Did the sun stand still? Joshua 10 and the motion of the earth

The passages

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

Joshua 10:12

So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

Joshua 10:13

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

Ecclesiastes 1:5

The problem

The passage describes the sun and moon as halted in the sky, which presupposes that the sun moves around a fixed earth. Psalm 93:1 says the world "cannot be moved". These verses were quoted in the early seventeenth century against the idea that the earth moves. If the earth rotates, the sun does not travel, and a "stopped" sun means a stopped earth, with consequences that no reading of the text mentions.

What believers and scholars say

Ordinary language. We speak of sunrise and sunset today without implying a belief in a moving sun. Joshua's speech uses the language of observation, and the text records what the people saw. This is the most common answer.

Galileo's principle. In his 1615 letter, Galileo (a believing Catholic) argued that the Bible teaches how to go to heaven and not how the heavens go. Most Christians since have accepted a version of that, and the church formally cleared Galileo's name in 1992.

A poetic fragment. The passage quotes "the book of Jasher", a lost collection of poetry. Some scholars read verses 12–13 as a poetic excerpt, with prose commentary around it. The meaning of the miracle itself is debated: some propose a prolonged darkness or an omen instead of an astronomical stop. Hess surveys the options.

A miracle. Others take the event as a real miracle, in which God adjusted whatever needed adjusting, and see no need for an explanation.

Where this leaves it

The text assumes an ancient view of the sky, as do other biblical passages, and the question is whether that matters. For most Christians it does not, because they read the passage as the language of experience. A reader who wants every sentence to be scientific will see a conflict. A reader who sees the book as a record of how people understood God's action will see a miracle story told in the vocabulary of its time.