Good question...

...What about "The Fivefold Challenge"?

I have always enjoyed reading Robby Berry's material, not only for its wit, but also for the generally solid logic behind much of it. The 'Fivefold Challenge' [LINK BROKEN/NO LONGER THERE] of his is no exception to this. His argument has a definite plausibility about it, and is based upon the obvious observation that "real" historical events have historical implications. Miracles (or even 'big events') impress themselves upon people, and this impression produces historical responses by those people--in some form or another. Worldwide, visible, extraordinary miracles, he argues, will be noticed by many people, and should generate "dozens of documents concerning them."

The biblical miracles he advances as being of this magnitude are:

1. The parting of the sea by Moses
2. The stopping of the sun by Joshua
3. The reversal of the sun's course by Isaiah
4. The feeding of thousands of people by Jesus using only five loaves of bread and two fishes
5. The post-crucifixion resurrection of the saints, and their subsequent appearance to many.

I heartily concur with his basic logical assumption that miracles (or any dramatic events) will produce historical effects; but I think his belief that these historical effects will invariably include documentary effects (fitting his criteria) to be historiographically naive (as most of us 'modern' Western types are about ancient, and even different, cultures... the modern specialists in this field have coined the phrase "graphocentrism" for this!) and even contradicted by 'control' cases (i.e., massively impressive events of non-miraculous character).

Let's look a little closer at Robby's position here, to make sure we understand the argument correctly.

As far as I can tell, his position asserts the following propositions:

1. If literacy is not very widespread at the time, or in the geography of the miracle, it fails.
2. If the circumstances of the miracle retard any 'normal' literacy impetus (e.g., polemical contexts, observers perish), it fails.
3. If the culture of the observers is not supportive of 'writing things down', it fails.
4. If the events are difficult to detect or arise in conscious reflection as extraordinary, it fails.
5. If the five miracles somehow do NOT fall into the category of 'massively observed' events, it fails.
6. If we have no reason to believe that the 'preservation of ancient documents' problem is somehow abated in these cases(!), it fails.
7. If we have no reason to believe that a population base of only 'thousands' of observers would generate such documentation, it fails. [Doesn't apply to worldwide events, of course, unless the actual number of people "watching" is small].

Now, as far as I can tell (for the first three miracles: Moses, Joshua, Isaiah), ALMOST ALL SEVEN of these conditions (not just ONE) are true--and the arguments fall on ALMOST ALL counts. As we look through the evidence we will see that:

1. Literacy is extremely restricted at the time, especially in the cases of Moses and Joshua.
2. Circumstances of the miracle WOULD have retarded normal literary impetus; in the cases of Moses and Joshua especially.
3. There is nothing in the ancient world that even remotely approximates a 'culture to document'!
4. I have no reason to believe that any of these three events would have been obvious and detectable to large audiences of non-Jews (except perhaps the people on the far side of the shore of the Red Sea, but only at the point of parting).
5. The biblical data does NOT support the view that these three miracles were anything other than local phenomena.
6. We KNOW that the 'problem of preservation' is HUGE, for ALL of ancient literature, and no less so for biblical events.
7. Our ratio of observers-to-reports for ancient events (seen in 'control data') is WAY too poor to support a belief that mere 'thousands' of observers would generate references (much less guarantee its preservation). Our control data will show ratios of 300,000,000-to-10 or less (Comet of 44BC); 60,000-to-1 ("Delian" earthquake); and 150,000-to-1 (eruption of Mt. Vesuvius).

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So, before I look at each of the 5 miracles, let's explore the literacy angle.

First, let's look at this from the historiography angle--how historical documents (especially of the kind Robby wants) are produced.

Let's say Joe is a rural peasant or even an urban merchant in the ANE. And let's imagine that one day Joe sees a man magically turn a dozen monkeys into a dozen men. Since even he would presumably know that monkeys cannot become men, he would undoubtedly be amazed, shocked, and forever-changed. What historical effects could we be sure would be produced?

If Joe is a rural peasant, he may be incredibly impressed, but we aren't gonna know about it--he would probably fail on all of the above counts.

If Joe is an urban merchant, however, the issue is slightly different. In this case, Joe probably knows how to write/draw enough for basic economic transactions (often pictographic), such as bookkeeping entries, but this would generally be inadequate for narrative descriptions of Berry-quality [for examples and discussions of such bookkeeping methods, see ABWT]. Likewise, Joe would have access to writing materials of sorts, generally clay materials and later on, wax writing tablets, neither of which is known for its survivability through time. But this can be overstated, as exemplified by the Greek papyri of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: of the 1,500 of these that have been printed, a large number of these mention explicitly that one or more of the principals were illiterate [Youtie, cited by Harris in HI:AL:10].

So, from a process perspective, the cases of the rural peasant and urban merchant would argue against Robby's position of 'invariable production of documents'.

Now let's consider two cases in which some of these conditions are met: the miracle-class (e.g., magicians, religious figures, and scribes in the employ of these) and the ruling-class (e.g., kings, wealthy, military leadership, literary elite, and scribes in the employ of these).

The magician/miracle class probably has access to adequate writing materials, probably has a repository that will increase the likelihood of preservation, has a scribal trade group associated with it for literary activity, and has a sub-culture that would preserve such 'portentous' events. In Babylonia, for example, priest-groups often keep detailed records of auguries, so they could train their students in how to read animal entrails.

In the case of the miracle-class, we logically have three sub-groups: rivals, members of the same "party", and neutrals. In point of fact, there essentially were no 'neutrals' in these situations--EVERYBODY took sides, even the 'detached' philosophers of Greece.

What, practically speaking, is the likelihood that a rival organization will publish the successes--however spectacular--of its competitor? Slim to none. And, if a member of the 'rival' group is converted by seeing the miracle, our likelihood goes WAY UP, but the resulting document now looks like it was written by a member of the same 'party' (cf. Paul's testimony of the appearance of Christ to him on the Damascus road).

And, even in the case of a success being published by a member of 'the party', we are still stuck with the preservation of the materials problem, the cultural support for general recording values, and the problem of dramatic genres (i.e., ambiguous) being preferred over "tech docs" for "dramatic" events. And, what's worse, since this event will likely show up in their 'religious literature', it won't count as 'independent' for Robby! They cannot be heard at all!

The final class to consider is the ruling-class: rulers, economic powers, and literary elite. They clearly have access to suitable materials and repositories. Some of them have leisure time/resources to actually 'write this up'. Unfortunately, they have the same 'political' problems as the magician-class: they are either rivals or members of the same party. And, since they often drafted the priest-groups into their service anyway, the two generally approximate each other.

Ruling elites also seem to have an 'arrogance' problem. They are known to "edit down" accounts of their rival predecessors (e.g., they 'scratch out' their accomplishments on memorials), 'edit up' accounts of their genetic predecessors (e.g., make their ancestors into deities), and omit material that is not flattering to them (e.g., boast about winning a battle when they had lost the war).

For example, Ramesses II (likely pharaoh of the Exodus) was one of the kings who vigorously pursued this [OT:PTLTR:224]:

What this amounts to is the problem of ancient literacy. For Robby's argument to work, there must be a large number of actual observers of special phenomena that also have adequate documentary writing skills. His argument loses its force if EVERYONE can see the miracle, but NO ONE can write a record of it (to Robby's criteria)! Thus, to the extent that literacy is limited, to that same extent his argument is weakened. (And, once we clear the general literacy hurdles, we have the preservation problem, of course.)

So, what are the general literary estimates for the cultures of the periods of these miracles?

Well, we can neatly divide the 5 miracles into pre-Classical and Classical times (even though "Classical" is seen as a mythical term nowadays). The first three miracles of Moses, Joshua, Isaiah will fall in the 1400-700 BC range and therefore be considered 'pre-Classical' (pre-Greek and pre-Roman, so to speak). The second two--miracles associated with the time of Jesus--would fall into "Classical" times (i.e., Greco-Roman).

So, what is going on in the world--in terms of literacy--around the times of the 1st two miracles (1400-1200BC)?

Let's consider first the Old World cultures.

Our oldest written documents come from Mesopotamia, long before the period in question, but literacy (of the type Robby needs) is extremely low. Akkadian was the writing form from earliest history there, and access to these skills was limited. So, BTM:5,6:

Although we have found several libraries from ancient Mesopotamia, scholars still believe that "Literacy was not widespread in Mesopotamia" [HI:RTP:43]. The vast majority of literature we have recovered falls into two categories: (1) omens, collections of observations made over hundreds of years of stars, the appearance of the liver of sacrificial animals, movements of birds, lexical lists, incantations, prayers, epic literature; and (2) economic texts. Walker pointed out the predominance of the latter [HI:RPT:49]:

The "next" most literate culture at this time was Egypt, but the literacy rate is again abysmal. Davies describes this reality [HI:RTP:99]:

In southern Asia, this period coincides with the emergence of the Vedic traditions (e.g., the Rigveda, hymns), although they were not actually written down until much later [HI:AC, 120ff; HI:OWCROCS:,70-71]. The only candidate for a reasonably literate society was Harappan culture (2400-2000BC), which had passed from history several centuries earlier. At the 1400-1200 mark, we are just beginning to see the birth of organizational structures similar to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Not much writing there--much less mass literacy.

Southeast Asia experiences the Iron Age a millennium later than the ANE [HI:OWCROCS:,80-88], and literacy only begins to surface around the time of Christ. The major impetus to literacy actually comes around 500ad, with the influence of Buddhism.

We literally have almost no literary remains from these latter two areas--much less any indication of even pockets of significant literacy [HI:ACAEC:15,20].

The development of writing in China is only beginning at this period. The Shang period (1600-1100 BC) is generally considered the period in which writing was developed in China, with our first inscriptional evidence on oracle bones deriving from 1300BC and later [HI:OWCROCS:,103f; HI:AC:151-154,341]. Our first astronomically-oriented artifact is an oracle bone in 1281 BC that mentions stars by name, and a later oracle bone that seems to refer to the solar eclipse of 1281 BC [NHAAC:133]. Although the earliest known sighting of a comet is from China in c.2296 BC (they were also the first to note Haley's comet in 240BC), they do not begin recording astronomical data until around 720BC [TOS:12,18]. Some of the popular notions of ancient Chinese astronomy have been discarded for decades by scholars, as this quote from North indicates [NHAAC:134]:

Let's take a brief look at New World civilizations.

New World civilizations cannot play here, simply because their writing systems are just too recent. The oldest Mesoamerican writing systems are the Zapotec (600 BC), the Maya (200-1500 AD), and the Mixtecs and Aztecs (1000-1521 AD). The Inkas never developed a symbolic language medium [NWC:101ff].

To sum up this overview of historical literacy, let me quote from Harris' important work on Roman and Greek literacy--by all accounts more literate societies than the ANE [HI:AL:7-8, 13]:

The main problem with Robby's position should be clear by now: the probability of anyone producing the kind of documentation he is looking for (for ANY kind of event) is extremely small, even before we get to the issue of the preservation of that material (from both environmental and "political" dangers). And the probability that such documentation will appear in large quantities ("dozens") is accordingly much, much lower. The ancient world simply did not work the way the way the modern/western world does. When you put these three problems together--individual production, scale of production, and historical preservation--the odds become infinitesimally small.

There is one other factor that I should mention here. Even though people might be illiterate themselves, they DID have recourse to scribes to write things down FOR THEM. We have a couple of documents in which an obviously illiterate person hired a scribe to write something down for them. This is exceptionally rare, and obviously depended on the disposable income of the individual. The cases we do have, deal with grievances of administration and not personal matters. Historically, this does not seem to be a significant occurrence.

We must be careful of avoiding extremes here, though, as in pointed out in HI:LAPW:10: "we should beware of veering erratically between the view of a literate elite narrowly defined by the limited spread of writing skills and any unrealistic notion of a brad, popular literacy in the ancient world."

Strictly speaking, we could probably stop the argument right here, since the numbers are so scaled down that the likelihood of an observer even being ABLE to write something down has shrunk by two to four orders of magnitude (based on a comparison of modern literacy to that of the ancient world). But let's continue...
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Secondly, let's try to find a piece of "control" data--an event which was earth-shaking (maybe not miraculous, but perhaps viewed as such) and which was viewed by very large populations of higher-than average literacy rates.

Here we are specifically focusing on the FOUNDATION of Robby's argument--NOT the softer 'challenge' piece. We want to see if, in fact, spectacular events DID cause the production of "dozens of documents concerning them". If we end up not having any confidence in this foundational principle, then the Challenge becomes interesting, but not in any sense compelling. (Presumably, since we KNOW of these control events, then they have at least ONE piece of documentary data and would accordingly satisfy his Challenge criteria, had they been named in the bible. But we are 'forced' to consider these kinds of cases, since we obviously cannot discuss events for which we have no record whatsoever! Our point is NOT to show that these events do not meet Challenge, but that they undermine the foundation upon which the challenge is primarily based. Remember, if the foundation principle does not hold and therefore current evidence is NOT 'inexorably expected', then the fact that I cannot produce extra-biblical evidence for some miracle is perhaps disappointing, but not in the least damaging to the biblical case. The argument from silence that Robby believes is valid--due to the invariability of the production of documentary evidence--would remain as powerless and impotent as it normally is.)

Where are we going to find such events? I would think we could put certain astronomical data and major geo-environmental catastrophes in this category. This might include eclipses, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, comets, and other such phenomena, which was often seen as divinely produced. For example, natural disasters were often seen as the displeasure of the gods. (Astronomical events, on the other hand, were often understood as movements of the deities themselves.)

Before I get to two literally 'earthshaking' events, let's illustrate the principles in Robby's "Foundation Principle" (that spectacular events invariably produce large numbers of documents) by reference to a known worldwide event--the comet of 44BC. This comet was visible for 3-6 days worldwide, and was of a bright reddish color (Donald K. Yeomans, Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore, Wiley Science:1991, pp. 13,367).. According to Robby,

1. At least 24 ("dozens") of documents produced.
2. The documents are 'concerning them' (presumably more than a casual mention?)
3. These documents would have surfaced in "active cultures"
4. These documents would bear local interpretations in keeping with their worldviews.

So, what evidences of this comet are there?

1. We have a sighting record (unexplained) in Korea.
2. We have a sighting record (unexplained) in China.
3. We have several oblique references to 'a comet' in Latin writers, probably referring to this one.
4. The most detailed and lengthy description we have comes from the rather politically motivated Octavian (recorded in Pliny's N.H. 2.94):
"On the very days of my Games [held in honor of the recently assassinated Julius Caesar], a comet was seen in the northern part of the sky for seven days. It appeared about the eleventh hour of the day and was clearly visible in all countries. The young people believed that by that star it was signified that the soul of Caesar [Julius had been assassinated the year before] was received among the immortal gods, on which account the sign of a star was attached to the head of the status of Caesar which I shortly consecrated in the Forum." [Subsequently, Octavian (who was the adopted son of Julius Caesar), minted a coin with a comet on one side entitled "divine Julius" and his own head on the other, entitled "Caesar Augustus". Other coins had "Divine Julius" on one side and "Caesar, son of a god" next to his own picture. He milked this for all it worth.]

What's missing from this collection of evidence?

1. We are considerably short of 'dozens' of documents.
2. We have nothing even remotely resembling a 'document concerning X'
3. We only have two cultures represented, out of literally hundreds of 'active' civilizations. (Korea was under Chinese domination at this time; it was known as the Han commandery of Lelang [HI:AC:342f]).
4. The only culture that came close to giving an 'interpretation' was Rome (by the 'young people').

What is missing is the magnitude and genre-type of the response. The 'large numbers' argument simply didn't work here; the historical notation of this worldwide is miniscule compared to what should be expected under Robby's argument, especially for the culture in the city of Rome at the time. This does not bode well for Robby's thesis...(pardon the omen metaphor, but the research on this stuff is coming out my ears!)
But notice that I have made the same mistake/assumption that invalidates much of Robby's argument: that because we do not have CURRENT evidence of PAST documents, that the event did not GENERATE a large amount of documents. This comet may have generated tens of thousands of records, and the fact that we have less than ten today is totally irrelevant. The problem of the preservation of ancient materials is shared by all alike. That no documentary evidence exists today has literally NO IMPLICATIONS for the existence of such documentary evidence in the past. If we DO have current evidence, then the implication is clear--there was at least ONE past document. But if we have NO current documents, we have no conclusion that has any force whatsoever. We can use sociological and economic models to examine probabilities of literate response (as I did above), but these are strictly models that we use because of lack of evidence. Granted, this is the best we can do, but it must be noted here that it takes a lot of the force out of Robby's overall argument, and of much of my argument here in the 'control data' section.

Now, let me select two highly noticeable events that occurred in the early times of Greece and Rome--one an earthquake and one a volcanic eruption. Although these are much later that the events of Moses, Joshua, and Isaiah, and involve civilizations that are generally considered substantially more 'literate' than the nations of the OT world, they will at least provide a 'greater than which' it might be unreasonable to exceed.

The first event, was an earthquake. The earthquake occurred in 464 BC, and was pivotal in the breakup on the Delian League in Greece. This league was composed of some 200 city-states, united again the Persian invasion threat of Darius. The League was not as unified as the Athenians would have hoped, and a major earthquake was instrumental in inciting the Messenians to revolt against Sparta, and in stopping the "Lacedaemonians" from intervening in assistance for the Thracians. This earthquake--adequate to throw governments into disarray to the point of being vulnerable to revolt and adequate to prevent large-scale military intervention/response--would have been experienced by between 20,000 and 100,000 people. This would have encompassed numerous city-states and a wide variety of people.

So, how many observers wrote down anything (that is preserved and meets Robby's criteria) about this event? None. How do we even know about this event? From a single mention in Thucydides (c.460-400 B.C.). He was born four years after the event, and probably interviewed people in the area for the information that later showed up in his History of the Peloponnesian War. In I.100 he simply makes a general comment about the military intervention, that it was "prevented by the occurrence of an earthquake"--nothing more, nothing less.

A second event, one that is much more well-known to moderns, is the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. This volcano (still active) sits off the Bay of Naples in Italy. Prior to its eruption in 79, the surrounding area was populated by upper-class Romans. These were the wealthy, literate, and decadent. When the volcano erupted, it buried the famous towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, most of the expensive villas on the side of the volcano, and destroyed the lesser known towns of Stabiae, Oplontis, Taurania, Tora, Sora, Cossa, and Leucopetra. Estimates of fatalities vary from 16,000 to 60,000. [Pompeii alone had an amphitheater that seated 20,000 folks.] No one from Pompeii survived, but a considerable number from Herculaneum had abandoned the city long before it was buried in the 65 feet high mud-flood. All in all, some 100,000 to 250,000 people would have been able to see, hear, and experience the smoke, explosions, flooding, and general chaos of the event.

Nearby Naples, about 20 miles away, was shaken considerably, but suffered no major damage. It had a population of at least 20-40k at the time. Naples today has a population of 1.2 million people, but back then it was no doubt considerably smaller. It is still rocked by volcanic activity from Vesuvius in modern times. Naples had long been a very literary area, during both Greek and Roman history. (The tomb of Virgil is there supposedly.)

There are few areas in antiquity that would have been more likely to leave multiple records of this eruption. Indeed, under Robby's assumption, there should have been many accounts by contemporaries.

So how many do we have? One. We have some correspondence from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus some 30-40 years later, describing the events as an eyewitness (Letters, VI.16). Naples was at that time the home of Pliny the Elder (PE) who had assumed the education of his nephew Pliny the Younger (PY). PY was 18 at the time, and was working on a school assignment for PE when the volcano went off. PE went to attempt rescue of some friends and perished in the process, but PY and the wife of PE fled and survived. PY did NOT write a record of the event at the time, and only recounts the incredible event 30 years later to his friend Tacitus for his upcoming Histories. He doesn't even refer to a previous written entry of his in the letter, but gives all indications that it is from memory. Had Pliny not been prompted by the possibility of publication in Tacitus, we would probably not have this information at all. In other words, the writing down of this information had nothing to do with being impressed by the event itself! There are many subsequent references to this event in government relief and clean-up operations, of course, but these are all third-hand documents written in Rome by non-observers. We are indeed fortunate that PY had just moved there, and that unrelated factors (i.e., Tacitus' plans for publication) surfaced, or there would have been NO literary accounts of this event at all.

These two well-witnessed, impressive, and important events in the history of two generally "literate" cultures, in two generally "literate" community areas of high population content--and much later than the period of our first three miracles (1400-700BC), have left barely a trace in the literary record.

My point should be clear by now: the foundational principle set up by Robby as the basis for the Challenge is simply ahistorical/unreasonable, given ancient cultures, and in light of the realities of our paucity of preserved materials, impractical as well. Furthermore, they SEEM to be contradicted by known historical experiences.

In fact, we might even go a step further and argue that true historical study works with the tiniest of traces of historical 'audit trails'. The example of the earthquake above, for example, makes good historical sense. Even though the literary evidence is meager and even questionable (and certainly incapable of verification), the picture it paints is historically plausible. It would make for a cohesive story that there was a debilitating earthquake. The revolt had not happened thus far, and something would have been needed to trigger the hopes. Likewise, the military aid/intervention had ALREADY been promised; that it did NOT occur would call for some kind of extraordinary event, like an earthquake.

The implications of the above discussion are thus:

 
1. Robby's assumption that real events cause real ripples in history is entirely accurate, but his belief that those ripples will invariably be documentary evidence of the quantity and character of his criteria is a-historical and even contradicted by actual records of events in known history.
2. We will be 'lucky' if we have ANY literary evidence of even major events.
3. If we have even fuzzy, incomplete, later, and unreliable evidence, then this evidence will witness to SOMETHING having happened to 'generate' that evidence.
4. The recording of events is subject to a large number of variables, ranging from individual literacy to cultural support, from political 'tolerance' to access to materials.
5. The preservation of materials is extremely unlikely and renders all arguments from 'no evidence' suspect from the start.

With this in mind, let's dive into the miracles.
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Miracle One: The parting of the sea by Moses (Ex 14.21-31):

First of all, let's try to get a fix on the location of this event.

Standard discussions of this issue normally focus on an alleged dichotomy between the Red Sea and the "Sea of Reeds". The Hebrew phrase in the passage above does not indicate this, but other passages call this body of water yam suph or "sea of reeds". The LXX understood this to refer to the Red Sea, and translated it so. Recent archeological studies have made a case that the Red Sea/Gulf of Suez extended much farther north at times in Egypt's history, and that the two phrases 'sea of reeds' and 'Red Sea' are therefore describing a part of the Red Sea that would have extended north-westward to the Bitter Lakes region. The likely character of this section is described by Hoffmeier after discussing in detail the recent research [OT:IIE:209]:

The biblical description of this event has the following participants (and therefore, potential observers):

1. The Israelites
2. The part of the Egyptian army that went into the sea (and drowned)
3. Some portion of the Egyptian army that remained on the western bank/shore of this body of water.
4. (Although the biblical record doesn't mention it, there logically is the possibility of observers on the east side of the sea as well.)

1. The Israelites are of course quite likely to record this, since it was a very positive national experience for them. Their recordings, however, would likely show up in 'religious' literature (e.g., the bible) since it was understood as deliverance from the oppression of Egypt by their God. But, according to Robby's criteria, we cannot use their testimony, since they benefited from the experience(!).

 

 

[Some readers will notice the extreme arbitrariness of any criterion that asserts that no record of a beneficial event can be trusted. It is altogether unreasonable to eliminate from consideration any account of an event that is recorded because someone was happy, excited, moved, entertained by that event. This removes, of course, the vast majority of the world's historical writing, since most people enjoy the subject matter of which they write, or at least the very act of writing. Robby's position is not quite this extreme, since he would probably except extra-biblical documents from other Asiatics that perhaps escaped in the exodus confusion. But to avoid slipping into this position, what Robby really needs to do here is to come up with some additional criteria to help weed out embellishment or propaganda, from true celebration or fond reminiscence. In the case of this event, there are considerable factors that indicate historical 'genuineness': technical Egyptian terms, useless geographical detail, unexpected theme and elements, persistence of detail over time, the restriction of poetic/dramatic expressions to the poetry version in chapter 15, negative remarks about the Israelites (14.11). Robby just needs to adopt some of the tools of the biblical critic for this refinement.]

2. The part of the Egyptian army that drowned can be excluded from consideration, obviously.
3. The portion of the army that remained on the shore needs to be considered (and perhaps court officials including Pharaoh).

It is difficult to tell if anyone remained behind. Pharaoh had sent a squadron of 600 of his best chariots, and these are apparently the ones who perished in the sea. But presumably, there would have been officers and messenger personnel remaining on the shore to observe the battle and relay messages back to the court. But, at the same time, this contingent would have been relatively insignificant, numerically, but historically important. This group presumably reported back to Pharaoh the outcome, so that he was impressed with Israel's God, and somehow this account traveled to the land of Canaan, for the story is known by the Canaanites (Joshua 5.1) and by the inhabitants of Jericho ( Joshua 2.9-11). Even the Philistines were aware of the victory over Egypt although they focused on the plagues instead of the sea event (1 Sam 4.6ff). Communications among the nations were fairly good at that time, so this is not surprising. These statements by inhabitants of Jericho, Canaan, and the Philistine cities, about the Exodus events, would actually be extra-Israelite information (even though recorded by the Israelites), but since they do not show up in the extremely few literary remains we have of those places, I am sure they won't pass Robby's criteria.

The messages from the surviving troops on the shore back to Pharaoh might have involved a written component [most military leaders of the day were required to attend scribal school OT:PTLTR:140ff], but writing by military leaders is very scarce in Egypt. So Kitchen [OT:PTLTR:140]:

But we have to ask the fundamental question: what is the likelihood that the surviving military personnel would write up an independent account of this miracle (documenting the defeat of Pharaoh!) and that it would be preserved? And again, we run across the obvious political realities of 'very slim'. The Pharaohs were not known for their willingness to record their defeats(!), especially Ramses II. Ramses II is actually known to be quite selective in the details reported. Take for example the monument at Abu Simbel. This incredible piece of work commemorated Ramesses' heroics and victory at the battle of Qadesh. The monument is a considerably greater achievement than Ramesses' "victory" over the Hittites! The facts of the matter were that Ramesses' had stubbornly attacked the massive Hittite force, trying to recapture Qadesh and Amurru, but was grossly defeated by the Hittites. At the last minute, an act of bravery by Ramesses' turned the massive loss into a precarious stalemate, but not only did he NOT succeed in retaking Qadesh and Amurru, but the Hittite annexed Upi as well! The diplomatic overture by the Hittite leader was portrayed in the monument as a 'plea for peace'! This is "selectivity" at its best! [For the details of the battle, see OT:PTLTR:55-67; Atlas of Ancient Egypt:202].

Now, there is one possible exception here that we should at least consider. Although Pharaohs' did NOT record their 'bad sides', and although subsequent Pharaohs tended to erase all mentions of their predecessors (as did most rulers, in what is called damnatio memoriae, cf. HI:LPAW:8), we do have one case where a subsequent Pharaoh made a monument attacking the character and worth of his predecessor. The Atlas of Ancient Egypt:51 describes the reigns of Pharaoh Apries (589-570 BC) and Pharaoh Amasis II (570-526BC):

So, conceivably, the successor to Ramesses II could have been interested in doing this, and the Red Sea fiasco would be a great candidate for that.

But as it turns out, the successor to Ramesses II (1) did NOT record even the NORMAL failures of R2 ,such as the truth about the battle of Qadesh; (2) was NOT a usurper at all; (3) was definitely a supporter (and his son!) of R II, and (4) the events would have faded from memory of the general public, since they would have happened at least 35-45 years earlier. So, at least in this case, we have no reason to assume that the exception would apply here.

Accordingly, the general practice of rulers of the period, and of Pharaohs in particular, to avoid recording (and to suppress recording by those under their authority--the scribes and the military) embarrassing moments/events, certainly would explain why we don't think a record of the event was written down by the observers on the west side of the Red Sea. Indeed, Kitchen puts it succinctly [OT:PTLTR:71]:

The account of the miracle seems to indicate that the 'ditch' in the sea through which the Israelites passed would have been confined to a narrow strip of east-west turf. [Of course, we have no indication of how wide or how narrow this original connecting body of water was; it had only to be large enough to drown 600 chariots, small enough for the nation to cross within half a night, and long enough to bridge the gap between the Bitter Lake and the current Gulf of Suez.] The fact that the Israelites are said to have seen a 'wall of water' on their right and on their left seems to suggest that people perhaps even a half a mile down the coast may not have noticed anything strange. Frankly, it is a bit unclear as to how to understand the visual aspects of this event. How an "east wind" would have divided a uniform body of water by blowing all night is not obvious to me, and the event looks a little like a summary statement anyway (e.g., the order of the statements). To create a "walled" effect, the wind would have had to be a relatively narrow airstream, which would have pushed the water toward the western shore. Presumably (although we cannot be sure of this), the water at the western shore would have then flowed back toward the east, on the northern and southern sides of the airstream. If the wind were strong enough, this could have generated the visual effect (as in the movie!) of walls of water. This would have required, however, two airstreams of wind as the Israelites traversed the ditch or trough in the water, since a wind strong enough to move that much water would have made travel in the dry area virtually impossible for either Israel or the Egyptian chariots. If the wind separated into two airstreams, with an 'eye' in the middle, this would have created one possible understanding of this phenomenon.

The physical dimensions of this are likewise obscure. Our oceanographic data suggests that the water section connecting the Bitter Lake and the Red Sea was much narrower than even the tip of the Gulf. How wide the sea was at this point, how wide the ditch or pathway was during this event, and how deep this trough was are exceedingly difficult to estimate. The only clues we have on this are that the trough must have been large enough to hold 600 chariots, and deep enough to drown in. The wind had started to blow at sunset, and the Israelites must have gotten to the other side by no later than 3 am. Somewhere around this time, the Egyptian chariots and associated calvary, had entered the trough. During the morning watch (3am to sunrise), God began to undo the miracle. The dry earth in the trough began to moisten (from the beginning seepage of the water?), and at sunrise the airstreams (or whatever forces were holding the 'walls' up) were gone, and the walls of water collapsed into a dual-tidal wave of sufficient rapidity to preclude escape by the encumbered chariots.

This scenario would have required around two million people traveling with flocks (but minimal belongings), to cross through the trough within between 3 and 6 hours. How big a trough would this have required?

Let's try one scenario, with the following assumptions for this parade and see where this leads us.

1. A trough width of half a mile.
2. An allowance of 4 feet per person per row (a spacing of some 6 feet between them)
3. An allowance of 8 feet per person per column (a walking space of some 14 feet between them)
4. Two million people at the above rates, with flocks and wagons within the spaces, but travelling light as per the biblical text.
5. A travelling speed of 3 miles per hour.

Let's look at 600 chariots in a trough width of half a mile, under the following assumptions:

1. An allowance of 32 feet per chariot per row (a spacing of 50 ft between them)
2. An allowance of 64 feet per chariot per column (a spacing 80-90 ft between them)
3. 600 chariots

Under this imaginary reconstruction, the travelling time of the Israelites (3-6 hours) is way more than enough. In fact, the area of the trough can be considerably smaller than this and still accomplish all the requirements of the text. For example, we can change the following assumptions:

1. Trough width from half a mile to a quarter of a mile;
2. Israelite travelling speed from 3 miles an hour to 4 miles an hour;
3. Trough length from 2 miles to 1 mile,

The net of this is that we are still only talking about a very 'localized' miracle. The surface area we are talking about here is simply not that geographically large, and I have been more than generous in allotting space for the crowds (e.g., families traveling together would have had a much higher density than I allotted).

But wouldn't the return of the water have caused major NOTICABLE shoreline effects elsewhere? Probably not. If the height of the water wall was only in the 10-15 foot range, the return of these walls would have been too quick and not violent enough to make much 'splash'. And the presumed rise in water levels associated with this would NOT have been in the 10-15 range, but would rather have been incremental over normal water depth. In other words, the displacement of a volume of water .25 mile by 1 mile by 15 feet, spread out over an area of 1.25 square miles (roughly a square 6,000 ft on each side), would raise existing water levels by only 3 feet. And, a water level increase of only one foot would only require a surface area of only 3.75 square miles. [By comparison, the Dead Sea is 230+ square miles and the Sea of Galilee is 130 square miles.]

The only major after-effects seem to have been the dead Egyptian soldiers on the shore (Ex 14.20).

So, so far, the only people likely to record anything would be the Israelites. And, remember, it is a VERY rare event in ancient history that is recorded at all by contemporaries.

But strangely enough, we actually MAY have an echo of a remembrance of this event. What we have not considered so far is the possibility of observers on the eastern shore of this event. From their visual perspective, they would have seen the east wind blowing away from them, literally parting the sea without any clue as to what was going on. They would have seen this trough in the middle of the parted sea, from the east bank, open for perhaps an hour or two before the first Israelites in the parade would have emerged. As the parade continued, the sea would have stayed open, and then they would have been observers of the return of the sea, and then the washing up onto shore of the dead bodies of the Egyptians. They had seen people before (obviously!), but the parting of the sea might have generated some attention. Without the polemical and political dimensions present in the Israelite/Egyptian relationships, they may have come close to being 'neutral' observers.

The reason I mention this, is that Diodorus Siculus (The Library of History, III.40.9ff) has this strange passage in his description of the people living in this area (written 60-30 BC):

[Technically speaking, there is one antecedent piece of literature that could be considered as a source for this story. There is this strange story about an Egyptian priest parting the waters of a lake. Currid describes the story [OT:AEOT:84]:

One final note worth pondering-the possibility of polemical response by Pharaoh and company. We have already noted that Pharaoh was not very likely to record his 'bad press'. But is it possible that his court officials might have recorded the incident differently, in such a way as to explain to the public the exodus as a good thing or positive action by Pharaoh? That maybe the priests 'spin doctored' the events into something 'good'?

Strangely enough, we MIGHT have evidence that this indeed occurred. But again, this is difficult to nail down, due to the problems associated with transmission of ancient records.

The first Egyptian to write an Egyptian history is Manetho (c.300 BC). He claimed to have used actual records of priests, as well as Egyptian folk-tales and legends, in constructing the history of Egypt. His writing is only preserved in fragments scattered throughout the writings of others, and it is very difficult to tell what is genuine, hybrid, or bogus. [This actually has been called THE most difficult problem in Classics by scholars (HI:BAM:116)] Most of the alleged fragments of Mantheo are disputed, of course, and the ones cited in Josephus are no exception [see BAM for discussion]. Indeed, some of them seem very doubtful as to authenticity. But Josephus has a couple of passages in which he violently defends the Jews against Mantheo's history. The interesting one in this connection has to do with assertions about the 'official' view of the exodus [in Contra Apion, Book I.26]:

Now, we don't know if these fragments are genuine, nor even if Josephus has understood them correctly, or even if the references to the Jews in these passages refer to the Jews and not to the Hyksos. As such it can remain nothing more than an interesting and intriguing hypothesis. But if they are genuine and applicable, they would be some additional tangential 'evidence' of something discontinuous in the history.

[Now, we must also entertain the historical possibility that it was the Hebrews that 'spun' the story instead of the Egyptians. After all, it is at least theoretically possible that they WERE diseased and expelled, and that it was THEY who spun the tale into some glorious victory of the Jews over the gods, pharaoh, and armies of Egypt. That this is altogether unlikely comes solidly from the biological arena-we don't have the slightest reason to believe that a nation of such seriously diseased individuals would have had even a remote chance of survival in the harsh ancient world, much less produce a nation with purity laws as stringent about disease as Israel!]

Overall, then, I find no real reason to accept Robby's assumption that this event would have been recorded by anyone other than the Jews. And, indeed, there actually MAY be a scrap or two of extra-biblical historical data that remembers this event.
.....................................................

Miracle Two: The stopping of the sun by Joshua (Joshua 10.7-15)

1. Extension of daylight hours (allowing the battle to continue) [Woudstra in NICOT]
2. Subjective 'extension' of daylight hours (more a miracle of 'efficiency' than 'nature') [possible conclusion of Keil and Delitzsch]
3. Semi-Darkness during the day due to miraculous hailstorms and cloud covering (maximizing confusion, reducing heat, and divine deliverance) [Madvig in EBC, Walt Kaiser]
4. Providential battle play-out (the sun always being in the opponents' eyes due to the slope of the enemy's descent) [Gordon]
5. An eclipse (as an omen, based on ANE usage of the verbs) [R.D. Wilson, Holliday]
6. Poetic-only, referring to the combination of weather-as-weapons and astral elements as signs/omens
   

1. The mixture of poetic and narrative elements
2. The mixture of timing elements/indicators
   
3. The ambiguity in the word choices describing the astronomical/meteorological events
4. The historical setting and the general inability of anyone present to measure time or observe the sun.
5. The nature of verse 13b--is it prose or poetry?
   

First, the mixture of poetic and narrative elements. We know that poetic/dramatic restatements of historical events tends to be hyperbolic. This is easily documented, even from the bible. David's proclamation of God's deliverance in Ps 18.7-17 is jubilant:

"The Passage Is Figurative. Two proposals take into account the nature of poetry, since vv. 12b–13a (and possibly v. 13b, as well) are poetic (see NIV’s layout). One such proposal is that the words spoken to the sun and moon in v. 12b originated with the poet who authored the fragment (and perhaps the book), not with Joshua or Yahweh, and they were a command to these heavenly bodies to “be speechless with terror, be stunned into motionless rigidity,” that is, that they should have “a stunned reaction in the face of a startling catastrophe or astonishing revelation.” This proposal has support in that dmm, “to be quiet,” does indeed indicate on occasion “silence in the face of an impending catastrophe or one that has already struck, or in preparation for a revelation.” It rests on the analogy of such poetic passages as Exod 15:16, where the Moabites, Edomites, and Canaanites are terrified of Israel: “Terror and dread will fall upon them. // By the power of your arm they will be as still (dmm) [i.e., dumbstruck, silent, in awe] as a stone //—until your people pass by, O LORD,” or Hab 3:11, which states that “sun and moon stood still (ʿmd) [i.e., were dumbstruck, silent, in awe] in the heavens // at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spears.”

"Others have argued that the poetic nature of the passage indicates that it was never intended to be taken literally. Rather, it describes the battle in cosmic terms, in the same way that Judg 5:20 mentions that the stars were involved in the Israelites’ battle against Sisera and his army: “From the heavens the stars fought, // from their courses they fought against Sisera.” We can also cite the aforementioned passage from Habakkuk, where an awe-inspiring appearance of the Lord in a vision is described, and the sun and moon are described in terms similar to what we find here in Joshua 10 (Hab 3:11). No one suggests concerning these two passages that there were any extraordinary astronomical or geophysical phenomena involving the sun, moon, or stars; rather, they are easily recognized as figurative expressions in poetic form, describing the totality of Yahweh’s victory over the Canaanites (in the first case) or the awesomeness of Yahweh’s appearance (in the second case).

"Thus, one scholar asserts that vv. 12b–13b are simply poetic expressions of information contained in corresponding prose assertions. The prose account of the all-night march (v. 9) is described in the poetic text as the moon’s standing still (v. 13a), since the moon’s light would have facilitated this march; likewise, the prose account of the entire battle, which was a lengthy one and which concluded “at sunset” (v. 27), is described in the poetic text as the sun’s stopping in the middle of the sky and delaying setting for a full day (v. 13b). Similar relationships between poetic and prose texts can be found elsewhere, most notably in Exod 15:1–18, which is a poetic description of the events that are told in a prose narrative in Exodus 14, and Judges 5, which is a poetic reflection upon the prose text in Judges 4. Given the fact that poetic texts are indeed frequently figurative in their expression, this possibility has much to commend it.

"What conception are we to form of this miraculous event? It is not stated that the sun actually stood still in one spot in the heavens,—say, for instance, in the zenith. And if the expression, “the sun stood still in the midst of heaven,” which is added as an explanation of וַיִּדֹּום, is so pressed as to mean that the sun as miraculously stopped in its course, this is hardly reconcilable with לֹא אָץ לָבֹוא, “it hasted not to go down,” as these words, if taken literally, merely denote a slower motion on the part of the sun, as many of the Rabbins have observed. All that is clearly affirmed in vv. 12 and 13 is, that at Joshua’s word the sun remained standing in the sky for almost a whole day longer. To this there is added, in v. 14, “There was no day like that before it, or after it, that Jehovah hearkened to the voice of a man; for Jehovah fought for Israel.” This expression must not be pressed too far, as the analogous passages (“there was none like him,” etc.) in 2 Kings 18:5 and 23:25 clearly show. They merely express this thought: no other day like this, which God so miraculously lengthened, ever occurred either before or afterwards. So much, therefore, is obvious enough from the words, that the writer of the old song, and also the author of the book of Joshua, who inserted the passage in his narrative, were convinced that the day was miraculously prolonged. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that it is not stated that God lengthened that day at the request of Joshua almost an entire day, or that He made the sun stand still almost a whole day, but simply that God hearkened to the voice of Joshua, i.e., did not permit the sun to go down till Israel had avenged itself upon its enemies. This distinction is not without importance: for a miraculous prolongation of the day would take place not only if the sun’s course or sun’s setting was delayed for several hours by the omnipotent power of God, and the day extended from twelve to eighteen or twenty hours, but also if the day seemed to Joshua and all Israel to be miraculously prolonged; because the work accomplished on that day was so great, that it would have required almost two days to accomplish it without supernatural aid. It is not easy to decide between these two opposite views; in fact, it is quite impossible if we go to the root of the matter. When we are not in circumstances to measure the length of the day by the clock, it is very easy to mistake its actual length, especially in the midst of the pressure of business or work. The Israelites at that time had neither sun-clocks nor any other kind of clock; and during the confusion of the battle it is hardly likely that Joshua, or any one else who was engaged in the conflict, would watch the shadow of the sun and its changes, either by a tree or any other object, so as to discover that the sun had actually stood still, from the fact that for hours the shadow had neither moved nor altered in length. Under such circumstances, therefore, it was quite impossible for the Israelites to decide whether it was in reality, or only in their own imagination, that the day was longer than others. To this there must be added the poetical character of the verses before us. When David celebrates the miraculous deliverance which he had received from the Lord, in these words, “In my distress I called upon the Lord … He heard my voice out of His temple … He bowed the heavens also, and came down … He sent from above, He took me, He grew me out of many waters” (Ps. 18:7–17), who would ever think of interpreting the words literally, and supposing them to mean that God actually came down from the sky, and stretched out His hand to draw David out of the water? Or who would understand the words of Deborah, “They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (Judg. 5:20), in their literal sense? The truthfulness of such utterances is to be sought for in the subjective sphere of religious intuition, and not in a literal interpretation of the words. And it may be just the same with these verses, without their actual contents being affected, if the day was merely subjectively lengthened,—hat is to say, in the religious conviction of the Israelites. But even if the words really affirmed that a miraculous and objective lengthening of the day did actually take place, we should have no reason whatever for questioning the credibility of the statement." Keil, C. F., & Delitzsch, F. (1996). Commentary on the Old Testament (Vol. 2, pp. 80–81). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

[Maimonides also took a somewhat similar view in Guide to the Perplexed 2:35, explaining that the battle lasted so long and was concluded in a single day, that it appeared to do so to the participants.]

In our passage here, we have the possibility of this hyperbolic dimension as well, since the writer explicitly makes that point that some of this is from the poetic book of Jashar ("The Upright"). It requires extreme care therefore, in determining the scope of the linguistic terms in the passage. At first blush, this would argue that the more extreme astronomical/meteorological statements are metaphorical.

The only real objection, btw, to a figurative/poetic interpretation of this passage is that if 13b is prose/narrative, then it either represents a MISUNDERSTANDING of the poem (i.e. error) or it REQUIRES a motion-centric (rather than luminosity-centric) interpretation of the clearly poetic lines. [See discussion of 13b below].

Second, the mixture of timing elements and indicators. It is obvious from the time elements in the passage that there is restatement and telescoping of story-line here. Verses 9-10 look the summary of the battle like  [NICOT]. Verse 11 looks like a flashback to sometime within the battle. Verses 12-14 seem to be a restatement in poetic form of the battle . Verse 15 seems to be AFTER the battle. And verses 16-27 are another flashback, focusing on detail regarding the kings within the battle as well.

This allows for the possibility that some of the statements are restatements referring to the earlier description of the hailstorm in verse 11.

This is supported by the usage of the adverb 'az:

"The second section describing the battle of Gibeon is introduced with the disjunctive adverb ʾāz, translated “then” (meaning “at that time”). It introduces important action that took place at the same time as that of vv. 6–11, not something that happened later. This is the function of ʾāz when it is followed by a prefixed (imperfect) verb form, as it is here. That is, somehow the hailstorm of v. 11 and the phenomena of vv. 12–13 either were one and the same thing or (more probably) they happened at the same time, as part of the same larger miracle of deliverance for Israel." [Howard, D. M., Jr. (1998). Vol. 5: Joshua. The New American Commentary (238). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.]

 So, whatever we think happened in 12-13, it has to be consistent with the hailstorm/etc of verse 11.

Third, the ambiguity in the word choices makes a conclusion difficult. Let's note first the main verb-words:

"Or could the Hebrew word dōm, “stand still” (much like our onomatopoeic word “be dumb”) signify that the sun was to remain hidden—hence “silent”—during the violent thunderstorm that accompanied the troops as they fled before the Israelites down the Valley of Aijalon? ... We can conclude that dō˓m in verse 13 should be translated “was dumb” or “silent.” The sun did not “stop” in the middle of the sky, but its burning heat was “silenced.” The presence of the hailstorm lends more than a little credence to this view." [Kaiser, W. C., Jr., Davids, P. H., Bruce, F. F., & Brauch, M. T. (1996). Hard sayings of the Bible (p. 187). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.]

be still, i.e., be in a state of inactivity (1Sa 6:14)

"At that time, Joshua spoke to (i.e., petitioned) the LORD, on the day of the LORD’S giving the Amorites into the power of the sons of Israel. And [the LORD] said in the sight of Israel,

“O sun, over Gibeon stop, O moon, over the valley of Aijalon (stop)!”
So the sun stopped, and the moon, it stood still
Until [the LORD] took vengeance [against] the nation of his enemies.

"Is it not (all) written in the book of Jashar?

And the sun stood still in the midst of the heavens,
And it did not hurry to go (down) about a complete day.

"And there has not been (a day) like that day before it or after it, when the LORD obeyed the voice of a man, for the LORD fought for Israel.

"There are nine poetic lines (or half-lines) here (for this terminology and the method of counting stresses here, see Howard, The Structure of Psalms 93–100 [Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997], 28–30 and n. 9). They are fairly well balanced in terms of the stresses in the Hb. text: In the first set, we have stress patterns of 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, while in the second set, we see 2, 2, 2, 2. We must note that v. 13b (containing the second set of poetic lines) is not generally analyzed as poetry—and this is perhaps the major weakness of this approach, because otherwise it is difficult to deal with the assertions of v. 13b. However, the four lines here are as easily poetic as the three lines in v. 13a (including the presence of a wayyiqṭōl verbal construction in both sets); virtually no one questions the poetic nature of v. 13a, and, we would argue, v. 13b is no different in kind."

Let's look at 'hasten' first:

For 'uts ("hasten" or "hurry"), in Swanson [Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament), who cites Josh 10.13 as the only example of uts as 'delay', meaning 6!], in the semantic domain of 'attitudes and emotions', he lists this as the 2nd major of the meanings of 'uts:

The Psalmist poetically portrayed the sun's normal vigorous circuit in Ps 19.5-7:

And the word 'go' (bo') which is generally rendered as 'go down' here--referring to sunset according to many commentators--is definitely too ambiguous to demand a motion-centered understanding.

HAL gives these as the top 5 meanings for bo':

1. To enter
2. To come (to, toward, in), to bring a thing, come up to, come upon somebody, come true
3. To return home, to sally forth and decamp (military terms or responsibility terms)
4. The coming of God, an epiphany
5. Misc (associate with, become involved, chase after something, to descend from)

The verb IS used to speak of 'sunset' but only as a unit with the word ha-resh (cf. Judg 14.18, bo'-haresh). This unit is not present in our verse, so there is a presumption against interpreting this 'not hasten to go (down)' or 'not hasten to set'.

And I find it suggestive to notice that the 'unwillingness to engage' nuance of uts could fit perfectly with the military-centric/royal-centric meaning of bo'. There are strong connotations of leadership, power, authority, and even of 'routine responsibilities'.

The 'sally forth and decamp' passages illustrating this meaning given in HAL include these:

• Joshua 14.11:I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming [bo'].
• 1 Samuel 29.6: Then Achish called David and said to him, “As the LORD lives, you have been honest, and to me it seems right that you should march out [bo'] and in with me in the campaign.
• 2 Kings 19.27: But I know your [Sennacherib] sitting down and your going out and coming [bo'] in, and your raging against me.
• 2 Chron 23.7:  The Levites shall surround the king, each with his weapons in his hand. And whoever enters [bo'] the house shall be put to death. Be with the king when he comes [bo'] in and when he goes out.”
• Num 27.16-17: Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation 17 who shall go out before them and come [bo'] in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them [bo'] in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.
• 2 Chron 1.10: Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come (bo') in before this people, for who can govern this people of yours, which is so great?”

So, when I put uts and bo' together in this passage, I get something like this: "And the sun was not willing to march into the battle for about the entire day" or "And the sun had no power/energy to break into its powerful sunshine for about the entire day".

Interestingly, the 4th meaning given in HAL ("the coming of God, an epiphany") is even closer to our concept here--that the Sun, an Amorite nature deity, could not help the Amorites at all, but rather stood silent and powerless in the face of YHWH's weather-centric battle.

The two passages given in HAL explicitly relate coming (bo') with luminosity!

Deut 33:2: The LORD came [bo'] from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran
Hab 3.3ff:  God came [bo'] from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. (Selah) His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.  His brightness was like the light;  rays flashed from his hand; and there he veiled his power.

And remember that the closest example we have to the sun/moon stop/still imagery is from Hab 3.11, and it also connects 'humility' of the sun/moon with thunderstorm activity--and with the lightning which would have accompanied the violent hailstorm:

      The sun and moon stood still in their place
      at the light of your arrows as they sped,
      at the flash of your glittering spear.

Thus, the poetic imagery is very easily understood under the hailstorm scenario, and this understanding even makes the best sense of the 'about' clause and its importance for the late-day military clean-up operation (noted above).

What this leads me to note is:

1. The word choices SEEM to favor the hailstorm scenario
2. The summary character of some the statements seem to be referring back to the hailstorm victory
3. The poetic elements-in the context of victory-poems in the OT-seem to indicate that the victory was slightly more subdued (and therefore more in keeping with "standard" meteorological assistance by God) than large-scale astronomical changes.
4. The circumstances of the cloud cover, lack of timekeeping, and religious setting favor a hailstorm scenario.
5. The addressing of the Sun/Moon deities as being subdued --and even enlisted by!--YHWH to abandon the Amorites, and even fight against them fits with the background.
   
6. The military needs of the moment seem to favor a cooler day, rather than a hotter, longer day.

Now, I personally do not have the slightest problem with God stopping anything in the universe at all-I consider natural 'law' to be absolutely arbitrary [For example, gravitational attraction does not 'have to' exist at all-it is not 'logically necessary' in nature.] So, for me, the issue is one of exegesis-what does the text say happened?

To net this out, then, what I see going on in the passage is this:

• Joshua appeals to YHWH for military aid--in the morning-- after a long night's march.
• He then issues a curse-type command to two Amorite deities (Sun and Moon) to take YHWH's side in the battle, by not intervening at all.
• His command to them instructs them to reveal their presence (as an omen of opposition) in their respective locations, but to not engage in their normal illuminating and vigorous heating functions until the battle is over.
• YHWH --who has presumably allowed clear skies for the all-night march of Joshua's army--reveals the sun and moon to the Amorites in the ill-omen opposition (but probably with the orbs behind some gathering clouds, beginning to show YHWH's power over them).
• The clouds would still allow the Amorites to see and be 'confused by' the opposition, but might also be the precursor to the hailstorm which follows shortly.
• With this omen fresh in their minds, the hailstorm attacks them with thunder and lightning--doing much more damage than the Israelites could have done.
• The sun continues to move through the sky--but it is powerless before YHWH to break through His weather-weapon--and the coolness helps the Israelites on the offensive, without offering any real relief to the hailstorm-plagued Amorites.
• At the end of the battle and the end of the day, the Sun finally breaks through, and Joshua's army can start/continue with the 'mopping up' operation.
• Thus, the 'gods of the nations' are shown to be insignificant before the power of YHWH--just like the 'gods' of Egypt (including Pharaoh) were! [BTW, there is not 'polytheistic' in the addressing the 'luminaries' in this way, just like there was nothing polytheist in YHWH's statement that He would 'judge the gods of Egypt' in Ex 12.12: "on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD."]

So, on the basis of my exegesis of the passage-that the sun was 'silent' for almost an entire day while the hailstorm wreaked havoc on the enemy-we still have a relatively local miracle. The area in which the hailstorm and darkness would have been observed would have been confined, and even other native people experiencing this would have not been shocked by the occurrence at all. Under this scenario, Robby probably would not have included this in his list as a major scale event, since the combination of locale-restriction and the natural appearance of the phenomena (i.e., hail and dark skies) would have rendered this miracle unobserved and/or unnoticed elsewhere.

And again, we have the scenario that those most likely to see the miraculous element in the event-Israel and her enemies-would be either (1) beneficiaries of the event, (2) dead, or (3) unlikely to record the failure of their god or rulers to protect them against YHWH.

But we need to cover the other bases here. What if my understanding is incorrect? What if the miracle were one of prolonged daylight, rather than of extensive darkness? How would we evaluate this scenario?

Well, the first thing to do is to discard assumptions as to the precise 'physics' of the miracle. In other words, for the 'sun to stand still in the sky' would have to be understood as phenomena first and astronomy last. In other words, this miracle could have happened in the following ways:

1. A pure hallucination. The sun and earth moved perfectly normally, but the battle combatants had the visual (coordinated!) of the sun standing still. [I don't know of anyone espousing this view.]
2. A perspective distortion (type A). The sun and earth moved perfectly normally, but the battle combatants had the experience of the day "dragging out" or "stretching" due to the amount of activity compressed into it (e.g., getting two day's work done in one). [e.g., KD]
3. A perspective distortion (type B). The sun and earth moved perfectly normally, but the battle combatants had the experience of the sun standing still due to its location in the sky relative to the combatants. The battle was fought on a gradual slope, on which the enemies would have been looking directly into the rising sun at the inception of the battle. As the battle moved westward, the angle of the vision of the enemies would have increased at the same rate as the rising sun, with the appearance that the sun was staying 'still' in the same debilitating spot in their battle vision. This, of course, would have required the victory to have been completed by late morning, in which this 'angle' could still be reasonably small (allowing some 4-6 hours max). [e.g., Gordon in BANE]
4. A distortion of light. In this scenario, the sun and earth moved perfectly normally, but the light from the sun was subjected to abnormal reflective/refractive forces, so that daylight (diffused) continued for a longer period of time than normal. [entertained by most long-day advocates]
5. A slowdown in the rotation of the earth. In this scenario, the earth moved normally, but at a slower speed than normal, so that the sun appeared to (and did) move more slowly. [entertained by some long-day advocates]

The first two of these face the difficulty that whereas God often causes psychological confusion/distortion for the wicked (e.g., I Sam 14.19), we do not have any indication that He has done this to His people. The third option makes good sense, but we don't have any indications that Israel would have understood this as a miracle per se [although this understanding is favored by Gordon in OT:BANE]. The fourth one has an advantage of being a standard "manner of operation" of God; He routinely uses light and optical effects (cf. the cloud in Exodus 14.19-20). The fifth one requires a 'wasteful' miracle-one which is altogether overkill for the situation. God seems generally to match the 'scale' of a miracle with the 'importance' of the event, and when He does choose to over-do it, it is in the area of less human involvement. So, for example, the deliverance by Gideon was a normal battle outcome, but God restricted the involvement of the Israelites to prevent their misunderstanding/misappropriating the results (Judges 7.1-9)! It is certainly not that any miracle is any 'harder' for God to do than any others, but rather that He normally avoids large-scale disruption of His created order. He LIKES to preserve the predictability of the natural world (cf. Jer 33.20: "Thus says the Lord, 'If you can break My covenant for the day, and My covenant for the night, so that day and night will not be at their appointed time, 21 then My covenant may also be broken with David My servant that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne" ).

And we must note that God is more likely to avoid disrupting the motions of the heavenly bodies, because He literally set them up to be guides to the passage of time:

Accordingly, given these 'patterns of divine activity' in the world (a theological argument), we would be on firmer ground to accept number four as a likely 'implementation' of the miracle of 'long day' (assuming of course, that one understands the miracle in this second fashion, which I do not.).

Under this understanding, again, the effects are still confined to the locale. However, any bystanders would no doubt have noticed something 'odd' about the day, but this probably would not have produced any literary remains for obvious reasons:

1. The 'elite', with access to and skills for writing, would have been involved in the battle (it was a coalition of all the surrounding towns and villages-cf. Joshua 10.1-5).
2. Any non-participants would have been extremely rural or isolated peasants.
3. There were no major centers of learning and literacy around the area, in which more neutral observers might have seen the phenomena and recorded something (as someone might have done in Egypt or Babylon).
4. There is the distinct possibility that this event would not have been distinctly noted for what it was (below).

"So I marched, and as I arrived at Mt. Lawasa, the mighty storm-god, my lord, showed his godly miracle. He hurled a meteor (or thunderbolt). My army saw the meteor; (and) the land of Arzawa saw (it). And the meteor went; and struck the land of Arzawa. It struck Apasa, the capital city of Uhhaziti. Uhhaziti fell on (his) knees; and became ill. When Uhhaziti became ill; he did not come against me to fight; (but) he sent his son, Piyama-KAL, together with troops and charioteers to engage me. He took his stand to fight with me at the river Astarpa at Walma. And I, my sun, fought with him. The sun goddess of Arinna, my lady; the mighty storm-god, my lord; Mezzulla, (and) all the gods ran before me." [Younger, K. L., Jr. (1990). Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (Vol. 98, p. 208). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.]

So, under the most likely interpretation [IMO] of the passage (i.e., the hailstorm) the event would have to be removed from Robby's list. And, under the most likely understanding of the 'popular' interpretation of this event (a local optical miracle), it would also have to be removed from Robby's list.

But let's entertain the extreme possibility-that the passage teaches that God literally caused the rotation of the earth to (Type A) slow or (Type B) even stop for a period of time.

Under either scenario, there WOULD have been worldwide effects. Type A (the "Slow-down" view) involves steady motion of the sun, but at only half the speed. Type B (the "Pause-and-Resume" view) involves the sun travelling at regular speed from rising in the east to some point in the morning sky [around 10-11 am, so that it was 'over Gibeon' as Joshua would have been looking eastward], and remaining in the 10am-2pm area of the sky for an extra 8 hours or so. Then, it would presumably make the rest of its journey to the western horizon at regular rate.

What would be the visual, global effects of this event?

[Let me first make a comment about this part of the exercise. One of the most entertaining pieces of writing I have ever read was a skeptical analysis of the physics of a sudden halt in the earth's rotation. The piece gave vivid descriptions of cattle flying off the earth due to momentum, of upsets in natural/biological systems that have gravity-dependent functions, of catastrophic gale-storms due to sudden wind movements, of major geographical/topographical realignments due to suddenly shifting land and water masses . The major assumption, of course, is that God would forget about this and do the 'pause miracle' (with all good intentions!) without adjusting all the interrelated processes and systems. Only God could make such a God-size goof-up, of course! But all the other natural miracles in the Bible seem to be 'well integrated' into the setting, even some of the more bizarre ones...Accordingly, we will be looking for effects related to the appearance of night/day/sun/moon-related observations.]

Let's first consider the "Slow Down" understanding (Type A). What effects would have shown up?

Well, time would have seemed to slow down, night would have been longer (for those on the other side of the earth), and day would have been longer.
 

But an obvious question comes up here-how would a world that generally measured time by motion of bodies in the sky (i.e., sun, moon, stars)-have even been able to detect or measure a 'slow down'? In other words, if there are not independent ways of measuring time (such as Egyptian water-clocks) that are running in parallel with sun-based or star-based clocks, one has only the vague 'biological' senses to fall back on (e.g., hunger, fatigue, regulated habits, psychological sense, a "better" night's sleep!). So, unless we find large populations of people using independent clocks in a deliberate time measurement (and implicit 'comparison') manner, our population-size for Robby is going to dwindle to statistical insignificance for his purposes. For example, if we only find 1,000 people who are even candidates for noticing this problem, then Robby's argument will lose most of its force. [It could be bolstered however, if those 1,000 people were specifically tasked with, and performed, a recording function such as this faithfully.]

So, around 1400-1200 BC, what time-keeping methods were in use, and how widespread were they?

If we list the historical evidences we have for time-keeping devices in antiquity, here is what we roughly come up with:

• The Chinese use a vertical pole for a rudimentary shadow clock in 2600-2500BC [HI:TOS:10]
• According to Egyptian sources, the clepsydra (water-clock) was invented by the "bureaucrat" Amenemhet, during the 15th Dynastic (around 1600BC) [OT:TE:118; HI:CAW:15].
• The gnomon, an L-shaped indicator is used as a sundial in Egypt around 1450BC [HI:TOS:16; HI:CAW:15].
• The MUL.APIN tablets from Assyria (c. 1000-800 BC) give instructions on using a shadow-pole.
• Water clocks begin to be used in Assyria around 700 BC [HI:TOS:19]
• Sundials begin to be used in China [HI:TOS:27] around 600 BC.
• Xenophon (c.428-354BC) says that time is told by looking at the sun during the day and the stars at night (Memo.IV,3,4) and Aristophanes (c.400BC) says that a man's shadow showed the progress of the day (Eccles. 652).
• Sundials were used by the Athenians (5-4 centuries BC) to ensure that both parties got the same amount of time in court [HI:CAW:15n9].
• Plato is said to invent around 380 BC a water-clock with an alarm (and I THOUGHT he was supposed to be so smart, eh?!) [HI:TOS:35]
• The first sundial in Rome was constructed in 293 BC., according to Pliny [N.H., VII, 213].
• Around 200 BC, Alexandrian engineer Ctestibus improves the water-clock by making the water-flow constant [TOS:42; HSC:344-345]. Previous versions, used by the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, were always a little inaccurate.
• Water clocks appear in China in the famous armillary by Zhang Heng in the 2nd century after Christ. [HI:TOS:50, NHAAC:134]

That water clocks were used to compare with solar clocks is generally accepted. In fact, one of the major math challenges of the ancient world was to coordinate the multiple calendars that were based on astronomical data: solar, lunar, astral, zodiacal, sideral, tropical, anomalistic, synodic, draconic periods of time [NHAAC:24ff]. The water-clock was used to measure changes in the length of the night (i.e., the difference between day-length and night-length between the equinoxes). But this prompts two other questions:

Historians of astronomy provide a clear answer for us here [NHAAC:16-17]:

Given this, then, the assumption that they would "write something down" is plainly contra-indicated by historical practice.

The other possible understanding ("the Pause/Resume" of Type B) would have the same factors involved, of course. The main difference is that the rate of change of shadow clocks MIGHT have been noticeable, but again, we would simply not have enough watchers and recorders to make a dent in the literary record likely.

So, although it would probably have been noticed (however vaguely) by many, we are still faced with the basic problems of ancient literary remains:

1. No one was keeping records of adequate precision to document this.
2. It was only patterns of time dilation that warranted attention (a single event, of rather insipid character for everyone except the combatants, would have gotten no press).
3. When there were major disagreements between the time-keeping systems and actual observations, the ancients adjusted the time-keeping system!
4. We have no reason to believe that the impetus would have been there to prompt the infrequent actual production of a literary text.

[It is probably important to note here that there are definitely "Christian myths" that float around about this, and Kaiser points these out in his analysis of this passage [HSOBX, in. loc.]:

Miracle Three: The reversal of the sun's course by Isaiah (for Hezekiah, somewhere around 702 BC).

Now, in this case, we have one piece of textual evidence that the miracle WAS a localized miracle. The Chronicler, when describing the subsequent visit of the envoy from Babylon in 2 Chron 32.31f, indicates that this sign/wonder was localized to that area (and not worldwide):

But we need to ask a few more questions here:

Actually, we know very little about the miracle. We know it was a movement of one specific shadow (not necessarily of the sun--big difference!). We know this shadow moved in the 'opposite' direction from its normal course. We know it was visible to Hezekiah and Isaiah. We know the shadow was caused by the sun. And we strongly suspect that the motion was quick (and not slow as a shadow normally moves), so as to get Hezekiah's immediate assent.

We do NOT know how long the shadow stayed in that spot. We don't know if any of the court personnel saw it. We don't know the physical length that 'ten whatevers' involved, nor how much time it represented. We don't even know if the miracle was visible outside the room they were in. And since the text only refers to the 'shadow on the steps', we have no reason to believe it applied to other shadows in the room, in the city, in the land, or anywhere else.

Of course, we don't really have any idea of what happened after the miracle, nor how far back '10 steps' (or '10 degrees' ) was. For all we know, the shadow may have gone back ten steps (until Hezy admitted it) and then come back to its normal position immediately. We simply don't know much about the details, and Hezekiah probably did most of the "proclaiming" himself to those around him (cf. His recorded psalm/prayer at the end of the passage, 38.9ff).

Most traditional commentators are influenced by the 2nd Chronicles passage into understanding this to be a local miracle, and one of the refraction of light. So KD (in discussing the 2nd Kings passage):

The next two miracles in Robby's list occur, from the life of Jesus in Roman Palestine. We will examine that situation in the next part of this, especially since the literacy dynamics are quite different (i.e., smaller crowds and much higher literacy).
....................................................

Let's sum up our observations on literacy and the 1st three miracles:

On now to the events in the life of Jesus...