The Longest Day

Last week, Bill Gallaher wrote this email to me - about the events in Joshua 10. I enjoyed it so much that I asked if I could post it here, and he agreed. So here it is (slightly edited to remove the personal info):

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Since today was Veterans Day, I caught the movie The Longest Day on a movie channel and it reminded me of another longest day -- the passage in Joshua (10:13-17) about the sun and moon standing still. Given my scientific background, I have given that passage a lot of thought over the years.

The passage is sometimes ballyhooed as a point of contention between the Bible and science, but I think this is garbage and that there are several reasonable explanations.

The problem is that God would have to suspend a whole host of natural laws to achieve the literal effect of the sun and moon standing still. Unknown to the ancients, we understand now that the sun does not actually move, but that the earth rotates. The moon does move, but its motion is over a month, not a day, so the earths rotation accounts for the vast majority of its apparent movement as well. So, as we would put it today, the earth would have to stop rotating to achieve the effect stated in the Bible.

Halting the rotation of the earth would cause fairly incredible geophysical effects. The sun would disproportionately heat one side of the earth over the extended day, and cool the other side with extended night, leading to disastrous weather effects. The extended influence of the moon would exacerbate incredible tides on the side of the earth facing the moon for a full day. Secondly, as passengers on the earth we are actually moving at an orbital velocity around the earths center, at our latitude and that of Israel, of about 900 miles an hour (witness our awareness of time zones approximately that width). The deceleration from 900 to zero would kill us all. By this logic, causing the sun and moon to stand still is literally impossible.

There are, however, several solutions to reconcile the Bible with geophysics.

One, quite simply, is that God is God. No limits on what natural laws he can suspend if he wants to. The continuing problem with this solution is that such a dramatic event would surely have been given a prominent mention in the histories of other nations, such as Eqypt, Mesopotamia and China who should have independently observed the effect.

Two, the effect was purely local in nature, one of causing the Israelites to have an altered perception of time, or causing them to essentially extend their motions in time, while the actual sun, moon and the rest of world remained apparently normal to everyone else. Or perhaps everything BUT the Israelites and their foes were arrested in time. This is the solution I favor, since our perceptions of time can vary so dramatically. The one minute before the worship service on Sunday appears to go like lightning, especially if the microphones are malfunctioning, while holding ones breath for one minute seems an eternity. As you know, a moment of silent prayer rarely lasts more than a few seconds before the silence seems interminable, and never a full minute. Without an actual clock to adjust ones perception by an external standard, time can indeed seem to stand still. The literal truth is in the eye of the beholder. The Longest Day was coined by the concept that June 6, 1944 seemed to go on forever in the minds of the combatants, as it certainly must have seemed while they were storming the beaches and then remaining under fire for what must have seemed an eternity.

Third, the language of some phrases in the bible is intended to be purely metaphorical, a form of truth that is not literal truth. This gets one into all sorts of hot water in Biblical interpretation since metaphorical truth is frequently a matter of opinion.

Last, the phrase is not a metaphor but a figure of speech, frequently used in antiquity and today, as also illustrated in The Longest Day. There was special significance in ancient cultures in being able to defeat one enemy in a single day, mentioned a number of times in Assyrian and other accounts. The Battle of San Jacinto also gains in stature in this same way, quick defeat by superior strategy resulting in the liberation of Texas from Mexico. The difficulty here is that it applies to the Bible ordinary standards for literature, rather than the reverence it deserves as the inspired word of God.

That God extended time in answer to Joshua I have no doubt. How he did it is a mystery, but then, after all, he IS God.

Best wishes,

Bill Gallaher