings, diagrams and cartographic designs of the people who inhabited it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Alexander Gleason's 1893 Book
What is the full title of Alexander Gleason's book?
The full title is Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? In Two Parts: Does Modern Science and the Bible Agree? Also, an Accurate Chronology of All Past Time, Containing a Classification of All the Eclipses from Creation. The 1893 Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, was published in Buffalo, New York, by the Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Company. Library of Congress records describe it as xix preliminary pages followed by 402 numbered pages.
When was Is the Bible From Heaven? Is the Earth a Globe? published?
An earlier version of Alexander Gleason's work appeared in 1890. The substantially rewritten, revised and enlarged Second Edition appeared in 1893. This creates an important historical sequence: Gleason's earlier book appeared in 1890, his New Standard Map of the World appeared in 1892, and his greatly expanded second edition followed in 1893.
Was Gleason's book published before or after his famous flat earth map?
Both. An earlier version of Gleason's book appeared in 1890, before his famous map. His New Standard Map of the World followed in 1892, and the revised and enlarged second edition of the book appeared in 1893. That chronology helps demonstrate how closely Gleason's written and cartographic work developed alongside one another.
What subjects does Alexander Gleason discuss in the book?
Gleason discusses biblical interpretation, prophecy, creation, chronology, geology, astronomy, eclipses, the Sun, Moon and stars, curvature, water level, horizon observations, canals and lakes, navigation, longitude, circumnavigation, Polaris, perspective, Antarctic exploration and the physical shape and motion of the Earth.
The work is therefore much broader than a short argument concerning the Earth's shape.
Did Alexander Gleason believe the Bible described a stationary Earth?
Yes. Gleason interpreted a number of biblical passages as physical descriptions of an established and stationary Earth. He believed genuine observation of the natural world should ultimately agree with Scripture and argued that accepted astronomical theories had incorrectly interpreted important observations.
Was Alexander Gleason a Seventh-day Adventist?
Gleason had a significant connection with Adventist thought and demonstrated extensive knowledge of Seventh-day Adventist doctrine. However, surviving historical evidence does not clearly establish that Gleason was formally a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. An Adventist historical study specifically notes that Gleason himself does not say whether he belonged formally to the denomination. For that reason, describing him as strongly connected with Adventist thought is more historically precise than simply identifying him as a confirmed church member.
Is Gleason's book connected to his 1892 flat earth map?
Yes. The book addresses many of the geographical, astronomical and navigational subjects associated with his New Standard Map of the World, including longitude, circumnavigation, the polar regions, solar motion and the physical structure of the Earth.
His 1893 U.S. patent also demonstrates a direct mechanical connection between his circular world map and a time-chart using movable indicating arms. The map provides a visual expression of Gleason's geographical model, while the book provides much of the larger written framework behind it.
What is a Zetetic approach?
"Zetetic" is a term associated with inquiry or investigation. Nineteenth-century flat-earth writer Samuel Birley Rowbotham used it prominently in his Zetetic Astronomy, presenting an approach that he believed should begin with direct observation and experiment rather than with an assumed theoretical model. Historical sources identify Rowbotham as an important influence on later flat-earth writers, including Alexander Gleason.
How did Gleason use water as evidence?
Gleason treated long stretches of apparently level water as an important test of Earth's physical form. He discussed canals, lakes and other bodies of water and argued that their observed level character did not match the curvature he believed a globe should produce.
Where can I read Alexander Gleason's complete 1893 book?
ADVENTURE iDIAZ offers a carefully restored Historical Digital Edition of Gleason's complete revised and enlarged 1893 work, preserving the original text, diagrams, illustrations, tables and historical character for modern reading and research.
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