Toto

Texas medicine seems to be mescalin, although a commentator on this site claims If we have such trouble understanding a contemporary song, what hope is there for understanding the cultural references in Biblical literature?

semiopen

Of course my comments werent aimed specifically at your interpretation.

The concept of finding religious truths in secular places began with the the Bible_code. It was discovered that Moby Dick could also be used to prophesize.

Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!

Follows with examples of Indira Gandhi, Trotsky, Martin Luther King, etc.

There are currently a remarkable number of people who still believe in the bible codes.

This concept can also be extended to the more mainstream field of biblical exegesis. Dylan is probably too good an example because there is an underlying religious element in his work. It seems to me profound lessons can be learned by closely analyzing Austin Powers and the Scary Movies.

In your own example here, your exegesis is Christian. My own opinion is that Jewish exegesis is far superior to Christian in the Old Testament, but if we grant that they are equivalent (even though opposite in many respects) why can't religious exegesis be performed on Austin Powers and the Scary Movies with equivalent results as we have on the bible?

The concept of divine inspiration is vague enough that it is completely appropriate to argue that anything produced by anybody is divinely inspired.

Chili

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aris...poa/book2.html

The last paragraph of the above link show in a summary statement that you are correct in this. It tells us that our intuition is the divine . . . which also means that 'walking on water' means to actually go by our intuition, etc.

Chili

I am not Christian but Catholic (if anything) which in turn is far superior to Jewish from my point of view and to accept that just go back into the history of art and the high culture Renaissance period it created. . . even in Russia where that ended with the great revolution there in 1914-17.

bacht

Exegesis might work better with something like the Magna Carta or American Constitution, which became foundational documents of Anglo society. Pop culture tends to disappear, like the troubador ballads that Richard Lionheart would have known.

The Jews seem better at approaching the OT with a worldly perspective, being open to the earthy side of life and the foibles of human nature. They also built on the Tanak with the Talmuds and later writings, acknowledging the necessity of keeping the tradition up-to-date.

Christians typically view the OT as prophecy pointing toward Christ, a narrower focus.

semiopen

Of course, I was suggesting that all styles of exegesis deserve respect and simply noted my personal preference.

Your last sentence is very perceptive, peronally I only became aware of the implications of this within the last week or so and Chili's exegesis is an excellent example of this. This is substantially different than translating almah as virgin; it takes things to a level I previously wasn't aware existed.

It seems that this, at some point, is totally random and that this randomness can be demonstrated.

For example,

I was driving today and the combination of frost on my windshield and sun glare obscured my vision.

Chili's exegesis is equally valid on this statement as it is on the Joshua verses. Moreover my statement is more profound than Joshua, as it incorporates elements of weather (earth) along with man's response both as a species and individual.

bacht

Well, Chili has his own take on things, largely unintelligible to many of us.

The day the sun "stood still" can be interpreted allegorically as the arrival of a new power in the land, the beginning of the process that would establish the Law of Moses in Canaan. In fact, the full application of the Torah may not have occured until Ezra's time, several centuries after Joshua.

It's more likely that before 1000 bce the religion of the Hebrews resembled that of the Canaanites or Syrians. The Samson cycle shows a conflict between the god of the Philistines and the god of the Hebrews, complete with tribal totems (the ark and its contents).

James Brown

I'd like to know who, before heliocentrism became commonly accepted, interpreted this passage as just a metaphor.

bacht

Not sure I can answer your question, but here are a couple of points:

Assuming a composition date in the 6th C bce, the Jewish scribes would have used a geocentric cosmology. The first heliocentric model came from Alexandria afaik.

There is metaphor in the book of Genesis ("Judah is a lion's whelp", "Is'sachar is a strong ass").

semiopen

Olivia mentioned the tradition of other cultures having a similar myth.

Christian Evidences - THE LONG DAY OF JOSHUA

The link makes a brief mention of Velikovsky who Olivia also mentions.

This link also attempts to demonstrate that this brilliant man wasn't a total whack job:

Immanuel Velikovsky - A Study in Anger in The Name of Science and Pride

One has to wonder that given the amount of fellow whack jobs in the world why he wasn't revered by these people at least. It turns out that he was and is...

Science: Venus on the Loose Time March 13, 1950


Regarding the current heliocentric question. The book of Joshua was undoubtedly written after 600 BCE, probably quite a bit after.

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Heliocentric_theory

I'm not aware of any commentary on Joshua until the Talmud in the common era. We don't know what the original writer or commentators thought. As I mentioned earlier, IMHO, it seems doubtful that this was meant literally