Jaybees

I guess we disagree on this point. Given the people that this passage was intended for--literate Jews around 600 B.C.E., who believed that the sun revolved around the earth--I feel it must have been intended as a literal description of that part of their past history.

Jaybees

Not only was this passage not considered to be a metaphor before heliocentrism became commonly accepted, it was one of the major reasons why there was so much resistence to heliocentrism. Ptolemy and other ancients were also cited in opposition, and the fact that you can see the sun move, were also powerful deterents to this heretical notion.

The thing is, empirical evidence can be challenged and may lead to rejection of earlier theories or serious modifications of those theories. Faith is not open to any such modification. If a person believes in the inerrancy of the bible, than looking for evidence that Joshua stopped the sun is--if not blasphemy--certainly ridiculous. The question really becomes: "How can it be demonstrated that modern knowledge supports the view that Joshua stopped the sun?"

As the comments in this thread indicate, there are endless ways of answering that question, only one of which is that the passage is not really meant to reflect reality.

semiopen

Bypassing the little inaccuracies in your reply... such as the implied wide spread reading of Joshua around 600 BCE;

This is a hugely important issue and one that deserves attention.

Biblical_literalism

The wiki doesn't say a single word about how the bible was originally interpreted.

My position is only that it is not certain (doubtful) that early readers took this passage literally. Your position is that it is certain that they took it literally. This is as laughable as actually believing it is true.

I'm assuming you mean that they probably took it literally as opposed to my possibly.

John Kesler

Jesus ben Sira, whose work I mentioned earlier in this thread, was a second-century BCE Jewish author whose commentary regarding the sun-stopping incident indicates that he interpreted the event literally:

semiopen

The passage quoted is not obviously giving a literal opinion. My opinion might be worthless but not only would I not read it this way, I can't imagine any non Christian scholar asserting .

Seltzer Interview With Dr. Rivkin

I don't know Dr. Rivkin, but this seems reasonable.

Sirach Note that in these discussions, nobody is speculating whether he actually believed the literal shit.

Shane Berg, “Ben Sira, the Genesis Creation Accounts, and the Knowledge of God’s Will”

Is it really possible to assert that he gave a shit about the sun stopping for Joshua outside of whatever his agenda entailed?

There is a concept in Haredi Judaism that humans get stupider as time passes, so that guys in 175 BCE were very much smarter than us. This has been shown to be dubious. What is interesting though is that these guys were apparently smarter than modern biblical literalists.

http://theriddledicktruth.wordpress....t-of-ben-sira/

A guy in the thread discusses Ben Sira's birth from The Alphabet.

It is said that Ben Sira’s mother was the daughter of Jeremiah. One day Jeremiah went to the bathhouse and found wicked men from the tribe of I wonder if Ben thought that this was literally true.

judge

As if the sun could actually stop! Sheesh.

Obviously the earth just stopped turning for while.

GakuseiDon

Does anyone know of similar stories about the sun stopping for a period of time in ancient Greek or Roman myths? It might help shed some light on what the story in Joshua means.

Herodotus writes in his histories:
http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt

The sun, however, had within this period of time, on four several occasions, moved from his wonted course, twice rising where he now sets, and twice setting where he now rises.

The sun was a primary god for some; I wonder of Joshua describes a moment where the Hebrew god exercises authority over the sun, for theological purposes.

Jaybees

Don't you think the writers who compiled the Old Testament intended it to be a history of the Jewish people with special emphasis on their relationship to god?

semiopen

I documented similar stories, etc in post 60.

This was in response to a post by Olivia towards the beginning of the thread. My reply gives references to things she mentioned, such as the similar stories and Velikovsky.

No offense to Olivia but this appears to be some weirdo Xian thing. I haven't had time to look at this in any depth but my impression that the question "Has the sun ever stopped?" is an obvious one, so similar stories based on this theme might be expected. Similarly, questions like "What was the biggest flood ever?" are not inconceivable from many different cultures.

semiopen

There was some percentage of the people who thought many of the stories were true. There are difficulties in estimating how many and how this changed through history. For example stories about Joshua probably were around during Davidic times but perhaps not written down. The specific stopping of the sun seems to have been added later.

The start of Judaism (during the Babylonian exile) was heavily influenced by Persian religions such as Zoroastrianism, the Chaldeans etc. where the links to astrology made the actual historicity of the events not very important.

Sorry if I've pursued this too vigorously, but it is directed against bible literalists. In a debate with literalists, it is not necessary to concede that they are carrying on an ancient tradition.