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Clearly it's been too long since I've read HoMe IX! With all the talk of DA being the 'Mannish' version of the story, I had actually quite forgotten that the author of DA himself accepts the round-world tradition.
But with that correction, I think my scenario remains plausible. That is, that the author of DA is mistaken in his understanding of what the 'Elvish belief' is (or was). He is aware that the Elves teach that the world is round, and indeed he believes them; but he is not aware that they teach that it used to be flat, before the Cataclysm.
The dispute in DA between the teachings of Zigur and of the Elves would then be material added to the legend by DA's author, wherein he puts into the mouths of each side the view he believes they would have had. One might even imagine that this addition to the legend was motivated by events in the author's own day - perhaps he ascribes the 'flat earth' view to Zigur as a way of discrediting the Men of his own day who hold that view.
Again, I don't pretend that this hypothesis is particularly likely. However, on reflection, it does at least avoid one somewhat puzzling feature of the alternative view. That is, if the Elvish belief is that the world was always round, then why does the author of DA (who, after all, even gets things like the difference between the Elves and the Ainur a bit muddled) present the authentic Elvish view, whereas Elendil himself believes the world was flat until the Cataclysm? If the dispute between the Elvish and Sauronic cosmologies actually occurred in Numenor, surely the Elf-friends would have known and accepted the Elvish view. In short, I still have trouble believing that the Dunedainic tradition could have gotten such a basic thing 'wrong' (assuming the Elves are correct) - and especially that, nonetheless, DA would get it 'right'.
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