Re: [asa] Turning back the sun

Yes. The Joshua passage has been discussed on this list. If the Hebrew is
taken literally, what Joshua asked the sun to do was to be silent. This
event took place in the morning, maybe even the early morning, as is
evident from the position of the sun over Gibeon, which was in the hills
to the east of the battlefield, as well as from the time when the battle
began. I have seen a commentary that suggested that Joshua was asking for
a continuation of darkness.

Gordon Brown

On Thu, 27 Sep 2007, Jon Tandy wrote:

> I have a question, that I know has probably been discussed but I don't
> recall any definitive answer in the last year or two on this list.
>
> Assuming we can say that the earth's rotation is relatively fixed, due to
> its angular momentum, etc., how can we interpret Josh 10:12-13 and Isa 38:8
> in a way that honors the truthfulness of scripture? Meaning, interpreting
> those verses in anything close to what would preserve the integrity of the
> intended meaning. I don't see any way to interpret these literally with a
> modern understanding of planetary motion, without violating quite a few
> things that we know about physics. Further, with the Chinese and others
> having been watchers of the skies in those days, I would think certainly
> that if there had been a literal halt or reversal of the planet's spin,
> others would have noted it in some ancient records that are now available.
>
> I can almost see the verse in Joshua to be interpreted in a way as to mean,
> the Israelites were in battle and prayed for help, and Joshua commanded the
> sun to stand still -- then for what SEEMED to them like a whole day, they
> prospered mightily in battle with divine assistance, in such a way that they
> could only have interpreted that the Lord caused the day to prolong. In
> reality, it could have been a local miracle of divine intervention in
> destroying their enemies in a moment, unable to be described by them in
> other terms, but which didn't involve the literal reversal of planetary
> motion.
>
> The verse in Isaiah I find to be more difficult to interpret in this way,
> because it's described as bringing the sun's shadow backward on the sundial,
> as a sign to Hezekiah that the Lord had heard his request. I can't think of
> any reaonable interpretation for this, except that maybe the Lord was
> playing with the shadows or Hezekiah's perception of them so that it SEEMED
> to Hezekiah that the shadow had moved because of the sun, or maybe some real
> phenomenon caused this appearance, not involving actual planetary reversal.
> Ten degress on the sundial, if I'm calculating correctly, would be over a 6
> hour reversal, which actually might be roughly equivalent to the "whole day"
> in Joshua, depending on how you interpret that statement.
>
> These are questions which probably trouble most modern scholar who holds a
> strictly literal view of scripture (if they think about it), but which may
> also impact the views of OEC or TE believers. Any thoughts would be
> appreciated.
>
> Jon Tandy
>
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Sep 27 16:12:14 2007