Brian Withnell
Puritan Board Junior
If God says it figuratively, and Joshua said it with misconception, both are still in the text. What one might demand for figurative markers doesn't matter. If God said it so they would understand it, and yet it is figurative because we know it so, then demanding that God should have said it differently so it makes sense scientifically is not what we are able to demand of God.
The spanner in your works comes in the fact that there is no shift between (1.) Joshua's prayer, (2.) God's answer to the prayer, and (3.) The inspired narrator's statement of fact. From each and every perspective, the sun stood still. In a fight between the text and the interpreter the text wins every time. Just concede!
The text speaks in terms understandable to persons at the time (all three, Joshua's prayer, God's answer, and the narrator). And it is perfectly understandable today even as we know the truth more clearly (and yet would still use the exact same language). You are arguing that the text cannot state what it states in a manner which does not answer the question you want answered. You are demanding that it speak how you would want it to speak. I'm not demanding it say anything other than Joshua asked (in the way he could) for the day to be extended, that God answered (in the way Joshua would understand) and the narrator stated the same in the way that people of the time would understand.
What I see you doing is demanding that if the heliocentric model is true, and that what happened in the big picture was the change of rotation of the earth, that it would have somehow had to have been communicated. I hit the buzz, wrong question being asked of scripture button ... if the concept was not known, then the question answered would not be the one that contains the concept, and the expressions used would have been the most natural to the people of the day.
The question remains, if there was no concept of rotation of the Earth, how would they have expressed it? "Appeared to stand still" would have made no sense as the person of the day.
Joshua would certainly have asked for the sun to stand still. And God would condescend to answer in the terms the question was asked, and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing. The passage does not loose anything if it does not talk to the physical motions involved, but states them uniformly as what would be observed. If the same thing happened today, it would probably be described the same way even if the writer believed in rotation of the earth.