The Long Day of Joshua

>>QU> 1) although we know the sun to be rotating around the earth, if the earth were to stop rotating, it would appear as if the _sun_ stopped.

CORRECTION: If the rotation of the earth completely stopped, the sun would not appear to stop, but would appear to slowly move backwards in the sky, due to the earth's ORBITAL motion around the sun.

>CQ> But the book clearly says that the sun stood still. Not that it looked that way, but that it did.

The "sun" that YOU observe in the sky is in fact an APPEARANCE. The scientific term "sunrise", of course, refers to the appearance of the sun rising as the earth rotates on its axis. When you POINT toward the sun, you are in fact pointing at its appearance, not at its physical location at that point in time, which if you are facing south near noon, would be about 2 degrees to the right of where you point, or about 4 solar disc widths to the right. In the Bible, the word "sun" refers to the greater LIGHT that God made.

As noted before, the movement of the "sun" from Joshua's point of view included both the rotation of the earth, and the orbital movement. The rotation of the earth would only have to slow down to a one turn per year rate for the "sun" to stand still. And note further that it HASTED NOT to go down by the space of about a whole day. That indicates the slowing and re-acceleration was GRADUAL.

The sun stood still RELATIVE to OUR common geocentric viewpoint frame of reference. Before Joshua commanded the "sun", he prayed to the Lord! and then, in the SIGHT of the people he spoke toward the appearance of the sun, "the greater light", commanding it. The point in time when the sun stood still was high noon at Gibeon.

Technically, it was not said that the moon stood still, but that it "stayed" in the VALLEY of Ajalon. The moon was framed in the "gun sight pass" of the valley west-north-west of Gibeon, so the moon was about (last) Third-Quarter phase, and had just begun to set.

The ORBITAL motion of the moon is CONTRARY to the direction it appears to move due to NORMAL earth rotation. Roughly 30 days per 360 degrees orbit would be nearly 6 degrees for the half day after noon remaining, but that day was "about" double length, so make that 11 degrees, but the earth would only have slowed to about 1 degree per day rotation, so the moon could have risen maybe 10 degrees from the western horizon. But with the earth re-accelerating, it probably wouldn't have risen backwards much more than one moon width; it would still appear in the V of the valley for quite some time.

Besides the historical record in Joshua and Habakkuk, as well as the book of Jasher, ancient Chinese writings record the long day. The Incas and Aztecs have a record, as well as the Babylonian and Persians. Herodotus tells how the priests of Egypt showed him their temple records which had an account of a double length day. There simple is no doubt about the fact that the event indeed happened.

Grace be to them that love the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. --Richard