Joshua and the Miracle of the Sun
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- Episode 5: Joshua and the Miracle of the Sun
The text of Joshua 10 describes the sun standing still at Gibeon as the greatest miracle in history. Analysis of this chapter reveals a complicated composition history, and the archaeological evidence suggests that a very different historical situation underlies the narrative. To theologians, reconciling the story with modern science has been a challenge for centuries.
Related blog post
• isthatinthebible.wordpress.co...
Contents
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Prologue
1:48 The battle at Gibeon
4:31 The miracle of the sun (and moon)
10:49 The campaign continues southward
12:46 The archaeology of Joshua’s conquest
17:51 The conflict between religious worldviews and science
21:53 Credits
Works cited
⦾ Baruch Margalit. “The Day the Sun Did Not Stand Still: A New Look at Joshua X 8-15”. Vetus Testamentum, 42/4. 1992.
⦾ Theodore Hiebert. “The Use of Inclusion in Habakkuk 3”. Directions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, edited by Elaine R. Follis. 1987.
⦾ Thomas Dozeman. Joshua 1-12: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible Commentary series). 2015.
⦾ J. Briend, “Josué 10: Une conquête en morceau”, Foi et Vie 97/4, 1998.
⦾ Yigal Levin. “The Wars of Joshua: Weaning Away from the Divine”. War and Peace in Jewish Tradition, 2011.
⦾ Yigal Levin. “Conquered and Unconquered: Reality and Historiography in the Geography of Joshua”. The Book of Joshua, edited by Edward Noort. 2012.
⦾ Nadav Na’aman. “The ‘Conquest of Canaan’ in the Book of Joshua and in History”, Canaan in the Second Millennium BCE. 1994.
⦾ K. Lawson Younger, Jr. Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing. 1990.
⦾ Edward Noort. “Joshua and Copernicus: Josh 10:12-15 and the History of Reception”. Flores Florentino: Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez. 2007.
⦾ Harry Rimmer. Science and the Long Day of Joshua. 1927.
⦾ E. Walter Maunder. The Astronomy of the Bible. 1908.
⦾ John Walton. “Biblical Credibility and Joshua 10: What Does the Text Really Claim?”. BioLogos, October 15, 2013.
Other notes
• Regarding travel distances for ancient armies, see Richard A. Gabriel and Karen S. Metz, A Short History of War, 1992, Chapter 3. See also C. Neumann, “A Note on Alexander’s March-Rates”, Historia 20(2/3), 1971, p. 196.
• Regarding the location of Makkedah, see D.A. Dorsey, The Location of Biblical Makkedah, Tell Aviv 7(3-4), 1980.
Music by Scott Buckley (www.scottbuckley.com.au), Fesliyan Studios, Adrian Walther, Autumn Summers, Caleb Etheridge, and Cody Martin.
Special thanks to John Kesler for feedback and advice.
#Joshua #heliocentrism #archaeology
Phenomenal. This is the kind of thing that captures my interests in religious studies and text criticism of scriptures.
Thanks, Elijah. That's exactly what I'm hoping to achieve.
Just wanted to say that you're one of the greatest biblical studies content creators on youtube
Thanks!
Holy crap this is so good!!! Thanks for making it.
Thanks for watching it!
Good to have you back!
Thanks! I'm still not very quick at this.
fantastic! I go straight to these whenever there is a new one
Great content, but I was extra impressed with the animation design in this one. Right up there with the best, loving the paper tear theme. I also enjoyed your thoughts on the impact of a literal interpretation of Joshua on science.
Thanks! It's certainly nowhere near the quality of your animation, however.
I really do hope your channel blows up
That makes two of us! :)
There is an even more insane miracle in when the LORD makes the sun go back 15 minutes.
Yeah, Hezekiah's sundial! That was the other biblical passage that caused some theologians to resist Copernicus's heliocentric model of the solar system. Thanks for mentioning it.
This was an excellent video. I would like to add some extra clarifications to Joshua's relationship to the Copernicans in the early modern period. It should be noted first that biblical literalism wasn't as big a deal back then as it is today. People were fine with reinterpreting scripture to be metaphorical if the evidence clearly showed it couldn't be literally true. This happened with the passages of the Bible that indicated a flat earth. It was just reinterpreted in late antiquity since educated Christians had become very aware of the evidence in favor of a round earth from reading ancient Greek works on the topic. The main objections to Copernicus weren't so much appeals to the bible (although this did exist) but appeals to their understanding of science at the time. Copernicus's theory at the time was just as bad at explaining the orbital motion of the planets as the dominant Ptolemaic theory. This was because Copernicus had the planets going in circular orbits rather than elliptical orbits. There was also the major problem of stellar parallax which was not properly addressed by Copernicans for a very long time. These (along with other scientific objections) were the main reasons why people rejected Copernicanism not so much the bible. Now the bible (like the sun passage in Joshua) was cited as an additional reason on top of those scientific reasons but it wasn't the main objection. Cardinal Bellamene (the guy perhaps mostly responsible for the Catholic church's condemnation of Copernicanism in 1616) himself said that if proof of Coperncanism arrived he would be perfectly happy to reinterpret those scriptural passages but that he wasn't aware of any proof of Coperncanism and didn't think there would be any (he was right that at the time there was no proof of Coperncanism yet). It wasn't until 1728 that finally direct proof was found that the earth rotated around the sun (with the discovery of stellar aberration by James Bradley) and the Catholic church relatively shortly afterwards (in 1750) changed their official prohibition on Copernican books (although most astronomers by 1728 had already accepted Kepler's form of Copernicanism as the most probable theory). So I don't think this passage in Joshua was really that responsible for the delay in the acceptance of Coperncanism in the early modern period although it was deployed in the arguments. An excellent book on the topic is "Setting Aside All Authority: Giovanni Battista Riccioli and the Science against Copernicus in the Age of Galileo" by Christopher M. Graney and for the theological context of the Catholic Church's condemnation of Copernicanism "Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible" by Richard J. Blackwell is very good.
always enjoyed these, great work!
Thanks!
yay a new video!
Very good video! I really liked the Archeology section it’s extremely good! Good work and good luck on the rest of your content!
Thanks, CC!
I was just thinking about sending you a link to this channel since it seems right up your alley, and then I scroll down to the comments and see this lmao
Wonderful, thank you.
Okay, so 1st love the research, and honestly i think i might fall on the "It's a bad Omen" side of things.
But, please do a video about The journey Christ took leading up to his Crucifixion. I've always thought that distance from Pilate's court to Herod's palace, then back again is a crazy distance for a bloodied and beaten man to make.
Thanks for the suggestion. I plan to start covering more New Testament material next year.
Your content is incredible.
Thanks for the nice comment!
interesting presentation. i am convinced however that the battle of gibeon was an actual battle with a very specific date, july 14, 1406 bc. this is actually a check on the date of exodus, march 25, 1446 bc, derived from the assyrian eponym canon with the eclipse of nineveh on june 15, 763 bc. since the math checks out, that the conquest of canaan was 40 years after exodus and punctuated by an eclipse. i agree that the conquests of the 5 cities are a condensed narrative. also, the archeological dating of the artifacts for jericho is off, as argued by david rohl. it is easy to pick parallels to subsequent stories of conquests because the levant have been a chessboard of empires dating back even earlier.
hey love your content, I was wondering of what you thought of IPs video on the historicity of Joshua's conquest
I haven't seen it. I assume he thinks the conquest was historical.
Hatsoff History has a pretty good response to IP's video about Joshua's long day that also addresses the historicity problems with the conquest.
th-cam.com/video/cyD7I68OM9A/w-d-xo.html
DOCTOR MICHAEL JONES❓️ 👍👀
Love it
it seems that your videos follow the order of the Bible, I can't wait for the video on Job
I have been roughly going in biblical order, but Job is a ways off. Since you've expressed interest, though, I'll bump it up a bit in my future plans. In the meantime, @Dr_Armstrong has some fun videos about Job.
@@InquisitiveBible oh I actually like the order you are doing! I think it gives it a nice thematic flow from episode to episode. Your work is amazing!! It really makes the whole text more understandable and interesting!
@@InquisitiveBible Oh and thanks for the recommendation!
What do you think of Council of Trent's interpation of this story?
I'm afraid I don't know who that is or what their take on the story is.
Anyone who cant comprehend this miracle has clearly not heard of how in 1948 Israel a young nation with minimal military equipment and tactic not forgetting its a nation made of jews who grew up in different countries managed to defeat 6 strong nations
What do you think of InspiringPhilosophy's answer?
Video: Did the Sun Stop Moving (Joshua 10)? - InspiringPhilosophy
Thanks for the question, @Zatoichi82.
InspiringPhilosophy is repeating the interpretation put forward by Professor John Walton, which I mention briefly in my video and address in a bit more detail in my original blog article. The gist of this claim is that the text is not trying describe a miracle; Joshua is asking God to make the battle happen on a specific day of the month so that the Amorites will see it as a bad omen and be demoralized. This explanation is thoroughly rejected by practically all scholars on the book of Joshua who mention it.
In essence, I don't think this interpretation is based on a fair reading of the text. Its purpose seems to be to make the story more palatable to modern readers by watering down the central miracle. Here's an excerpt from my article:
===
The weaknesses of this approach are immediately apparent. The pairings of “Sun” with “Moon” and “Gibeon” with “Valley of Aijalon” (an adjacent region) are isocolons-poetic repetitions that repeat set pairs or variations of elements (see Gevirtz, p. 49). Such doublets are ubiquitous in Hebrew poetry. These geographical names are probably not meant as an obtuse way of conveying the date or time of day. (Even concluding that the sun is in the east and the moon in the west is reading too much into the text. After all, if Joshua is approaching Gibeon from Gilgal, both locations are to the west.) Furthermore, the Neo-Assyrian omen texts were written many centuries later than the events depicted in Joshua 10, and there is no evidence of Canaanites holding those particular astrological beliefs. Walton’s position also requires us to ignore the statement in v. 13 that the sun delayed its descent for a full day, as well as the fact that Joshua’s command only occurs after the battle is already won. But worst of all, it renders the miracle nonexistent. It’s as if Joshua prays for it to be Thursday because the Amorites “never could get the hang of Thursdays.” What kind of miracle is that? Such an interpretation does a serious disservice to the text.
@@InquisitiveBible Thanks, for the quick reply and the extensive research and serious thought you put into this subject. I'll keep in mind what you conveyed.
Ok I should make a slight correction to your otherwise exellent video. You said that Calvin and Luther condemned Copernicanism on scriptural grounds but it that the anti-Copernican quote we have from Calvin is spurious. This is what the historian of early modern science, Thony Christie, says about it on his blog "The Renaissance Mathematicus":
"The simplest case is that of Calvin. The anti-Copernican quote that is attributed to Calvin is spurious and as far as can be ascertained Calvin never publicly offered an opinion on heliocentricity."
Thony then goes on to talk about Luther which explains the complexity:
"The case of Luther is much more interesting and is a classic example of how a supposed historical fact is misused to support an argument of much greater historical significance than it actually has or had. In Luther’s Table Talk (German Tischreden) we can read the following story from Anthony Lauterbach:
"There was mention of a certain astrologer who wanted to prove that the earth moves and not the sky, the sun, and the moon. This would be as if somebody were riding on a cart or in a ship and imagined that he was standing still while the earth and the trees were moving. [Luther remarked] “So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Jos. 10:12].”"
Here we have it at last a religious rejection of heliocentricity by a very major sixteenth century religious figure, case proved or is it? If one actually examines the context of this quote then its significance actually dwindles to almost nothing. The Tischreden are just what the tittle says they are they are records of the conversations that took place around the dinner table in Luther’s house. Luther was a professor at the University of Wittenberg and like many other university professors in the Renaissance his house was also a boarding house for rich students whose payments for board and lodging helped to supplement the professor’s income whilst reassuring anxious parents that their, mostly teenage, sons were under suitable supervision whilst attending the university. Luther was a bon vivant, who greatly enjoyed his food and drink in copious quantities so his evening meals were grand affairs with many people seated at the table enjoying the hospitality and entertaining conversation of their host. The conversation in question was recorded in 1539 but first published in 1566 long after Luther’s death so it cannot be authenticated. The date of its occurrence is of course before the publication of both Rheticus’ Naratio prima as well as Copernicus’ De revolutionibus and as we have very good grounds to believe that the Commentariolus was not know in Wittenberg at this time the entire conversation is based on hearsay, the participants never having read any account of Copernicus’ hypothesis.
What we actually have, in the passage quoted, is a man in his cup making a throw away quip to impress his dinner guests with his intellectual quick-wittedness. Nowhere else in his voluminous writings or in the records of his lectures and speeches does Luther mention Copernicus or his hypothesis with a single word. Also possibly more important nobody in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries quotes this passage from the Tischreden as Luther’s opinion on heliocentricity, it is first in the nineteenth century that we find this passage being used as a so-called proof for the religious rejection of heliocentricity in the early modern period."
Thanks for the clarification. Early modern theological disputes are a bit outside of my wheelhouse.
@@InquisitiveBible No worries. I really love your channel! Early modern astronomical and theological disputes are rather complex lol.
God made a sign for King Hezekiah. The sign was that the sun went backwards. Thus, the Mycenaean story has Biblical validity. Secondly, the earth is flat and immovable, and it is the sun that moves, as the Bible clearly teaches. There are stories of a "long night" in Native American oral traditions.
I still tentatively think John Walton's theory might hold more credibility than you assigned to it
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate John Walton in general for getting regular Christians on board with academic studies. This is one case where I personally don't find his explanation satisfying at all, but you are certainly allowed to disagree. :)
@@InquisitiveBibleif you have freetime, could you pinpoint what precisely is wrong with his proposal? While I strongly disagree with his fantasy (projecting Westernised anti-supernatural prejudice so prevalent among American evangelicals) that Joshua is represented as commanding omens relating to the sun & moon JUST to demoralise his "more superstitious" enemies (I don't believe the author portrays Joshua as any less superstitious-that is John Walton's misunderstanding of biblical monolatry) WITHOUT ACTUALLY BELIEVING in the spiritual efficacy of the omen, I still think he's right in implying that the text portray's Joshua as having superhuman abilities to order astrological omens into existence.
This story, like all miraculous phenomena in the Bible, is a myth relating to comet catastrophe
YHWH is an asteroid, known by some as the destroyer or the red dragon, not the sun. His angels are the comets.