Re: [asa] Turning back the sun

Regarding?the Joshua passage, there is a better explanationt that surprisingly has never been published anywhere (to my knowledge).? We should?start out by noticing that _two_ unusual things are mentioned:? not just the sun standing still, but in the verse just before that?(verse 11) we see God throwing hail stones.? Thus, God is personally taking part in the actions of the battle, personally fighting on the side of Israel.? The text makes a big deal of this a few verses down, as we will see in a moment.? Second, we need to notice that Joshua is actually quoting a poet from a book that no longer exists (the book of Jashar).? In the NASB translation (for example),?verses 12b through 13a?are indented in the way that notifies us that this is Hebrew poetry,?

???????? O sun, stand still at Gibeon,
?????????And O moon in the valley of Aijalon.?
???????? So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
?????????Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies

Then in the last half?of verse 13 Joshua gives us the source for this stanza of poetry -- the book of Jashar.? (By the way, don't trust the quotation marks given in the translations because they aren't part of the original Hebrew.)? So this is a poetic idiom when it says the sun stood still, not a literal event.? It says the sun stood still meaning that it was such an amazing event when God sent the hailstones that [it was as if] even the sun stopped moving out of shock when it saw what God did that day, as He was fighting for Israel.? So this is just poetry and not a record of a solar event.? Joshua is?quoting the poet?probably because it was a well-known verse and Joshua is agreeing with him that the hailstones were such a shocking event that "the sun stood still."? So Joshua is agreeing with the intent of the idiom, not the literal idea that the sun stood still.? Third, notice that when it says there was never a day like that ever again (verse 14), the amazing thing the pa
 ssage cites is not that the sun stood still, but that God fought for Israel -- that is, that he joined their army in throwing projectiles against their?enemies.? This supports the idea that the part about the sun?was just poetry, because if the sun had literally stood still then that would have been a bigger deal than the hailstones.? It would have said,

"There was no day like that before it or after it, when the LORD listened to the voice of a man; for the LORD made?the sun stand still in the sky."

But it doesn't say that.? The Bible says that it was the hailstones (God fighting?on the side of Israel's army)?that made it such a unique day.? Therefore, the sun standing still was just poetry.

Of course, someone who is inclined to interpret this passage otherwise can find loopholes in the text to argue that God did indeed make the sun stand still.??My point, on the other hand,?is that it is not necessary?to believe God literally did this.??The interpretation I have given above is certainly valid, even if not provable, and?I wonder why should we choose an interpretation that is difficult to reconcile with physics when we could choose one that is easy to understand, instead?

As for the Isaiah passage, I haven't studied it carefully but I have always assumed it was just a localized miracle or that it has some explanation as an amazing coincidence rather than a localized suspension of physics.? I don't assume that it was an astronomical event in any way.

God bless!
Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Tandy <tandyland@earthlink.net>
To: 'American Scientific Affiliation' <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 3:39 pm
Subject: [asa] Turning back the sun

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 17:11:15 2007