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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/9/2002 8:49 PM (GMT -6) |   | Maybe we’ve discussed this one before. I can’t remember. Still, I need an explanation for this:
Joshua 10.12-14: On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on 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. 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!
Two questions:
1. What really happened here? Certainly SOMETHING happened to account for the entire nation claiming that twelve hours of extra sunlight showed up.
2. Whatever happened, does it not challenge the open theist’s hermeneutic? We insist that where the Bible describes God rather matter-of-factly as having changed his mind, this ought to be taken as meaning he really changed his mind. OK, here’s a quite matter-of-fact description of the sun standing still for some twelve hours. Do we take it literally? If not, on what grounds to we not take it literally?
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde | | Back to Top | | |
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¡Que Payaso!
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Date Joined Jul 2001
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| Posted 7/10/2002 3:55 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom,
Did you check the Book of Jashar to see what it had to say? I seem to have misplaced my copy.
Judging from the general sentiment of people at my church, my guess is that most evangelicals are inclined to take this one literally. So the open theist isn't in any unique predicament here. I've heard that someone, somewhere, at one time or another, had calculated some kind of astronomical data which seemed to allow for an additional half day in human history. I'm not sure how they went about doing it. Starkman, you know anything about this? Sorry I don't have more concrete info; let me check on that to see if it holds any good water.
I'm interested in the physics of this event. If the sun "stood still," then we know that what really happened was that the earth stopped spinning on its axis. Normally, one would expect that if this were to happen, we would lose our orbit and fly into the sun. Obviously, nature is not acting independently in this case! Not only that, but the moon stood still too. So both the earth and the moon were temporarily suspended in their orbits?
As for the language, we still today speak of the sun rising and setting instead of describing it in terms of earth's rotation. Saying the sun stood still is perfectly ligitimate and doesn't count against the historicity of this story in my book.
Payaso 
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins
Edited by - payaso on 07/10/2002 9:14:36 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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¡Que Payaso!
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| Posted 7/10/2002 4:23 PM (GMT -6) | | Hi Tom,
Here's an analysis of Josh 10 and 2 Ki 20:8-11 (where the sun goes backwards?):
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/5felled.html#longday
What do you think of their discussion? This was put together by a Christian think tank called "Unravelling Wittgenstein's Net." They've put a lot of thought into providing answers to skeptics' questions.
The author discusses the astronomical data which suggests a missing day that I was thinking of. Apparently, it doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Payaso
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins
Edited by - payaso on 07/10/2002 9:23:46 PM
Edited by - payaso on 07/10/2002 10:02:04 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 7/12/2002 6:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Well, the only thing I've heard about Joshua 10 is that the axis of the earth was shifted in such a way that though the earth continued to spin there was, as a result, the lengthening of the day.
Chuck Missler (www.k-house.org) has talked about this.
That's about it for me!
Starkman
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Mephi2K
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Total Posts : 713
| Posted 7/12/2002 11:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Oh, yeah!
Now THIS is an even better question than my "talking donkeys" thing! LOL
And I think this will probably make the SAME point that I wanted to make there.
Well, anyone???
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¡Que Payaso!
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 108
| Posted 7/12/2002 2:22 PM (GMT -6) | | Well, if there is any validity to what the guys at "Unravelling Wittgenstein's Net" (the Christian think tank) say, then we don't even need to discuss whether or not the sun "literally" stood still, since that is not what the text says anyway.
As for donkeys, since I believe that God created all there is by speaking, then the possibility of a donkey talking is trivial. If the Scripture tells us that a donkey talked to a man and the man understood what was said, then I can certainly believe it happened.
Payaso
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - Bilbo Baggins | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
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Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 7/14/2002 9:24 PM (GMT -6) | | When we say that a person "changed their mind" we don't LITERALLY mean that they went down to the "Mind Exchange" store and swapped theirs for a new one. We mean they changed their intention, plans, opinions, etc...
The Open Theist claim is simply that when the Bible says God "changed its mind" it means rough the same thing as when we say a person "changed their mind." In THIS sense it is "literal." But its no MORE literal than when we say " a person changed their mind".
So too when the Bible says "the sun stood still," I would argue that it means roughly the same thing as when we ordinarily say "the sun rose at 6:02 this morning." The Bible's language is OUR language, and in this sense it is "literal." But it is no MORE literal than OUR ordinary language.
So, while I think this verse may have implications for our assessment of the relationship between science and the Bible (as Galileo taught us), I don't think it has any bearing on the Open Theism debate.
Doc
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Tom
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| Posted 7/16/2002 8:30 PM (GMT -6) | | Doc: So too when the Bible says "the sun stood still," I would argue that it means roughly the same thing as when we ordinarily say "the sun rose at 6:02 this morning."
Tom: Shouldn’t we rather argue that when the Bible says “the sun stood still,” it means roughly the same thing as when we say “the sun stood still”? It looks to me that likening the “sun stood still” to “the sun rose at 6 this morning” begs the question. Granted, “The sun rose at 6 this morning” describes the event in OUR language from OUR point of view. That’s OK. We allow it (do we not?) because we know (and in the case of a sunrise are able to describe it scientifically) that something real in the natural order of things (outside our perception) exists that accounts for (or creates) OUR point of view. The integrity of our language, our description of the sun “rising,” rests on SOMETHING being true about the natural order of things to which our language refers.
The open view, as far as I can tell, rests much of its case on approaching the descriptions of God “changing his mind” (et.al.) in precisely the same way. The open view argues that the divine-human relationship possesses an integrity to it which is difficult if not impossible to account for if “God changes his mind” doesn’t refer to something real on the divine side of the relationship AND that this something real, though it may be more than we understand a change of mind to be, cannot be LESS than we understand it to be, i.e., it cannot amount to a contradiction of the truth of OUR understanding of what a “change of mind” is.
So, my question is, how would this work with “the sun stood still”? If this means what we mean when we say “the sun rose at 6 this morning” then we’re still positing the existence of something real in the natural order of things that accounts for Israel’s perceiving/believing that the sun “stood still” for some twelve hours. What might that something be?
Either the sun really did stand still (and how does one account for this cosmologically?) or it did not (in which case how do we then account for the nation’s perceiving it to be so?). Did God perform a miracle of the earth’s gravitation? Or did God simply create the illusion of light in the minds of those present (in which case the sun did set on schedule and it really was dark for observers everywhere else)? Where do we want to locate this miracle? Outside or inside of the minds of those present? I’m inclined to think the first option presents us with fewer problems.
But doesn’t the answer to this question have something at least indirectly to do with how open theists interpret the Bible? If there is nothing real in the natural order of things that brings it about that the nation perceives the sun to be standing still (unlike the sun rising at 6 AM), then the question becomes: Why can we not take passages describing God as “changing his mind” this same way (viz., as describing only what APPEARED to us to be the case without any REAL correspondence in the divine order accounting for this perception)? This is what I’m after. But then maybe the problem here is just a perception IN MY OWN MIND! Arrghhh!
Tom
"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde
Edited by - TGB on 07/18/2002 01:18:44 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/17/2002 6:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Without volunteering to suggest anything non-literal here; I just want to open the can labeled "Contemporaneous." How did the cultures of the time interpret such a declamation?
The Sun stood still. The symbol of the division between good an evil. (Like Zarathustra favoring a mon-theistic sun god with all of its dualism of good versus evil; instead of the all embracing lunar vegitable deities.) The day speaks of good and the night of its lack. But here this story has the pluck to say that there was no disfavor THAT day. No rain on the select and the unselect. This was a big one-sided event, and one that had nothing to do with anything that they deserved.
I just wonder whether THAT is the kind of thing that such a report, official recording and annual recitation would mean to a pre-modern society.
Edited by - (o) on 07/17/2002 11:26:48 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 7/17/2002 8:21 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
The Sun stood still. The symbol of the division between good an evil. (Like Zarathustra favoring a mon-theistic sun god with all of its dualism of good versus evil; instead of the all embracing lunar vegitable deities.) The day speaks of good and the night of its lack. But here this story has the pluck to say that there was no disfavor THAT day. No rain on the select and the unselect. This was a big one-sided event, and one that had nothing to do with anything that they deserved.
Oooooo. Hmmmmmmm.
Tom 
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 7/18/2002 3:05 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Revelation 21
The New Jerusalem
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
5He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."
6He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."
9One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." 10And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. 13There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
15The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. 16The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. 17He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man's measurement, which the angel was using. 18The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. 19The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, 20the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass.
22I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
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