Total Eclipse of a Farce

While researching the claim that a meteor destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, I ran across a reference to another celestial event “proving” the Bible: a solar eclipse in the time of Joshua.

According to a paper by Colin Humphreys and Graeme Waddington published in the October 2017 issue of Astronomy & Geophysics, the biblical event where Joshua orders the sun and moon to stand still (Josh 10:12-14) refers to a solar eclipse and this can be dated to 30 October 1207 BCE. Previous researchers had looked for a total solar eclipse over Canaan during the expected time frame and didn’t find one.

Humphreys and Waddington thought, “What about an annular eclipse?” In an annular eclipse the moon is a bit further from Earth and therefore its disk is smaller and does not completely block the sun. There would still be a narrow ring of sunlight along the edges of the moon’s disk. When Humphreys and Waddington wrote a program to calculate annular eclipses over Canaan in the expected time frame, they found one in 1207 BCE.

Another team of Israeli researchers (physicist Ḥezi Yitzḥak, biblical scholar Daniel Vainstub, and archeologist Uzi Avner) independently reached the same conclusion and published their findings in January 2017 in the Hebrew journal Beit Mikra. Coincidences like this happen frequently in science. Because I don’t have access to that paper, I’ll restrict my discussion to the arguments presented by Humphreys and Waddington.

An annular eclipse, photographed on 10 May 2013. (Image: Fabrizio Melandri)

Not Enough Hours in the Day

As many critics have commented, Joshua 10 does not seem to be describing an eclipse at all. The chapter recounts a battle that Joshua’s army fought after an all-night march from Gilgal. The way the story is traditionally read, Joshua just didn’t have enough hours in the day to completely defeat all his enemies. So Joshua spoke to YHWH and the sun and moon stopped in the sky, giving him enough time to win the battle.

Arguing that the celestial event being described is an eclipse, Humphreys and Waddington point to the word usually translated as “stand still” saying it really meant “stop shining” not “stop moving”.

But a solar eclipse in the late afternoon would have given Joshua less daylight hours for his battle, not more. Also, when you read the text, Joshua calls for the sun to stand still at Gibeon and the moon to stop in the valley of Aijalon. Gibeon and Aijalon are ten miles apart on an east-west axis. In other words, the sun and moon appear to be in opposite sides of the sky, which makes an eclipse impossible since the moon needs to be in front of the sun for that to happen.

Poetic License

The story of the sun and moon standing still come from vv. 12-14. These verses seem very intrusive to the story presented in the rest of Josh 10:1-15. You could remove them and nothing would be missed.

To recap the story, in vv. 10-11 the combined army of five Canaanite kings (referred to as the Amorites) is fleeing, under constant attack from Joshua’s forces. YHWH gives the Israelites a bit of help by lobbing hailstones at the Amorites. The Bible reports more of the Amorites were killed by the hailstones than by the Israelites. It seems like the battle is over. If we skip over to v. 15, Joshua’s victorious army returns to Gilgal. It seems like a natural conclusion to the battle story, no eclipse needed.

In contrast, vv. 12-14 is a self-contained unit. After a brief introduction in v. 12a, vv. 12b-13a recite a bit of poetry taken from “the Book of Jashar” (or “the Book of the Upright” if “Jashar” is not a proper name). The rest is an elaboration on the poetic passage. Since these poetic verses come from a different source, they don’t necessarily refer to this specific battle. 

We don’t know if these verses are older or younger than the source for the rest of Joshua 10. In the main battle story, YHWH had already provided divine aid in the form of accurately targeted hailstones. The reference to an extraordinary celestial event such as stopping the motion of the sun and moon seems like a later legendary enhancement.

The Merneptah stele is a 10-foot (3-meter) slab of black granite recounting the pharoah's victories over Libya and its allies. The reference to "Israel" appears on line 27 (highlighted).

It’s About Time

The solar eclipse hypothesis is already looking shaky. But the title of the article by Humphreys and Waddington is “Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharoahs” and therein lies another problem.

Historians agree that the first mention of Israel outside the Bible is in the victory stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (reigned 1213-1203 BCE). Dated to Merneptah’s fifth year, it recounts his recent victory over neighboring peoples, one of them being “Israel”. Arguing that the confrontation with Israel would have happened a year or two before the victory stele was created, Humphreys and Waddington state that the 1207 eclipse would allow us to place the start of Merneptah’s reign as 1210 ± 1 year.

I had to read this part of their paper several times because I thought I missed something. But I didn’t. For some reason known only to them, Humphreys and Waddington equate the eclipse of 1207 BCE to Merneptah’s victory over Israel. But according to the Bible, Joshua was doing battle with five Amorite kings, not Egyptians. And Joshua won the battle, to boot! I’m really at a loss to understand how they put 2 and 2 together and got 5.

Even if you accept that the event cited in Josh 10:12-14 refers to a solar eclipse – and that’s a big “if” -- there is absolutely no connection between that and a victory of the Egyptians over Israel referenced in the Merneptah stele.

Where does this leave us?

There’s little doubt that an annular solar eclipse transpired on 30 October 1207 BCE in Canaan. You can check it out for yourself using the NASA eclipse calculator. The claim that Josh 10:12-14 refers to an eclipse depends on a debatable understanding of the Hebrew, and the reference to the sun and the moon in opposite parts of the sky seems to rule it out. The verses about the sun and moon are also not original to the rest of the story in Josh 10:1-11, 15.

Other than an interesting astronomical factoid, the eclipse of 30 October 1207 BCE doesn’t tell us anything about Egyptian chronology or the veracity of the Bible.