@inmate22841:
Well, only partially correct.
A lot of people did know the world was round. Not all of the church did however, e.g. St. Augustine:
"But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled."
This is often misquoted to mean that Augustine supposed this to be so, when in fact he appeared to have believed the world was a flat disc ("Augustinian Studies" v.27 (1996)) and was just following his own advice.
Wikipedia has a number of other examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth that show at the very least that opinion was divided on the issue.
Which leads us to where BelieveIt! is quite wrong. The bible does not say the Earth is round, hence it was quite possible for the leaders of the early church to believe otherwise.
In some places the what the bible says about the Earth is open to interpretation, although why literalists don't get cold sweats when their bible says "four corners of the Earth" I don't know.
In other places it is this ambiguous evidence is purely a result of interpretation. When Isiah talks of God sitting on the 'circle' of the Earth, this has been translated from a hebrew text that uses the word "chweg", meaning disc, not "duwr", meaning ball.
Of course apologists will claim that the later ambiguous translation is more accurate by divine intervention and what's more there's no ambiguity and it clearly means spherical. Funny how this stuff is always so obvious after the facts are in.
