Hot answers tagged astronomy
6
Alfred Edersheim, on Page 1135 of his book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, writes:
It could not have been an eclipse, since it was the time of full moon; nor can we place reliance on the later reports on this subject of ecclesiastical writers. It seems only in accordance with the Evangelic narrative to regard the occurrence of the event as ...
4
NASA interprets the passage:
...tells of an "accidental" sundial, in which the number of steps covered by the Sun's shadow on a staircase was used to measure the passage of time. In that story, the shadow miraculously retreated ten steps on the staircase built by King Ahaz.
The word translated "steps" also is translated as "degrees" (likely ...
4
As evocative as the phrase is, the context excludes an astronomical interpretation. The poetry of the Psalms comes largely from use of repetition and parallelism. A psalmist often repeats the same idea in two or more phrasings in order to solidify what they are speaking of. In this psalm, we see:
"God reigns over the nations"
"The princes of the ...
3
The simple meaning ("pshat") of the oral tradition is "They were unfaithful to the LORD and the resulting births were illegitimate. They will be consumed in a single month, together with their possessions".
So what's the problem? It starts with "chodesh", which can mean
"month" referring to some particular month such as next month, or the month of tamuz
...
2
The rabbis of the talmud, recording received oral tradition, appear to understand God to have arranged the stars into their constellations. The following passage from Tractate B'rachot 58b (in the Babylonian talmud) comments on the passages brought in this question (among others):
Samuel contrasted two texts. It is written, Who maketh the Bear, Orion, ...
2
I think the wording of the text draws our minds to ponder the beauty and arrangement of the stars and the power of God who put them in their place. Back in the days before electricity, the heavens would have been the most fascinating movie theatre to watch and it is no surprise that ancient philosophers identified the idea of God/gods with them and paid ...
2
This was also recorded by the chinise on the same date. They said the sun set and later rose back up.They had two sunsets in one day. Other sisemic events were recored on this date globily. Answer The sun or the planets did not move, the earth didn't stop spining. It was a polar shift of the earth's crust mayby ten or more degrees. Recently Around the time ...
1
The ancient Hebrew calendar was based on the cycle of the moon. Passover happened at the 14th of Nissan. Since we know that 1 Nissan would have been a new moon (required for a total eclipse), we know that the moon would have been waxing and nearly full on the 14th. This makes a natural total solar eclipse impossible.
That said, it says nothing of a ...
1
In Gen 1.1 'heavens' is a dual form of the word. God created two heavens and one earth. These are heavens 1 and 2 as listed above. They are created heavens.
The third heaven is referred to as the heaven of heavens:
2Ch 6:18 But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth?
behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much
...
1
What is a "son"?
In the genealogy of Joseph in Luke 3:38, Adam is described as the "son of God" because he was directly created by God.
In like manner, God is the progenitor of all angels. (They are non-procreating beings according to Matthew 22:30.) Thus as beings who are created directly by God, they are "sons of God."
Thus the "sons of God" shouted for ...
1
The morning stars (more than one) sung together implying they were a group or a choir, a soloist doesn't sing together, they just sing. The sons of God shouted, didn't say they sung. Maybe the morning stars was the heavenly choir and "The morning star" was the choir director, at first Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12) but he fell and now it is Jesus (Revelation ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
