Lugubert

One aspect that I think so far hasn't been mentioned in this thread is that just 15 pages later (in my KJV) the same entity that manages to stop the sun and the moon (and/or the earth?) "could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." (Jdg 1:19)

John Kesler

The point I was trying to make is that Joshua 10 records what was thought to be an actual stopping of the sun. Some apologists realize the problems created by this interpretation, and so they posit explanations that seem more palatable to modern readers. You may find this entry from Blueletterbible.org to be of interest:

Chuck Rightmire

Many people have come up with so-called explanations for the Joshua story but I think most of us on posts such as this confuse the issues by commenting on the thing as if "God" had played a role. There is a major difference between the occurrence of an event and its interpretation. It doesn't make any difference whether the sun appeared to stand still or not. Velikovsky had one idea that, whether you accept any of his thinking or not, still may be viable. As I recall, his Worlds in Collision postulated that the planet of the crossing of the Red Sea and the 40 years in the wilderness returned some few years later and provided the light for the day standing still. He is, of course, condemned and refuted in the canons and his sources shot down, but he had the right idea that even if the cosmic events happened they were related in oral tradition by a people whose world view favored a "god did it" explanation. If our world collapsed today, and written and electronic histories disappeared to be replace by the oral, what would be said about the twin towers a hundred or more years from now? The ignorant would once again be blaming diabolical powers for punishing us by encouraging physical activities by enemies. You can see some of that occurring now in the internet.

John A. Broussard

Good source. It says the sun stood still.

I find that to be the standard answer of most theists, though they are uncomfortable with the implications of that belief.

John A. Broussard

It doesn't?

Please explain.

Thanks.

Wallener

Literalists believe it happened and spend an inordinate amount of time discussing it as if it did. Non-literalists believe it didn't happen and....spend an inordinate amount of time discussing it as if it did.

Ergo, it doesn't matter if it did or didn't happen.

John A. Broussard

You are very probably right.

But it still fascinates me to hear the explanations of what happened that day in a tiny little segment of an insignificant piece of ground on a speck of dirt in a third rate solar system two thirds of the way from the center of one out of hundreds of billions of galaxies.

Chuck Rightmire

I say it really doesn't matter whether any of the supposedly physical events as reported in the xtian bible or any other religious text actually happened or not, because that is not what we are really looking at here. As I said in the earlier post, almost anything that happened recently, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the fall of the twin towers and the recent Asian tsunami could be (and is) being presented in some circles as the wrath of some god reacting to the evil that men and women do. So it is not the event but the interpretation of those events that is important.

To a primitive people believing in god's wrath and role in their lives everything that happens to them happens because of a spirit or a god. So, all the events cited in religious literature may have happened or may not have happened. But if they did happen, the after-the-fact laying of blame on a god does not say anything about that god's existence. The great Lisbon earthquake of the 18th Century was not the handiwork of god although he or she or it was blamed for it by the xtians of the time.

This has become more and more evident to me with various archeological findings in the Fertile Crescent. Whether David or Saul or Solomon or Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed is interesting. But finding out by archeological evidence whether they did or not has absolutely nothing to say about the existence of a god. It just says that things happened and people blamed or credited their god for natural or human events. The fundamentalists hail any discovery that bolsters the bible's history as proof of god's existence. I say to them, it doesn't work that way.

John A. Broussard

I hate to side with the fundies on anything, but I have to admit that a 100% support of the bible by the findings of reputable archeologist would go a long way in my estimation to indicate that god exists.

That would be especially true if Chinese, Indian, Egyptian records showed that the sun stood still for forty-eight hours right up there in the middle of the sky on that fateful day when Joshua and his nomads were scuffling with their neighbors.

Wouldn't you be persuaded?

Clivedurdle

Doesn't it state the sun and the moon stood still for 24 hours? Last time I looked they had different orbits.....

How would the earth stood still stop them both?