The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (best fiction books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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"And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had hidden themselves, and laid great stones on the mouth of the cave, unto this very day."
All these events—the pursuit for twenty-seven miles and more, the taking of Makkedah and the hanging of the kings—took place between noon and the going down of the sun, an interval whose normal length, for that latitude and at that time of the year, was about seven hours.
This is an abnormal feat. It is true that a single trained pedestrian might traverse the twenty-seven and odd miles, and still have time to take part in an assault on a town and to watch an execution. But it is an altogether different thing when we come to a large army. It is well known that the speed with which a body of men can move diminishes with the number. A company can march faster than a regiment; a regiment than a brigade; a brigade than an army corps. But for a large force thirty miles in the entire day is heavy work. "Thus Sir Archibald Hunter's division, in its march through Bechuanaland to the relief of Mafeking, starting at four in the morning, went on till seven or eight at night, covering as many as thirty miles a day at times." Joshua's achievement was a march fully as long as any of General Hunter's, but it was accomplished in less than seven hours instead of from fifteen to sixteen, and it followed straight on from a march seventeen hours in length which had ended in a battle. In all, between one sunset and the next he had marched between fifty and sixty miles besides fighting a battle and taking a town.
If we turn to the records of other battles fought in this neighbourhood, we find that they agree as closely as we could expect, not with Joshua's achievement, but with General Hunter's. In the case of the great victory secured by Jonathan, the gallant son of Saul, the Israelites smote the Philistines from Michmash to Ajalon;—not quite twenty miles. In the defeat of Cestius Gallus, the Jews followed him from Beth-horon to Antipatris, a little over twenty miles, the pursuit beginning at daybreak, and being evidently continued nearly till sundown. The pursuit of the Syrians under Nicanor by Judas Maccabæus seems also to have covered about the same distance, for Nicanor was killed at the first onslaught and his troops took to flight.
It is not at all unusual to read in comments on the Book of Joshua that the "miracle" is simply the result of the dulness of the prose chronicler in accepting as literal fact an expression that originated in the poetic exuberance of an old bard. The latter, so it is urged, simply meaning to add a figure of dignity and importance to his song commemorating a great national victory, had written:—
Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies,"
but with no more expectation that the stay of the moon would be accepted literally, than the singers, who welcomed David after the slaying of Goliath, imagined that any one would seriously suppose that Saul had actually with his own hand killed two thousand Philistines, and David twenty thousand. But, say they, the later prose chronicler, quoting from the ballad, and accepting a piece of poetic hyperbole as actual fact, reproduced the statement in his own words, and added, "the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."
Not so. The poem and the prose chronicle make one coherent whole. Working from the poem alone, treating the expressions in the first two lines merely as astronomical indications of time and place, and without the slightest reference to any miraculous interpretation, they lead to the inevitable conclusion that the time was noonday. This result certainly does not lie on the surface of the poem, and it was wholly beyond the power of the prose chronicler to have computed it, yet it is just in the supposed stupid gloss of the prose chronicler, and nowhere else, that we find this fact definitely stated: whilst the "miracle" recorded both by poem and prose narrative completely accords with the extraordinary distance traversed between noon and sunset.
Any man, however ignorant of science, if he be but careful and conscientious, can truthfully record an observation without any difficulty. But to successfully invent even the simplest astronomical observation requires very full knowledge, and is difficult even then. Every astronomer knows that there is hardly a single novelist, no matter how learned or painstaking, who can at this present day introduce a simple astronomical relation into his story, without falling into egregious error.
We are therefore quite sure that Joshua did use the words attributed to him; that the "moon" and "the valley of Ajalon" were not merely inserted in order to complete the parallelism by a bard putting a legend into poetic form. Nor was the prose narrative the result of an editor combining two or three narratives all written much after the date. The original records must have been made at the time.
All astronomers know well how absolutely essential it is to commit an observation to writing on the spot. Illustrations of this necessity could be made to any extent. One may suffice. In vol. ii. of the Life of Sir Richard Burton, by his wife, p. 244, Lady Burton says:—
"On the 6th December, 1882 . . . we were walking on the Karso (Opçona) alone; the sky was clear, and all of a sudden my niece said to me, 'Oh, look up, there is a star walking into the moon!' 'Glorious!' I answered. 'We are looking at the Transit of Venus, which crowds of scientists have gone to the end of the world to see.'"
The Transit of Venus did take place on December 6, 1882; and though Venus could have been seen without telescopic aid as a black spot on the sun's disc, nothing can be more unlike Venus in transit than "a star walking into the moon." The moon was not visible on that evening, and Venus was only visible when on the sun's disc, and appeared then, not as a star, but as a black dot.
No doubt Lady Burton's niece did make the exclamation attributed to her, but it must have been, not on December 6, 1882, but on some other occasion. Lady Burton may indeed have told her niece that this was the Transit of Venus, but that was simply because she did not know what a transit was, nor that it occurred in the daytime, not at night. Lady Burton's narrative was therefore not written at the time. So if the facts of the tenth chapter of Joshua, as we have it, had not been written at the time of the battle, some gross astronomical discordance would inevitably have crept in.
Let us suppose that the sun and moon did actually stand still in the sky for so long a time that between noon and sunset was equal to the full length of an ordinary day. What effect would have resulted that the Israelites could have perceived? This, and this only, that they would have marched twice as far between noon and sunset as they could have done in any ordinary afternoon. And this as we have seen, is exactly what they are recorded to have done.
The only measure of time, available to the Israelites, independent of the apparent motion of the sun, was the number of miles marched. Indeed, with the Babylonians, the same word (kasbu) was used to indicate three distinct, but related measures. It was a measure of time—the double hour; of celestial arc—the twelfth part of a great circle, thirty degrees, that is to say the space traversed by the sun in two hours; and it was a measure of distance on the surface of the earth—six or seven miles, or a two hours' march.
If, for the sake of illustration, we may suppose that the sun were to stand still for us, we should recognize it neither by sundial nor by shadow, but we should see that whereas our clocks had indicated that the sun had risen (we will say) at six in the morning, and had southed at twelve of noon; it had not set until twelve of the night. The register of work done, shown by all our clocks and watches, would be double for the afternoon what it had been for the morning. And if all our clocks and watches did thus register upon some occasion twice the interval between noon and sunset that they had registered between sunrise and noon, we should be justified in recording, as the writer of the book of Joshua has recorded, "The sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."
The real difficulty to the understanding of this narrative has lain in the failure of commentators to put themselves back into the conditions of the Israelites. The Israelites had no time-measurers, could have had no time-measurers. A sundial, if any such were in existence, would only indicate the position of the sun, and therefore could give no evidence in the matter. Beside, a sundial is not a portable instrument, and Joshua and his men had something more pressing to do than to loiter round it. Clepsydræ or clocks are of later date, and no more than a sundial are they portable. Many comments, one might almost say most comments on the narrative, read as if the writers supposed that Joshua and his men carried stop-watches, and that their chief interest in the whole campaign was to see how fast the sun was moving. Since they had no such methods of measuring time, since it is not possible to suppose that over and above any material miracle that was wrought, the mental miracle was added of acquainting the Israelites for this occasion only with the Copernican system of astronomy, all that the words of the narrative can possibly mean is, that—
"the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day,"
according to the only means which the Israelites had for testing the matter. In short, it simply states in other words, what, it is clear from other parts of the narrative, was actually the case, that the length of the march made between noon and sunset was equal to an ordinary march taking the whole of a day.
If we suppose—as has been generally done, and as it is quite legitimate to do, for all things are possible to God—that the miracle consisted in the slackening of the rotation of the earth, what effect would have been perceived by the Hebrews? This, and only this, that they would have accomplished a full day's march in the course of the afternoon. And what would have been the effects produced on all the neighbouring nations? Simply that they had managed to do more work than usual in the course of that afternoon, and that they felt more than usually tired and hungry in the evening.
But would it have helped the Israelites for the day to have been thus actually lengthened? Scarcely so, unless they had been, at the same time, endowed with supernatural, or at all events, with unusual strength. The Israelites had already been 31 hours without sleep or rest, they had made a remarkable march, their enemies had several miles start of them; would not a longer day have simply given the latter a better
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