Chili

Show me time. Existence takes place in time and in space where light is knowledge that pre-exists life. Omniscience is perpetual light and the insight of science requires us to be illuminated by the portion of light that pre-eixsts in us (or science would be based on accidents). I am convinced the myth was written from a noetic point of view (noetic is beyond lyric = gnostic). Myths contain reality and without reality myth is just a bunch of BS not worthy of our consideration. We're not that stupid and neither were they.

I would say that it was not part of their tradition like 'tall campfire tales,' but I agree that gnostic giants in those days wrote the stories as they saw them in those days. They are marvelous but we must meet in their insights to understand them.

badger3k

Whatever rocks your boat - although as a believer in the impermanent nature of everything, perpetual light is an impossibility to me.

Ok, just your feeling or do you have historical backup for that (ie analysis of texts, contemporary commentary or similar tradition that used gnostic-stlye symbolism)? Again, just trying to see what you base your opinion on.

Well, a myth without any reality is nothing we can comprehend. Even having a human in myth is part of reality. What's the sense of a story that no one can relate to in any way? How much reality does the myth have (superficial, such as Paul Bunyan and Babe, beings who never existed, or more, such as George and the Cherry Tree - he existed, the event never happened)?

Given the story of Joshua, we can make a multitude of guesses, from pure myth, to poetic license (sun stood still was metaphorical), to story compleletely (or even partially, to be generous) fake but meant to teach a moral or religious message, to - probably a hell of a lot more.

If I read correctly, you say that the stories were not part of a gnostic-style tradition, but they were written as such anyway? Or is it that you don't care what the original meaning or intention may have been, since you have found a "deeper" meaning in it (hence calling the writers "gnostic giants" even if they weren't? Do I have that right, or did I misunderstand?

Capella

Check what these guys say about 'stopping the sun'

http://www.scripturessay.com/q305a.html

My favorite part: "Some have suggested that God "stopped" the sun. While it is true that the God of the Bible has the power to do anything with His Creation He desires, the sun does not revolve around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun. "Stopping" the sun has nothing to do with the shortness or the length of our days."

Basically they waste an entire page just to say 'Of course stopping the sun isn't what happened, but GOD COULD do it if he wanted to!!'

So why doesn't he??

And people wonder why I'm a skeptic!

John A. Broussard

Quite the contrary. Look over the debate so far. No one says the sun stopped, but various explanations are given for why people may have "thought" it stopped.

And Capella's research indicates that consensus is being achieved even in fundie circles, the view there being also that the sun didn't stop but that God could have stopped it if he wanted to.

So, don't be so pessimistic. There's hope yet.

Chili

The argument here is that only beauty and truth are real with beauty being the continuity of truth, ad infinitum. You are talking about 'things' and I am pointing at the essence available for things that are contingent upon the beauty of our creation and subsequent recollection thereof. A mathematician will say that math is real, Zamjatin called poetry a commodity, Dostoevski called Beauty and Truth real, the Gospels call [only] eternal life real where eternity is the continuity of infinity that belongs to God.

Let me continue here and say that the word is knowledge which in the presence of God (truth without BS) generates light for the life of man that shines in the darkness where it is perpetual because darkness did not overcome it. Hence light is real as if it is a commodity for the utility of life and therefore is beauty the continuty of truth . . . which is life itself.

The field of blood purchased for 30 silver pieces was not for this 'light' that belongs to God, and thus Judaism has no copyright on that (and hence can not take credit for it in the temple). It was the bare naked mechanics as presented in Mark that sold for 30 silver pieces since they were unique in the Jewish myth. I added this to show that they recognized that 'light was real' but not theirs . . . wherefore it 'was' prior to the creation of man in their myth and was created in the organization of unstructured space with the word called into existence in Gen 1. ie, "God said." It is all over in literature but also in the visual arts, and music, and math, and Einstein, and Rembrandt, and Newton, and Duhrer, and your Eugene O'Neill and many more. Very detailed also is our De Mille, to the greatest of all Michael Angelo (but I like Masaccio best along with Thomas Hardy (most rugged in expression)). Oh, and don't forget the Belgians like Breughel in drama, very daring yet discreet.
But we are talking about a different kinds of reality here. Let me say that Nazareth is real because it did not exist. Nazareth and Rome are twin cities with Rome being our city of God. The difference is that Christ dwells among us and Vatican city is the place where we potlatch the spoils of those who have died in our potters field ie. in the lord and put the fruits of their labor on display in Vatican city (Rev.14:13). Just go to the declension of Aristotle's visions form Noetic to lyric to hyletic (obscure) to telec with 'beyond telec' being the place where the sun stopped.

Or to Plato's cave where the celestial light is seen outside the Cave and the light of common day is seen inside the cave that must diminish before the Beatific vision can be seen in the full splendor of 'beauty' (that is the celestial light itself; life is truth), here seen in contrast with the total absence of daylight (not just overshadow the light of common day).

Or Zamjatin's "WE" page 39 line1 Dutton paperback:"Yes sir, and if ever you should glance beyond the wall, you would be dazzled and close your eyes -yes-" They were not common language for the masses because gnostic giants are rare occurrences in any civilization. But I will say that intimacy of the masses with such lines varies over time and in different civilizations. I read articles on Shakespeare plays that tell of the spiritual well being of a people by their interest in different plays. The examples they used were the popularity of Romeo and Juliet, but more significant was that Coriolanus was not popular except in France while MacBeth was always popular in England but not in France.

No I have not found a deeper meaning but just put my argument to the test here. I never read this passage in context and don't need to. I just recognize the words as an expression for a certain state of mind. Then I associate that with our 2 days of Christmas and 2 days of Easter and conclude that the sun must have stopped twice. . . . which was foreshadowed in Gen.2 :1 where evening did not follow the day and is therefore called Sunday the seventh day.

aikido7

Biblical fundamentalists take the Bible literally. Secular fundamentalists seem to do the same.

God made the sun stand still, says the believer. Light refraction, an eclipse or a natural optical illusion made the sun stand still, says the skeptic.

According to the divine constancy of God, the sun did not stand still. According to the laws of physics, the sun did not stand still.

According to the Bible--which is either an example of sacred writing or God's own treatise on all ultimate reality--the sun certainly DID stand still.

Chili

They found that Coriolanus was only popular in France but never in England with emphasis on the word "was."

StaticAge

Actually, the point I was making was outside the context of this thread, in that I was saying that there are some things I am sure we could agree upon, not biblical or spiritual notions, that escape rational "proof." For instance, I am in love with my wife, but is that really testable rationally? Could someone eventually discover the psychological chemical reasons behind such emotional attachments and even come up with a mathematical formula representing a scientific explanation for attraction? What if scientifically it was "proven" that no, your wife is not a perfect match for you, but that this person over here is. Should such a "rational" reason override subjective irrationality? I say no. I believe that the notion that everything is reducible to strict logical explanations is sometimes very shortsighted in that our faculty to analyze data in this way is only one of our abilities. For another instance, there is no accounting for taste, so the saying goes. I can like red better than blue, but there is no rational reason for this, and no matter how stridently someone else may attempt to prove that blue is the better choice for so many rational reasons (if they existed), I am still "right" in stubbornly disagreeing. Its like the man in Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground who sticks out his tongue for no reason in the Crystal Palace where there is no rational reason to do so- sometimes that is the very reason to do something.

Now that sort of reason for irrationality is quite different from the accusation that I am advocating ignorance in order to hold on to beliefs that are clearly disproven. In context of God, in this thread, however we are not directly arguing the existence of God, but whether, if there was a God, how could he have made the sun stand still; I say that it is quite possible that if a God has power to create from an alternative plane of reality and to program our world, he also would have the ability to manipulate it. Outside of that I am not trying to prove anything else as far as the premise of this thread is concerned. My argument for the value of irrationality is not necessarilly tied to any discussion of God, but is a separate concept.

jakejonesiv

The third possiblility is that it really happened, but can be explained by natural causes. The argument advanced in Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky is that some celestial body (either a comet or Venus or Mars, I forget) altered the earth's orbit/rotation long enough for Joshua to fit the battle. Velikovsky argued that pratically every major miracle in the OT was the result of planetary ping-pong. I especially liked where he confused carbohydrates with hydrocarbons.

Jake Jones

John A. Broussard

I'm more or less compiling opinions about the event.

1. Most, so far say the sun did not stand still.

2.I have heard the argument, so far not on this site, that an all-powerful god could most certainly make the sun stand still even though it isn't moving.

I guess your hypothetical case comes under that second heading.