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Joshua Stopped The Sun

GNC

GNC

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Happened to be flicking through a book of urban myths, and found one that went over my head. Joshua was said to have stopped the sun in the Bible, and scientists at NASA have proved it. Except they didn't, this one goes back as far as the 19th century and has no basis in fact.

But here it is in the Times of Israel from 3 years ago, repeated as fact and claiming Cambridge scientists discovered it:
Link
Is there any truth to this new version?

Perhaps the reason I didn't understand the science is because it's utter rubbish? Any other thoughts/sightings?
 
G-D stopped the sun at the request of Joshua.

Such an event does not have to fit in to the natural phenomena of an eclipse, it was supernatural, so there need not be any natural way of dating it.

Atheists might disagree.
 
Victory said:
G-D stopped the sun at the request of Joshua.

Such an event does not have to fit in to the natural phenomena of an eclipse, it was supernatural, so there need not be any natural way of dating it.

Atheists might disagree.
Click to expand...

This one certainly does.
 
The new claim in the Times of Israel article is based on a shift in the evidence being sought. Prior attempts to match the Gibeon story with solar eclipses had assumed the story referred to a total eclipse of the sun. The total solar eclipses nearest to the estimated timeframe of Joshua's conquest were in fact pinpointed quite some time ago, but with dates that conflicted with other evidence for the dating of Joshua's campaign.

In 2017 two British researchers (one of whom was at Cambridge) published this article:

Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs
Colin Humphreys, Graeme Waddington
Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 58, Issue 5, October 2017, Pages 5.39–5.42.
Published: 01 October 2017

https://doi.org/10.1093/astrogeo/atx178

They determined that an annular (not quite total) eclipse event occurred on 30 October 1207 BCE. This date resolved the apparent conflict with secondary data on Joshua's timeframe.

You can access the Humphreys & Waddington paper at:

https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/a...ccessKey=96454415-36e7-4640-9fde-d942f3ad00b4

More recently ... This 2019 preprint article:

The Miracle of the Sun and Moon in Joshua 10 as a Solar Eclipse
Daniel Vainstub, Hezi Yizhaq, andUzi Avner

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Sun_and_Moon_in_Joshua_10_as_a_Solar_Eclipse

... provides much additional detail from a historical / hermeneutic perspective.
 
The sun does appear to stop.

On Dec. 21, the sun stops moving southward, pauses, and then starts moving northward. This pause is called the "solstice," from the Latin words "sol" for "sun" and "sisto" for "stop." Similarly, on June 21 the sun stops moving northward and starts moving southward.
Click to expand...
 
But who is to say the ancients had no idea what an eclipse was, or when it would happen?

The Jews had a calendar prior to Joshua, (lunar), so had astronomical knowledge.

In which case the sun stopping was seen as an extra event not in the calendar.
 
And also, there's a big difference between a solar eclipse and the sun suspended without movement in the sky. Are there any mentions of eclipses in The Bible?
 
GNC said:
... Are there any mentions of eclipses in The Bible?
Click to expand...

Explicitly presented as eclipses? No.

However ... There are verses in the Bible that have been suggested to be figurative or metaphorical references to eclipses.

Here's a list of 9 such verses:
https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Eclipses

Here's a list of 27 such verses:
https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Solar-Eclipse

The darkness occurring during the crucifixion of Jesus is often nominated as being a possible eclipse event. However, a solar eclipse doesn't last as long as Matthew describes (circa 3 hours). Furthermore, the crucifixion occurred during / around Passover, which should have meant the moon was full (plus or minus), and hence incapable of eclipsing the sun.
 
In our Jewish tradition some of our sages who were alive during biblical times were known to be astronomers.
In fact, it is essential, because the Jewish month is calculated from the sighting of the new moon.
The prophet Amos mentions what appears to be an eclipse - his life was 800 years B.C.E.
 
But can we agree that NASA never proved that Joshua stopped the sun all those years ago?
 
GNC said:
But can we agree that NASA never proved that Joshua stopped the sun all those years ago?
Click to expand...

Right ... NASA has never proven that Joshua literally stopped the sun (i.e., halted the earth's rotation).
 
Good. Thought that was important to point out (maybe I should have put this in the Urban Myths section!).
 
If the sun was stopped, then restarted, how could it be proved if it occurred before photography/film?

The timing of a historic eclipse can be charted, but not something which was outside the normal workings of the universe, and which would not leave much physical evidence...or at least little that science could currently record as data.
If the sun had been "stopped" for a year, then perhaps there would be a way of finding out...perhaps this would affect the rate of breakdown of carbon based material, so by analysis of chemical levels in soil and rocks etc we could find out more.
But this event was a day, or a portion of a day, so how could it be distinguished from a day when the weather was overcast?
So if we are to measure chemical levels in soil and rock we are looking for a very slight difference from the normal, which I think is likely to be far too slight for current science to detect?

So for this event, we are left with the bible and faith alone.
 
I suppose the sun stopping would make "sense" if the world was flat, if you want to go down that rabbit hole.
 
We can see some things like tidal cycles in rocks, but I can't really think of anything which would show a missing day.
 
Just putting this out there folks... One way of "stopping the Sun," would be to pass around the earth probably along the line of the equator at over 1,000 miles an hour in order to keep up with the path of the Sun?
 
Not sure that would work, for a start, how would you? The Earth is already travelling at 67,000 miles an hour through space, so just speeding up the spin wouldn't necessarily succeed in making the sun look stationary. Also, making the Earth spin faster would have us all flying around in a massive disaster.
 
If stopping the sun is taken to mean it stops shining, is there another way this could happen other than an eclipse?

Thick cloud maybe?
 
You'd think even someone recording the legends for the Bible would know the difference between an eclipse and overcast weather. Though I suppose the legend is the important thing here.
 
According to the New International Version of the Bible

"The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." from V15

So that seems to dismiss my thick cloud theory.

However, V11 says:

"As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them, and more of them died from the hail than were killed by the swords of the Israelites."

You don't get hail from a cloudless sky.
 
Mind you, the sun doesn't stop every day either!
 
Ahem. I have already pointed out the sun actually does stop. It’s the solstice event. Sol meaning sun and sisto meaning stop.

The sun crosses the equator travelling northward around March 21 and going southward on Sept. 21, in celestial events known as "equinoxes" (from the Latin for "equal night," as day and night are of roughly equivalent length on these dates.) The exact dates vary a little bit from year to year because of leap years.

On Dec. 21, the sun stops moving southward, pauses, and then starts moving northward. This pause is called the "solstice," from the Latin words "sol" for "sun" and "sisto" for "stop." Similarly, on June 21 the sun stops moving northward and starts moving southward.
Click to expand...

https://www.space.com/24014-winter-solstice-sun-movement-explained.html

This event is a part of many god myths.
 
pandacracker said:
According to the New International Version of the Bible
"The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." from V15
Click to expand...

This common interpretation of the relevant passages - i.e., that the sun stopped moving in the sky - is the one that's come down to us via multiple translations and interpolations.

However, if you check the details of the earliest known editions of the relevant documents as described in this preprint I cited earlier:

EnolaGaia said:
The Miracle of the Sun and Moon in Joshua 10 as a Solar Eclipse
Daniel Vainstub, Hezi Yizhaq, andUzi Avner
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Sun_and_Moon_in_Joshua_10_as_a_Solar_Eclipse
Click to expand...

... you'll see that there are viable interpretations under which the light of the sun is what stopped. In other words, there are defensible interpretations under which the sun stopped shining rather than stopped moving. This is the basis for the longstanding suggestion the incident refers to an eclipse - a suggestion heavily discussed and promoted among medieval Jewish scholars.
 
​
EnolaGaia said:
This common interpretation of the relevant passages - i.e., that the sun stopped moving in the sky - is the one that's come down to us via multiple translations and interpolations.

However, if you check the details of the earliest known editions of the relevant documents as described in this preprint I cited earlier:



... you'll see that there are viable interpretations under which the light of the sun is what stopped. In other words, there are defensible interpretations under which the sun stopped shining rather than stopped moving. This is the basis for the longstanding suggestion the incident refers to an eclipse - a suggestion heavily discussed and promoted among medieval Jewish scholars.
Click to expand...
[”The sun stood still and the moon stayed-and hasted not to go down about a whole day!”]
*This sentence is clipped from: https://bible.org/question/has-“missing-day”-joshua-been-proven-scientifically.

The hand-me-down tale includes the Sun, and the Moon, giving more of a clue to it being an misinterpreted account of an Eclipse that the event is referring to.
Of course, the story would hold many distortions in it's handing down and how it's interpretation, like so many stories and accounts in Biblical tales become so distorted, and misinterpreted. However, we should remember that how one person sees something (as we know from a multitude of accounts, and events given up to Forteana-forum) is not how 'all' might interpret what is reportedly being seen, looking for the "sensible" core that lies within the illogically written accounts is key.
 
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