Chili

It doesn't matter who stopped if the light of common day stopped since that is what the message really is about. IOW, the movement is not what counts but the prevailing darkness is what was counted and that typically is the night on which Christ was born, as we call it.

GakuseiDon

The link to similar stories didn't provide references to original sources unfortunately. For example, the link quotes Riss to claim "Herodotus recounts that the priests of Egypt showed him their temple records, and that there he read a strange account of a day that was twice the natural length". I can't find such a comment by Herodotus, and there is no citation. Another quote, this time by Nelson: "Chinese history speaks of Yao, their king, declaring that in his reign the sun stood so long above the horizon that it was feared the world would have been set on fire; and fixes the reign of Yao at a given date, which corresponds with the age of Joshua the son of Nun..." Again, no citation to an ancient text. It would be good to see whether such quotes reflect actual ancient writings.

Jaybees

Whenever I bring up the Joshua sun-stopping story among fundamentalists, they immediately reference ancient sources from all over the world reporting that the sun stopped at some time in the past. I've had no better luck than you, except for a couple of cases where the legend is being told long after the recounters had contact with Christian missionaries.

mountainman

In the beginning, the Joshua and the Jesus in the Greek stories are not explicitly named, but share the same abbreviated Greek nomina sacra code "ΙΣ".

Helios was not hiding, he just recalled his sunshine. The only way to do that as any 21st century physicist or Muse fan knows is within a supermassive black hole, where light returns to its sender. Hawking radiation emitted from the spacetime at the edges of the supermassive Black Helios Hole gave the impression that Helios was standing still. Of course Earth would be protected from the supermassive black sun spots by Gaia and a host of other terrestrial pantheons of gods, so us mortals could continue breathing and living and moving in Zeus.

In the thread Did the sun turn away from Jesus and recalling his rays make that day sunless? , stephan and andrew may be correct in ascribing the following quoted citation out of Athanasius to Athanasius and not Arius of Alexandria, as I had earlier presumed.

‘The heaven,’ as the Prophet says, ‘was astonished,
and the earth shuddered ’ at the transgression of the Law.

But the sun, with greater horror,
impatient of the bodily contumelies,
which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us,
turned away, and recalling his rays
made that day sunless.

The divine interest of the Roman Empire God Sol Invictus, Helios, is piqued by the death of "the common Lord" in the same manner as it had been piqued by the death of the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, as described by Mark Anthony in the writings of Josephus. Perhaps here, the father of Christian orthodoxy Athanasius, appeals to the common authority of his 4th century pagan audience.

Stopping the sun and stopping the sunshine are highly related significant astrophysicial events shared by the bearer of the nomina sacra "ΙΣ" in the Greek language books which were preserved by the nation of Christians all the way to the fifth century, and far far beyond.

semiopen

An Alphabetical List of the Emperors of China and of Their Year-Titles or Nien-Hao 年號
Author(s): J. L. J. F. Ezerman and B. A. J. Van Wettum
Source: T'oung Pao, Vol. 2, No. 5 (1891), pp. 357-389

The Chinese long day might have started during the reign of T'ang Ti Yao B C. 2357- 2256.

Sage Kings

China's Mid-Autumn Day
Author(s): Yang LemeiSource: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Sep. - Dec., 2006), pp. 263-270

Yao is over a thousand years before Joshua, and the story doesn't really account for the time zone change. It also is not exactly strikingly similar to Joshua.

Maybe there's a better fit somewhere, but this is the best I can come up with... nutty fucking xians.

Jaybees

Good point.

Many cultures have legends about strange sky phenomena. Angels coming down, chariots of fire, arrow chains up to the sky, multiple suns, multiple moons, the sun setting in the east, rainbows announcing the end of floods, star guides to important goals, etc. That the bible should also list peculiar sky phenomena shouldn't be at all surprising. What would be strange would be the lack of any such happenings in that work.