Joshua’s Celestial Miracle was not an Eclipse: the Long and the Short

Abstract

Humphreys & Waddington have recently suggested that the Biblical account involving Joshua’s control of the sun and moon (Joshua 10. 1-15) was inspired by an annular eclipse. Going by the text as given, it is shown that the explanation as an eclipse, whether annular or total, is unacceptable on calendrical, philological and physical grounds alike. The story’s possible historicity cannot be properly evaluated until it is placed in two cross-cultural and sometimes overlapping contexts: ritual utterances before battle designed to divine the outcome or provoke divine intervention in it and the mythology of solar arrests, reversals and radical alterations of the length of day. ‘Solar magic’ emerges as a common archaic practice in real life as well as legend. Some literary parallels are cited which have never before been linked with Joshua. All things considered, the tale may have originated as an embellished memory of some extraordinary natural event other than an eclipse, coinciding with a historical battle. A tempting possibility is the aerial passage of a fragmenting bolide, producing a meteorite shower and nocturnal illumination.