Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

Refuting Dominic Statham or Medievals vs. Newtonians · What's Not Wrong With Spong? · Spong and Sarfati - Where Both are Wrong

Here is a link to the essay by Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Bott about John Shelby Spong:

What’s Wrong With Bishop Spong?
Laymen Rethink the Scholarship of John Shelby Spong
© Michael Bott and Jonathan Sarfati
Apologia 4(1):3–27, 1995.
https://creation.com/whats-wrong-with-bishop-spong

NB: Reprinted, slightly modified and updated for the Internet, April 98; last update 7 February 2007
Apologia is the journal of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society

And as per previous, you can guess I have taken some potus coffeae in order to be up to answering about Joshua's long day.

Spong declares that the Bible sometimes appears to refer to a moving sun and stationary earth (RBF p. 26). However, Spong, who has no scientific qualifications that we are aware of, is unaware that all motion must be described with respect to a reference frame. For earthbound people, the earth is a convenient reference frame. After all, when drivers see a speed limit sign of 100 km/hr, they know perfectly well that it means 100 km/hr relative to the ground, not the sun! So it is absurd to attack the Biblical writers for doing the same.

My point involves a Biblical writer - acting in another capacity.

So although Spong mocks Joshua for asking the sun to stand still (Jos. 10:12–13), Joshua was asking God to perform a miracle lengthening the day to give him time to conquer his foes.

If Heliocentrism were proven to be true, that mockery would be somewhat understandable.

In Joshua 10:12 we are told Joshua spoke twice.

Then Josue spoke to the Lord,

We are not told in what words. Perhaps silently.

in the day that he delivered the Amorrhite in the sight of the children of Israel, and he said before them:

This no longer is his prayer to God, this is his ensuing and public adress to what he is miraculously ordering to change behaviour:

Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon.

Note very well, he is not adressing the Lord in these words. "O sun" and "O moon" are not names of the Lord, but of some of His servants. Saying these words are his prayer is like accusing him of confusing Sun and Moon with the Lord.

The Bible does not state how this enormous miracle took place: God may have miraculously extended the temporal condition, modified the trajectory of the rays light, or caused the relative motion of the sun across the sky to cease by stopping the earth’s rotation.

Or geocentrism could be true, God could be moving all the visible universe around earth each day, angels could be moving sun around zodiac each year and moon around zodiac each month.

In this case, the following confirms how I think this happened:

There was not before nor after so long a day, the Lord obeying the voice of a man, and fighting for Israel.

So, the Lord obeyed by stopping the Universe from turning around Earth. But he commanded Sun and Moon - right?

Well, they also arrested their eastward journeys:

The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation, in the light of thy arrows, they shall go in the brightness of thy glittering spear. Habacuc (Habakkuk) 3:11

The principle that a miracle worker adresses what miraculously changes behaviour remains.

When Christ drove out unclean spirits, unclean spirits obeyed and left the people they had infested, precisely according to Christ's actual wording.

What about bacteria in Hansen's disease? Christ said "be thou clean". The man adressed not being a bacterium.

The bacteria did not change behaviour but were annihilated. The skin obeyed by being again intact, and intact in nerve cells, and leaving no room for bacteria nor for dead tissue which Hansen's disease would have left a lot of. And the skin, nerve cells and so on are parts of the man adressed.

A Christian should find this miracle of the sun quite plausible, especially as the Amorites were sun-worshippers, and the miracle demonstrates the sovereignty of the true God over the false ‘god’ of the Amorites.

Sure - but Spong had a point on whether a Heliocentric could have a Christian attitude about Joshua's words.

Would we fly off into space if the earth suddenly stopped turning?

(For the technically minded)
Escape Velocity v = √(2GM⁄r), where:G is the gravitational constant = 6.67 × 10⁻¹¹ N m²/kg²
M is the mass of the planet, star etc. = 5.98 × 10²⁴ kg for Earth
r is the distance from its center = 6,378 km at the equator
Substituting these values into the formula, the escape velocity is 11.2 km/s.

The linear velocity on the equator of the rotating earth can be calculated by realising that a fixed point on the equator travels the earth’s circumference every 24 hours. Since the earth’s circumference = 2πr = 40,000 km, and there are 24 × 60 × 60 (86,400) seconds per day, the velocity is only 0.4638 km/s (1600 km/h or 1000 mph).

This is only 1⁄24 of the escape velocity!

Fine, but 1600 km/h or 1000 mph is still fast enough to kill at a sudden stop. OK, I get it, no need for the stopping to take place in one second, but a scenario like Geocentrism in which that is possible would be a more prompt obedience to the miraculous words. Precisely as Christ did not take five minutes before the leper was clean or five minutes before the demon was out.

So also, the words of His ancient namesake would be better obeyed the second they were pronounced. Impossible (without an extra miracle) on Heliocentric terms, but not even difficult on Geocentric ones.

Spong makes the undocumented and faulty claim that if ‘Joshua really caused the earth to cease turning, the gravitational effects would have destroyed this planet forever’ (RBF p. 30). Spong ignores the fact that the deity could by a further chain of miraculous interventions

Thank you for "further".

deal with the alleged physical consequences—God could probably have slowed the atmosphere, oceans and magma at the same rate as the solid parts of the earth. Also, we would be travelling no where near fast enough to escape Earth’ gravity (see calculations in the box (right)).

Fine, kind of, my model needs aether to stop moving - and bodies to have an eastward momentum through it.

Also, the earth may not have stopped too suddenly, as v. 13 states that the sun ‘did not hasten to go for about a day’. As shown in the calculations in the box, objects on the earth’s surface are travelling at 1,600 km/h. A car travelling at 100 km/h can be stopped comfortably for the occupants in a few seconds, therefore something travelling at 1,600 km/h could stop comfortably for passengers in a few minutes.

Recall the miracles of Christ?

The only time there was a delay before full effect was when a further action needed to be done beyond the one done by Christ.

Like, the example I remember is, after a clay of earth and saliva of Christ was applied, a theretofore blind man saw men walking, but they looked like trees.

However, when he had washed himself in the pool of Siloam, he was cured and could see normal.

That's a point against any delay of any few minutes.

Also, independent evidence for the historicity of Joshua 10 is that many ancient cultures have myths that seem to be based on this event. For example, there is the Greek myth of Apollo’s son Phaethon, who disrupted the sun’s course for a day. As would be expected if Joshua 10 were historical, cultures in the opposite hemisphere would have legends of a long night, e.g. the New Zealand Maori myth of Maui slowing the sun before it rose.

I have two more favourite examples. In the Iliad, Agamemnon tries to imitate Joshua. He fails. He thought Joshua had prayed to the Sun and the Sun had been willing to stop, he tried to do the same and the Sun did nothing for him.

Remember, he was not a temporary ruler in a fairly democratic city state in Pericles' time. He was more like a Hitler or Stalin* of Mycenaean unified Achaean Greece (or near unified, with Athens and Thebes as non-Achaean enclaves).

Was it acceptable for his prestige that an Israelite - enemy of his presumably friends among the Philistines - should have succeeded "in such a prayer" and he not?

No. He had to fix it, so, instead his father's crime against his uncle's small children (before the birth of Aigistos, I presume) would have staggered the Sun, and he would have gone ... at that stage perhaps just still. The detail of Sun going backwards would have been a later addition, from when Hesechias (ancestor of our Lord, like Joshua was his namesake) wanted the sun to move back two lines (on whatever gnomon he was watching).

Hence, Agamemnon's failed prayer and a story projected to who in classic times was thought of as his father, these are my favourite confirmation.

But there are more than one story of a long day or a long night. I calculated where exactly there would have been a very long sunset.

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Kurukshetra War and Joshua's Long Day
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/11/kurukshetra-war-and-joshuas-long-day.html

Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library
St. Stephen
26.XII.2019

* Actually, considering the peevish behaviour about Achilles' slave, and considering the description "οινοβαρες κ'ομμα κυνος, κραδιη δελαφοιο" and its being apt, I wonder if Hitler and Stalin couldn't sue me for libel over being compared to such a socially unpleasant despot. I also wonder whether kynoskephaloi are simply Asiatics and dog face (omma kynos) was so too, and was replaced with kynoskephaloi for Achilles using dog face with insulting intent : slit eyes can be seen on a certain dog breed.