At 09:42 AM 3/7/97 -0500, Bill Hamilton wrote:
>If the earth had stopped rotating for one day, and the ancient astronomers
>had failed to note that that day was unusually long, then if they had
>astronomical tables accurate enough to show the day-by-day motion of, say,
>Mars, or if they kept track accurately enough of where the sun rose and set
>in terms of its position in the constellations, then there would be a
>one-day jump, in the sense that they would have noted that when the sun set
>that day it set where it should have set one day later. Of course if they
>had timekeeping instruments they could also have noticed that the day was
>really a day and a half, so there was no jump. But a table simply giving
>the location of sunset/sunrise in the heavens that didn't note the extra
>length of the day would appear to show a jump.
>
I fully agree that they could have noticed this and written it down. My
point was merely that from today's vantage point, barring any ancient
historical records confirming the account in Joshua, there would be no way
to confirm it. I fully agree that the ancients could have verified this
event but we have a different situation if they didn't do it for us.
Does this help clarify things?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm