"And the Sun Stood Still in the Midst of Heaven" Joshua 10:13?

Question

Is it necessary to be scientifically illiterate to believe that bible stories are literally true?

Take this story in Joshua about the Sun standing still, for example. This story was written by a primitive ancient who had little understanding of the planet he lived on, much less anything in the Solar System or beyond, and he, along with the rest of the people of his time, believed that the Sun goes around the Earth.

But the Sun does not go around the Earth. Day and night is not caused by movement of the Sun, as the bible writer believed, but by rotation of the Earth. Therefore, the Sun could never have stood still overhead. Oh, the Earth COULD HAVE stopped rotating, making the Sun appear to stand still, but this would have created such enormous tidal forces that the planet would been blown apart. Besides, if that is what happened, then the bible would have to be wrong. It did not say the Earth stopped rotating. It said the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven.

OK, judging by most of the answers, it's clear the answer is . . . Yes, you do have to be scientifically illiterate to believe that bible stories are literally true.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Those kind of little Biblical statements of obvious non-knowing have always bothered me, and the answer you always get is those statements where made by men who didn't possess the most recent scientific knowledge and they were only reflecting the then believed positions. I believe that is true, but they want you to then believe that the same men wrote other powerful
spiritual statements that where said to be true for all time, when they couldn't get simple physical facts correct

Answer 2

First of all, from the perspective of the writer, the sun stood still. Whether he said the earth stood still, that would be immaterial because he would not have known better, per your own admittance.

Now, if you believe in God, this would be quite an easy scenerio to perform. As He is the Creator of time and space, he could simply stop time outside of the location where Joshua was. With time stopped, then the Earth would not have been ripped apart by the enormous tidal forces as you so accurately predicted would have occurred.

And if this event did happen, the figuratively, the Sun would have been still. (The sun rotates on it's own axis.)

So to answer your first question, one doesn't happen to be scientifically illiterate to believe in the bible. One has to have faith knowing that our infintesimally small knowledge of science cannot compare with the Creator of the laws of science.

Answer 3

What he meant was that for the entire time required in order to kill the enemy, Joshua asked God to "make the sun and moon stand still", meaning that the sun would not go down until they were completely rid of their enemy. They were in the middle of fighting a war. And so in fact the day remained until they were finished - this is one of many examples where in Genesis we are told that the sun, moon and stars are for signs. The Great God took care of the Israelites. Since you probably got your idea for this question from the one asked about twenty minutes ago, you probably already know this, but I'll say it again: The children of Israel, these folk's decendants, do you know who they are?
Do you know who God took such great care of? Well, ten of the tribes went North over the caucus mountains, settled Europe and then finally the Americas and Canada. They are the free Christian Nations of today. You are one of them.
On a final note, a High God, the Creator of a Universe, probably knows how to control the sun and the moon without it affecting anything (if he wanted to actually stop the sun in its tracks).
Yet, constantly there are questions like "hey, we don't know how to do this, so how could God have done it"? Its almost assinine.

Answer 4

Joshua prayed as he understood things. God honored his prayer in faith and stopped the Earth for about a day.

Oriental legends(legends are born out of truth) speak of a day that had no night. North and South American Indian legends speak of a night that had no day.

There are also people who are historical counters. They can tell you what happened on what day in history right to the day of creation. But there is one day they cannot find. Because the earth stopped rotating for about a day.

Since God is infinite,eternal, all knowing, and all powerful, keeping the planet under control was no problem for Him.

The Bible embraces science. ie: Noah's Ark.

Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Any first year science student can tell you there is more water below the earth's surface than on it.

Does medical count as science? The writer of The Gospel of Luke was a physician. He also wrote The Book Of Acts.

Go to Google and type in the search box Science in the Bible and click "I'm feeling Lucky". That web site can give you many more answers than I can.

I hope this helps you.

Answer 5

If I were you I would stop parroting the Atheists... this is the most lame argument against the Bible...

What do YOU say in the morning and in the evening about the sun? The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening does it not???

It's just an expression... because you say "the sun rises in the
morning" and "the sun goes down in the eveining" does that mean that you believe the sun moves? I didn't think so. The same is true then for Joshua in the Bible.

It's really not that difficult to figure out...

Answer 6

Fact is this Biblical story fits right into a physical happening when the Sun did appear to be standing still and if you did your homework you would know that. Thsi was written in a language using pictures to convey the story which is very differant than the way Geeek and latin work. You know if you are going to try to appear smart you must do your homework first and you have not. You sound like a brainwashed freshman in college being taught by those who can not do, and are therefor rebellious. If you were standing on earth what do you think it looked like was happening. Who was the audience and what was the message??

Answer 7

how are you able to not have faith that? I advise the earth is merely rotating at 914 miles in keeping with hour. an entire supply up from right here may be like a fighter jet hitting a brick wall, and then later immediately dashing as much because it incredibly is cruise speed at once. I merely don't be conscious of why the bible does not point out that each and each development in the international substitute into destroyed because of this catastrophic experience, and that each and each guy or woman substitute into thrown many miles from the place they have been status, and killed by the impact. Many mountains may be leveled, and a few created. So tell me, what in this tale isn't undemanding so you might have faith? I merely don't be conscious of why they did not end the story, and why it nonetheless mentions human beings being alive after this.

Answer 8

Absolutely! Thank you for pointing this out. And since we are discounting anything written before people knew the orbiting dynamics, there go Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato, Golan, Solan, Hammurabi, Euripedese, Caesar, Bede, the concept of zero.
By your logic God would be so impotant and dumb as to stop the sun and not handle the side-effects.
By your aesthetic sense - every word of Shakespeare and your last birthday card is literally true w/o poetic metaphor.
And, I presume your brilliant deductions are based on something other than the graffitti at your school because you certainly have not read the Hebrew.

Answer 9

actually, the earth's magnetic field reverses polarity about every 13,000 years; when it does this, the earth stops rotating for a day or so then begins to turn in the opposite direction. ancient hopi texts describe a day when the sun rose in both the west and east. if you want to learn more about this google; schuman resonance, earth's magnetic field, 2012 - this will give you a direction to follow insofaras the "sun standing still" --- the bible, like most old stories, are just that, stories; it is one way of telling the truth, but is not meant to be taken literaly (as far as 'when' , 'where' , 'who', etc... things happened)

Answer 10

Joshua 10
13 So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on [b] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!

-The sun DID NOT GO DOWN. This CAN happen, and God can make it happen- that is where your faith is little.

Answer 11

This question has been asked here before, and there are numerous translational & quasi-scientific explanations for this passage.

I'm not going to give you another lesson on ancient Hebrew, or cut and paste another scientific explaination that you could find yourself using the search function.

I will give God the benefit of a doubt and assume that God somehow knew how to extend the day in such a way that the Israelites had time to win the battle without destroying the Earth.