JOSHUA'S VICTORY AND THE SUN AND MOON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4425, 26 May 1875, Page 2

JOSHUA'S VICTORY AND THE SUN AND MOON.

TO THE EDITOR. ' Sib, —I was pleased to see the Rev. A. Stock taking exception to the extraordinary statement of your reviewer re Joshua's forecast of a solar eclipse, and giving us something like a feasible explanation of the phenomenon said to have taken place. It is evident that some clergymen can and do take a scientific view of the record of such events, but it is astonishing that any individual in possession of scientific knowledge, such as astronomy and the law of optics, should seri■ously believethat any such phenomenon took place at the command of a human being. In the probable causation of the event I am with the Rev. • A. S.; but there we part company, and .1 then join issue with your reviewer as to the motives and action of the Israelitish leader, because reason dictates.-such.-a course of belief. JSven if Joshua was not an astronomer, being an experienced leader and presumably of ready wit, he would immediately see the advantage to be gained by working on the superstitious feelings of his tired warriors; and, indeed, there would be nothing extraordinary in the fact of himself thinking so, in the frenzy of feeling the victory gained. The account of this affair in the book of Joshua is admittedly'taken from the poetic writings of Jasher, and is most likely a bardic exaggeration, such as are often met with in such compositions as relate to great national victories. The rev. gentleman must have written his letter hastily, or he would never have -us believe that the right meaning of the words (in English), "about a whole day," is "at the close of the day." Perhaps, he means to say the better translation of tha-text would have been, " the day being whole," or " nearly whole," which would indicate the close of the day. Again, one can scarcely understand the English, at Waterloo, chasing the enemy to Bath-horon; however, as I have said, this reading is due to hasty composition. The last clause of his letter, I' think, will scarcely be doubted by many at the present day, and ho may have added, "and at a few other places on'theearth's surface." Notwithstanding the objection some may have to the ten.; "miracle," as applied to either of the events mentioned, one cannot but feel pleased at the explanation of the probable cause of such phenomena, coming from so good an authority. —I am, &c, Non-Miraculous. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The two letters about Joshua's miracle, in your yesterday's issue, are a strange contrast; the one blindly orthodox, the other evidently the composition of a deep-thinking sceptic. " Christian's" letter becomes a terrible weapon against himself In the skilled hands of "Age of Reason :" and it is such narrow-minded determination to interpret and believe literally all the chronicles of ancient Jewish history that have come down to us in the Hebrew canorf, blindly, literally without effort of reasonmaking a merit of such faith—that causes that strange wavering between the sublime and the ridiculous in religious discussion pointed out by " Age of Reason." "Christian's" argument I take'to be that all things are possible to God, and the power tha set.the universe going can as easily stop it, therefore what need to explain away such a trifling exercise of p/wer as the stopping of the sun for a time ? He f or--gets that there is at anyrate one thing impossible, and that is inconsistency. Omnipotence, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, cannot cause two and two to become five, nor by stopping the sun and moon in their orbits cause Joshua and his army to receive their light, while the earth continues rotating on its axis. " Christian " may say that to Joshua's eye the sun appeared to stand still, while, of course, it was the earth that really stopped &c, &c; but, once relinquish the literal facts stated in inspired writing, and allow any human interpretation, why can it be more sinful to suppose the delusion caused by refraction of the sun's rays, as in & mirage, than by the (quite as unknown) rotation of the earth?—l am, &c, Scotchman.

Our Reviewer sends us the following, with which we must close this correspondence : Joshua and his Ckitics. I would say a word or two in explanation. " A Christian," without knowing anything about nie, pronounces me, off-hand, to be "an infidel," forgetful of the injunction, " Judge not that ye be not judged."' Mr. Stock is a "rationalist or a deist;" not quite so bad as I am, but yet outside the pale of " Christian " toleration. For myself, I simply deny the imputation. lan not an "infidel," but I neither believe in old wives' fables nor in the rhapsodies of ancient bards. I think, however, that Mr. Stock's mirage is a very lame and impotent explanation.of the alleged miracle by Joshua, and coming from a scientific man of some little repute, is very childish. Clearly the mirage explanation won't do. Nor will the Chinese and Greek traditions relied on by " A Christian," in support of the supernatural. Any schoolboy could demonstrate the absurdity of such an argument. In short, there was no such miracle at all; and the passage in the Book of Joshua, chap, x., verses 12, IS, 14, in which it is recorded, is clearly and unmistakeably an interpolation by the editor of'these Hebrew chronicles, most probably in the days of Ezra the scribe, to which period much of the early national records of the Jewish people must be credited. The narrative is complete without it; but the compiler, struck no doubt by the beauty of the passage, and anxious to glorify the national hero, quoted it from * Hebrew epic, (not without acknowledgment of somesort, as is the fashion with modern compilers,) and in this way it has come to be regarded with superstitious veneration as a divinely inspired record of God's: miraculous intervention on behalf of his chosen people. In alluding to this passage in my review of Mr. "Wilson's book on " The Immortality of the Universe," I proceeded on the assumption that an eclipse of the sun had occurred on the day when the decisive battle against the Amorites was fought by Joshua ; and that that great man, instructed "in all the learning of the Egyptians," as I have a right to assume from his relations towards Moses and the fugitive tribes, availed himßelf of his acquaintance with the physical laws which explain the phenomenon of solar eclipse, to impress his clansmen with the belief that God, at his command, delayed the going down of the sun " about a whole day," the exact time not being noted after the obscuration passed away. The well known phenomenon of ...an ecjjpse of the sun, appealed to in this way before his host, by a leader who was believed to be supernaturally endowed, could not but have a powerful effect upon the imagination of an ignorant and superstitious people, and it is therefore easy to perceive how, in process of time, the tradition assumed its present shape. Indeed, any one who has given any thought or study to the growth of national history, will have no difflcultyin tracing this alleged miracleof Joshua's to the circumstance that there was a partial or total eclipse of the sun, combined with great atmospheric disturbance, on the day when Joshua smote the five Kings of the Amorites. Any other explanation is inconsistent with physical laws and the canons of sound «, criticism. But arguing on probabilities, I would , say a word in reply to "A Christian." Does it Dot strike him that he pays an exceedingly poor compliment to the wisdom and beneficence of the Deity, who is represented in the chronicle as fighting for Israel with hailstones, that He should bring darkness and terror on innocent human beings, His creatures, in distant parts of the earth; and scorching heat and conflagrations on unoffending nations elsewhere, for the sake of giving a few hours of daylight to complete the carnage between obscure semi-barbarous tribes in the glens of Palestine. Does it not seem a, useless, not to say reckless and wicked exercise of power by an Omnipotent Being, who should care alike for all His creatures, and who, as we are told in the sacred writings, and as all know by daily observation, maketh His sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, and His rain to fall upon the evil and the good with benevolent and untiring impartiality. "What was the need for a miracle affecting the whole solar system, and through it the entire universe when the end could have been ■ accomplished by natural causes f A few more handfuls of hailstones or an earthquake, or a thunderbolt, or a whirlwind, or a hot blast—phenomena common to the East—would have sufficed, without suspending- the laws of theuniverse which He made, to the indescribable terror and suffering of millions of human beings, who never heard of the battles between Joshua the Hebrew and the petty kings of the insignificant strip of country which he invaded. I put the argument in this way, _«». not because I think it is necessary to convince men of ordinary intelligence that the extract from a bardic narrative of the battle of AjalOn, (about as authentic as the incidents in the ballad of Chevy-Chase,) although found in the book' of Joshua, is no guarantee of its authenticity ; but because I think "A Christian" should be compelled to see, that by reading the passage literally, he is denying the wisdom and goodness Of God. But the discussion is of no practical value. It is like thrashing the air. The laws of the universe are immutable. Neither Joshua, nor his Maker, with all reverence be it spoken, ever ■ varied them one iota; much less have they been suspended " for about a whole day," that the slaughter of a gallant people fighting for their hearths and altars, might be consummated by invaders who spared neither sex nor age, neither sheep nor cattle. If to doubt and to deny the truth of such a legend be a proof of infidelity, then indeed am I an incorrigible infidel; but I have too much reverence for the goodness and wisdom of God to suppose such a thing possible of Him even in thought, were it not a physical impossibility. " The Reviewer.