Joshua's Long Day

that the one who made the laws can manipulate them to his heart's content. We place our own limitations on God, our own understandings, the paltry knowledge we have, how he may do the things he does, and will always fall short of the goal.
I recall a story about Daniel....while he yet prayed...the angel came to him....that fast, wow. Today we might suggest that he bent space and that is why he arrived pronto quick.

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"In that day I will also make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land, and will make them lie down in safety. I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD."-the prophet Hosea (8th century B.C.) in Hosea 2:18-20

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[I would say] that the one who made the laws can manipulate them to his heart's content

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AH, the famous "God could just change the rules" argument that completely removes it from anything even remotely relevant to observation or science.God could indeed have done so, but then by that reasoning, God could have created the world 5 minutes ago, implanting false memories in all of us, which makes the Bible an outright lie.So exactly HOW does this argument of God wildly manipulating everything around us actually help your argument of the Bible being literally correct? If God completely counteracts basic natural laws, by should God not also have wildly counteracted everything else, including something as basic as time?By your argument, the event, and indeed all the events of the Bible might never have happened because God just made everything up and claim that we actually had a past in our actual 5 minutes of existence.For arguments NOT to descend into nonsense, we do need some parameters such as what we can see, feel, touch, smell and otherwise sense is actually there, that our entire existence is not a mythical creation in our mind by God.Now, we can go forever on the philosophical issue of whether what we see or feel actually exists, which is a rather old issue, going all the way back to Plato's cave and other nonsense.But in the REAL world, if you suddenly stop a spinning ball with a surface circular velocity of many thousand mph, then the shear-forces will cause significant shift at the surface of that ball. If that ball was the Earth, techtonic plates would shift, G-forces on any non-liquid substance (including humans) would rip these to shreads and so on.So once again, how is Joshua's extra day an actual possibility, unless the Bible took certain liberties with facts and events?

If we abandoned the literal account, are there any celestial phenomenon that might produce a light in the sky that looked like the sun? A comet perhaps? I'm aware that a comet would not be visible for only one day, but I'm quite willing to ignore the one day claim.[i.e., my suggestion is, it probably was observed by the Chinese say, but appears as something else. Can we get a probable chronological match-up with a comet? That would make a strong circumstantial case for the biblical account being distorted]Edit: for people without a regular concepot of time, surely one day = one rising and setting of the sun. Maybe this 'day' was a week long.This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-07-2004 10:36 AM

The easiest and best explaination is Poetic License. Such claims are not at all unusual and are found throughout mythology.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You're joking? no? A day (apprx. 24 hours) from one sunrise or sunset to the next. A week would be 7 of those. They didn't have clocks, maybe sundials? time for them would be solar time.This maybe the relativity of time Einstein talked about when saying an hour with a beautiful woman can seem like a minute, something like that I forget the exact quote.Was there a Joshua? There is no evidence for Exodus, or Moses. The brightest thing I know of in the night sky would be a full moon. Do you know of any comets as bright as the moon? I long ago heard talk of a supernova, but I don't know if that was substantiated nor do I know how much light a super nova would provide on earth.I would be more interested to discover myths of the sun stopping in other cultures or traditions, particularly ones that were close enough for the writers of the bible to borrow as they did with the Garden of Eden and Flood myths.lfen

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If we had bacon, we could have bacon and eggs, if we had eggs.

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You're joking? no? A day (apprx. 24 hours) from one sunrise or sunset to the next. A week would be 7 of those. They didn't have clocks, maybe sundials? time for them would be solar time.

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No. The 1066 appearance of Halley's commet, for example:

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It is shown on the Bayeux Tapestry, and the accounts which have been preserved represent it as having then appeared to be four times the size of Venus, and to have shone with a light equal to a fourth of that of the Moon.

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The comet was recorded by the Chinese in 239 BC. so what I am suggesting is that there is another object - it would have to be outside of earths orbit for this to work - shedding enough light to give the impression of a 'long day'.

So you are saying that the Bible is wrong, that the idea of the sun "standing still" for 24 hrs needs to be interpreted, based on what we know today?

Steen,I realize you wrote this in reply to Contra, But I'll add my unsolicited opinion. I look at it this way, the Bible is no more wrong than books such as The Bhagavad-Gita, or The Hobbit. Is the Hobbit wrong about dragons and hobbits? Only if you thought J.R.R Tolkien was writing a history book. The Gita is full of important teachings about life even though that battle never took place in history.The Bible is not a history book or a science book. It's a book that teaches about a religion and how that religion accounted for the world as understood by the people of that time.I'm not sure why Contra cycles thinks it was based on any real events such as a comet, as I think it's more likely it's a story to illustrate a point and is not based on any "real historical" event at all.lfen

Just came across this solution to the long day puzzle today. Best I've seen."A very similar case is the famous "sun standing still" story in Joshua. Joshua leads his troops on a forced night-march to catch an enemy coalition by surprise; "is it not written in the book of Jashar?" our author tells us, and cites a verse from this lost book of Jashar, "Sun, stand still upon Gibeon, Moon, stand still upon Aijalon". This is taken to mean "Sun, DON'T SET, and Moon, DON'T RISE" and we are told how the DAY was miraculously prolonged to give Israel enough time to thoroughly rout the Canaanites. But archaeologists now know where "Jalon" was: Ai-Jalon means "the ruins" of Jalon; the town was long abandoned by Joshua's time, and its very location had become forgotten by the time the book of Joshua was written; it was WEST of Gibeon. Thus, the verse actually means "Sun, DON'T RISE, and Moon, DON'T SET" and is not asking for the day to be made longer, but for the NIGHT to last long enough for the forced night-march to reach its destination. The poetry has been misunderstood, and turned into a fairy-tale."For more see:http://www.comparative-religion.com/...orah_torah/torah4.phpFor the whole article see:http://www.comparative-religion.com/...les/torah_torah_torah

Hey, gbunty! Willkommen! Bienvenidos! Welcome to EvC! It's not just a way of life, it's an addiction!

Thanks for the warm welcome, coragyps.I see several familiar names here, so I know its a good place to be.

Not necessarily a useless argument. As far as I can see, the "goddunit" argument, from the perspective of the fundies, is probably the strongest and most unshakable. In fact, the entire OT revolves around god snapping his fingers to get something miraculous happen.If the fundies are forced to throw the "goddunit" argument out the window, there's nothing else they can say about it. I'm not trying to disprove this reasoning, but it is kinda pointless to put it here. Actually, I don't see a strong connection between the "goddunit" argument and the postulate that you just presented. Well, I get the impression from the OT that god is bounded by the linearness of time just like we are. But that defeats the purpose of all the so-called moral teachings of the bible, though. You are trying to impose the scientific method onto the fundies' method. Good luck getting your point across. Thank goodness some people are not coherent enough to make any argument on the issue. The answer to solve such a problem of rotational momentum is "goddunit". I propose a different theory on the matter.Joshua and everyone else at the time were crackpots. Their sense of time was altered by whatever substance they were using... probably angel dust.******************************************************The way I see it, "goddunit" is probably the best answer to the question.There is another possibility. Check this explanation for a possible way a planet can stop rotating for a while. Check this explanation on how a planet could start rotating again.Although none of that make any sense to me, it's the next best thing to "goddunit".

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The Laminator

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Hey gbunty, could you please use the reply button with the red arrow? It makes our lives much better. Thanx.

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The Laminator

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[I would say] that the one who made the laws can manipulate them to his heart's content.

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Sure, but not without consequences. And therein lies the rub. Joshua (supposedly) wants a longer day. (But see my other post on that which suggests that what Joshua really wanted was a longer night.)God (supposedly) is inclined to grant this favour.God, we presume, can physically stop the rotation of the earth.But, as steen points out,

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... if you suddenly stop a spinning ball with a surface circular velocity of many thousand mph, then the shear-forces will cause significant shift at the surface of that ball. If that ball was the Earth, techtonic plates would shift, G-forces on any non-liquid substance (including humans) would rip these to shreads and so on.

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That is true no matter who or what stops the rotation.So, God has to decide if giving Joshua a longer day is worth this level of destruction.There is a scene in one of the Narnia tales where Lucy is removing an invisibility spell. She is startled to find Aslan next to her. Even more startled to find it was her spell that made him visible. "Why?" he asks her. "Did you not think I would obey my own laws?"That's fiction, of course. But IMO C.S. Lewis is stating a profound and correct theological truth. God obeys God's own laws. Manipulating or overriding or negating or suspending the fundamental laws of physics is not in the cards because, although God presumably CAN do this, the consequence would be the undoing of creation. And that God WILL not do.

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Not necessarily a useless argument. As far as I can see, the "goddunit" argument, from the perspective of the fundies, is probably the strongest and most unshakable. In fact, the entire OT revolves around god snapping his fingers to get something miraculous happen.

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The Old testament was not written dedicated in showing the power that God obtains. It was written for many reasons serving vastly more important purposes. Prophecy, creation, stories with messages; ideals, the world before Jesus' birth.

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The earth is flat.