Re: [asa] Turning back the sun

Just reading the passages in English, it seems to me that the Isaiah passage
is less troubling than the Joshua passage. All the Isaiah passage says is
that the sunlight / shadow unexpectedly moved backwards. An effect like
that could be produced with a mirror. Of course, this isn't to suggest God
was making some kind of mirror float over the steps -- just that, if we have
to describe this as a real, physical event (rather than, say, a vision given
to the prophet), some kind of optical illusion / effect isn't beyond the
pale.

Joshua's long day seems like one of those things that really stretches a
"concordist" reading to the breaking point. If the English translation is
rendered correctly, it's interesting that we have to do at least a little
work to even explain why Joshua would have thought the sun could "stand
still" -- it seems geocentrism was assumed. If God didn't literally make
the sun "stand still," should we assume He made the earth stop rotating? I
wonder if the best we can say is *"God caused something truly unusual to
happen in the perception of those present at this battle, which they
intepreted as the sun "standing still" in response to Joshua's somewhat
naive geocentric prayer, and which is recorded here in human terms, but
which probably is beyond any physical explanation."
*

On 9/27/07, Jon Tandy <tandyland@earthlink.net> 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 16:17:44 2007