High Spy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 26, 2023 12:44 am
Chap wrote: ↑Mon Dec 25, 2023 11:00 pm
Oh, right. I just thought it was the dull old business of the moon happening to pass over the line of sight to the sun of people on some rather narrow strip of the earth's surface.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionaries/eastons-Bible-dictionary/eclipse.html wrote:Eclipse [N]
of the sun alluded to in Amos 8:9 ; Micah 3:6 ; Zechariah 14:6 ; Joel 2:10 . Eclipses were regarded as tokens of God's anger ( Joel 3:15 ; Job 9:7 ). The darkness at the crucifixion has been ascribed to an eclipse ( Matthew 27:45 ); but on the other hand it is argued that the great intensity of darkness caused by an eclipse never lasts for more than six minutes, and this darkness lasted for three hours. Moreover, at the time of the Passover the moon was full, and therefore there could not be an eclipse of the sun, which is caused by an interposition of the moon between the sun and the earth.
[...]
Yup, in ancient times before people knew why eclipses of the sun and moon occurred, they often interpreted these striking events as being some kind of message from superhuman powers. That was the best they could do.
Here is an analogy. Some people (call them 'the X') who have never seen a mechanical clock are visited by some people from far away (call them 'the Y') who bring a great big grandfather clock with them. The X see that when the strange thing goes bong, once or several times, the Y do things like going to bed, cooking dinner, praying and so on. So the X conclude "Those noises are the voice of their deity, who tells them what to do and when to do it". But after a number of years, a little X girl gets friendly with a little Y girl, who opens the clock case and shows her all the wheels, how the descending clock weights make them turn, and even how the striking train of wheels makes the 'bongs' happen.
But when the little X girl runs off and tells her grandmother about her discovery, the grandmother tells her not to be disrespectful of her elders, who Know Best. The little girl persists, and after a few years, one of the elders concedes that yes, the wheels do make the bongs happen. BUT ... the Y people's deity made the wheels exactly the right size and shape to ensure that the bongs happened at the right moments when the Y deity wanted his worshippers to go to bed, cook dinner, pray and so on.
It's a bit like that nowadays. Few people who have had the chance to study the science will deny that since the time of Newton, we have been able to do calculations that will tell us, for instance, stuff like "Next month people in New York will see the moon passing between them and the sun for a few minutes on [this day] at [this time]; people in Florida won't see anything unusual'. And that's exactly how things turn out, every time. (By the way, Einstein makes very little difference in such cases). But somehow they still want to think that the ideas of ancient people who wrongly ascribed eclipses to divine action still have something to say that is of practical significance.
Aren't people strange?
