Biblical Record of Eclipse 3,200 Years Ago May Rewrite Pharaonic Era in Ancient Egypt

Biblical Record of Eclipse 3,200 Years Ago May Rewrite Pharaonic Era in Ancient Egypt
(haaretz.com)
Oldest Solar Eclipse Ever Recorded Tells Us When Ramesses The Great Ruled Egypt
(forbes.com)
Joshua said the sun and moon stood still: Now archaeologists think he recorded an annular eclipse in 1207 B.C.E.

Bit of a long read, but an interesting article that correlates a Biblical passage with an eclipse and how it helps to date Ramses II's reign in Egypt;

Joshua may have asked the Lord to make the sun and moon stand still, but scientists have reconsidered previous objections, and now think the Book of Joshua describes a solar eclipse on October 30, 1207 B.C.E., over 3,220 years ago.

The reinterpretation of event as eclipse rather than miracle, plus clues from ancient Egyptian texts, have led historians to redate certain Egyptian dynasties, notably that of Ramesses II (aka the Great) and his son Merneptah

From the Forbes article:

The Biblical text comes from the Old Testament Book of Joshua and has puzzled scholars for centuries. After Joshua led the people of Israel into Canaan (an area of the ancient Near East that covered modern-day Israel and Palestine), he prayed: “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.”

“But going back to the original Hebrew text, we determined that an alternative meaning could be that the sun and moon just stopped doing what they normally do: they stopped shining. In this context, the Hebrew words could be referring to a solar eclipse, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, and the sun appears to stop shining. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated ‘stand still’ has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses.”

By taking into account Earth’s rotation over time, the historians were able to pinpoint that the only annular eclipse visible in Canaan with[out] those 450 years would have been on the afternoon of October 30, 1207 (BC). That makes it the oldest solar eclipse ever recorded and allows researchers to date the reigns of Ramesses the Great and his son Merneptah to within a year.

While the article goes on to describe how the eclipse can more precisely date the reign of the two pharaohs, as well as events during the time of Joshua, I'm reminded of some Bible proponents claims of the sun stopping in its tracks, as well as Sitchin's (and Nibiru proponents) claim of a day the sun stood still (see: The Day the Sun Stood Still. The claims are based on an erroneous interpretation of the Hebrew used in the Bible, and as the authors of the article have pointed out, rather than meaning the sun "stopped," it should mean the sun "stopped shining;"

"This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated 'stand still' [dom] has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses."

For Sitchin, the passage in the Bible of the sun and moon stopping in their tracks was turned into another piece of "evidence" of a wayward planet disturbing the orbits of our solar system. For Bible proponents, it had been another example of miracles from heaven. The notion the bible passage refers to an eclipse isn't new, however proving it could relate to an eclipse requires an enormous amount of calculations that have only recently been carried out.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

They are simply wrong and are grasping at straws, the bible say the sun stood still, it did not move not that the moon covered it or that the sky turned black as in an eclipse.
Do these people think the people of the ancient world had never seen or heard of an eclipse, even the cave men spent an inordinate amount of time watching the sky so I am afraid they are simply wrong.

Joshua said the sun and moon stood still: Now archaeologists think he recorded an annular eclipse in 1207 B.C.E.

Interesting take, never thought of that possible explanation before.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Do you ascribe to a literal interpretation? Joshua also led campaigns of conquest into Canaan, and ANY natural phenomena (like an eclipse) is going to hyped up into miracle status and divine inspiration.

Well according to the bible the Israelites built the pyramids, BBBUUUTTT, the Egyptian records state the pyramids were built by free Egyptian workers. Volunteers for so many months a year. So just that throws all the bible off because there was no exodus. But feel free to try and justify it some other way.
As for historians they're lucky to get their birthday wrong as with every new discovery in Egypt they revise the pharaonic timeline.
As with another thread I've just commented on STOP trying to justify the bible in reconciling with actual historic events.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Do you realize that saying people are grasping at straws because they are reverting to more accurate language describing biblical hearsay, and then implying that the more probable event was that there was divine intervention that paused the rotation of the earth, is in-and-of-itself, quite amusing?

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
Do you realize that saying people are grasping at straws because they are reverting to more accurate language describing biblical hearsay, and then implying that the more probable event was that there was divine intervention that paused the rotation of the earth, is in-and-of-itself, quite amusing?

No, the almighty God of the universe is perfectly willing to bring the entire Earth and Moon to a stop to help a Hebrew warlord win a relatively minor victory at Jericho.

"As with another thread I've just commented on STOP trying to justify the bible in reconciling with actual historic events."

Why? Purely from a historical/scientific stand point..its exciting to have some sort of evidence to corroborate that certain events in the bible did in fact take place and to have an insight as to what was actually going on at those historically rich points in history.
I see the bible rather as an archaeological key to past happenings, non religious...I'm more interested in geological/natural events that happened and if they can now be corroborated then that's good enough for me!

originally posted by: indigothoughts
I see the bible rather as an archaeological key to past happenings, non religious...I'm more interested in geological/natural events that happened and if they can now be corroborated then that's good enough for me!

The problem seems to be that while many ancient cultures such as the Babylonians were really good at astronomy and record keeping, that doesn't follow for everybody in the Middle East. As it turns out, ancient historians were a lot less concerned with accuracy than we are now, and many of them were just plagiarists and flat-out liars.

a reply to: indigothoughts
No your not. You are trying to tie the bible with an actual historic event so you can say "see the bible is real". THe religious archeologist have been trying for decades or longer to find ANYTHING that can prove the bible is real history.
They haven't found anything yet (including keep wheeling out pieces of pottery with Jesus name on them) and never will.

originally posted by: crayzeed
Well according to the bible the Israelites built the pyramids, ...

Where in the Bible does it say that about the pyramids?

originally posted by: Mandy555

originally posted by: crayzeed
Well according to the bible the Israelites built the pyramids, ...

Where in the Bible does it say that about the pyramids?

It doesn't.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

That's all well and good, but how does it affect the dating of the Egyptian civilization? Does it push it backward or forward? How far does it push it?

a reply to: RadioRobert
Whoops, you're right. The pyramids were not mentioned in the bible with the exodus so the bible must be right. But the scriptures say the israelites were forced to make mud bricks for the Migdols. The Hebrews never had a word for pyramid and the term Migdol is used for "tower". But that's in the bible not in the Egyptian records.

Like most people, and even some academics, I did not know just how fluid ancient egyptian chronologies were.
There are some periods where a date can only be pinned down to a couple hundred year spread.
There are many reasons for this, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
This determination will pin down the chronology for that period and help pin it down for previous or subsequent periods.

The 13th cent BCE is one of the proposed timeframes for the exodus, and this puts it right there.
Fascinating stuff S and F Blackmarketeer.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Labtech, I am 53 years old and not once has there ever been a full solar eclipse where I live, and in some regions there will never be a full solar eclipse.
Mostly the knowledge of such events in the past was held by the priests and that knowledge was not available to the average person, nor would a priest know about it unless they studied the old record purposefully.
So yes, it is absolutely possible for people of the time to have no experience with a solar eclipse.

As an excellent example, when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD there was no word in latin for a volcano. people had no memory of mountains blowing up and billowing smoke and fire, as it had not happened for several hundred years.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Absolutely there is absolutely ZERO chance that text written thousands of years ago in an ancient form of Hebrew hasn't been misinterpreted at all. I can totally see that. I mean clearly the ancient Egyptians could tell the difference between an eclipse and a miracle of god. Right?

(I'm being sarcastic by the way)

a reply to: Blackmarketeer
The objections I see right off are in the very descriptions in the bible that were used in your OP.

Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon

Source
I am not familiar with this area but to me it sounds like two different locations. During an eclipse the Sun and Moon are in the same location. Also the Moon, being a new Moon, is virtually invisible since we are looking at the dark side and the sun is very bright. The Moon will not become visible until it eclipses the Sun so thinking that they "stood still" as meaning they stopped shinning doesn't work either.

From the linked article;

“Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon. And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.”

How long did it take for this "vengeance on their enemies" to take place?

So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.…

biblehub
About a whole day. I think it is safe to assume that this is at least 12 hours, perhaps 24. Solar eclipses last a few minutes, the longest being about 7.5 minutes.

The longest total solar eclipse from 4000 BCE to 8000 CE, a span of 12,000 years, will occur on July 16, 2186 and will last 7 minutes 29 seconds.

NASA
Of course if you count penumbra, partial eclipse, then the time is much longer, more than an hour, yet I don't see how even this fits the biblical narrative.

“If these words are describing a real observation, then a major astronomical event was taking place - the question for us to figure out is what the text actually means,

OP Source
This quote I completely agree with. According to the biblical descriptions the Sun and Moon stood still for about a day, 12 or 24 hours. Meaning the Earth quit spinning on its axis for that time period. This seems impossible. Wouldn't this cause global catastrophes? This would at least be a global event, one that was witnessed by everyone on the Earth at that time. What mechanism could cause this, other than claiming "God did it"?

Zecharia Sitchin, as far as I remember from having read some of his books, didn't address this properly. I didn't read all of his stuff and it has been along time so maybe I'm wrong on this account.

However, in my opinion, a better account of such an event was described by Immanuel Velikovsky.

Clearly if the sun “hasted not to go down about a whole day” the phenomenon could not have been merely a local spectacle. The whole area of the earth had to be affected...

Dr. Velikovsky produces records from all over the earth which agree as to the time and as to the altered portions of daylight and dark in each area.

“Allowing for the difference in longitude, it must have been early morning or night in the Western Hemisphere. We go to the books with the historical traditions of the aborigines of Central America. In the Mexican Annuls of Cuauhtitlan -- the history of the empire of Clohuacan and Mexico, written in Nahua-Indian (Nahuatl) -- it is related that during a cosmic catastrophe that occurred in the remote past the night did not end for a long time.

This suggests that the event was witnessed globally according to Velikovsky, but what about the mechanism? What could cause the Earth to stop spinning for a day?

The theory of Worlds in Collision rests on catastrophes caused by a great comet that passed near the earth twice, first about 1500 B.C., at the time of the Exodus, and again 52 years later, in the time of Joshua;

Source
A giant comet, the size of Venus, coming in close contact with and thus stopping the rotation of Earth for a day? It's a fantastic story and one that sounds completely impossible.

The Velikovsky Encyclopedia

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Just throwing this into the mix only because its about the same event as described in the bible but told in legends from different cultures at different places on the globe . Not sure it was a eclipse though .

I think that this idea of what was going on may be correct . People wrote things non-scientifically back those days. This means someone knew there was going to be an eclipse that day, it means they knew the cycles. There is a machine that was used to determine solar events found on a ship that predates this event. Maybe they had one of those tools or they knew someone who had that technology or knowledge.