And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.--Joshua 10:13
After the rise of Copernicanism, the quoted passage became very central. While there are other non-Copernican passages in Scripture, this one is significant because it is associated with a purported miracle, which shows God's favor to the Ancient Israelites in their war of conquest. (The whole chapter is very violent.) For example, Galileo's treatment of "the famous passage in Joshua" is central in his attempt to reconcile revelation and science in his Letter to Christina. The distinguished Newton scholar, Andrew Janiak,* has argued that Newton builds on, and subtly revises, Galileo's position. According to Janiak, Newton treats the Bible as literally true of the appearances. That is, "if scripture...proclaims that the sun once miraculously stopped moving, we should not understand this as a change in what Newton calls its “true” motion, which would obviously have to be accompanied by various dynamical effects but, rather, as a change in its apparent and relative motion, which need not be accompanied by such effects." (Janiak, 429) In this way, Newton delivers on his promise (in the scholium to the definitions of the Principia) of avoiding doing "violence to the Scriptures" (recall this post).
One striking fact about the passage from Joshua 10:13 is that it appeals to the "Book of Jasher [sic]." [סֵפֶר הַיׇּשׇׁר] Evidently, the Biblical narrative treats the "Book of Jashar" as an authoritative source.+ This book is mentioned once more in the Hebrew Bible, 2 Samuel 1:18ff, where it is cited as the source for an extended poetic quote (David's lamentation over Saul and Jonathan), which closes with a famous line: "how the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished."
The mention of the "Book of Jasher," figures in Spinoza's argument that Joshua did not compose the book commonly attributed to him. Rather, Spinoza argues, "if Joshua ever wrote any book, therefore, it must have been that which is referred to immediately before the passage just quoted (ver. 13), under the title of the Book of Jasher." (Theological Political Treatise [hereafter TTP] ch. 7) This is part of Spinoza's larger argument that the Hebrew Bible was put together by one person as a political document at the refounding of Israel. "Who this was, however, cannot be so readily shown, although from certain concurring, and by no means trifling, circumstances, I am led to suspect that Ezra was the man," (TTP ch. 8 [recall my post.]) According to Spiniza, Ezra relies on a number of other sources, some of them mentioned (not unlike the Book of Jashar) in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible.
Note, that Spinoza's position here implies that the Book of Jashar was not just known to Ezra, but also familiar to Ezra's audience (who are asked to answer the rhetorical question, with a resounding 'Yes, it's also so written in the Book of Jashar!') By Spinoza's lights this audience was not limited to the returnees from exile. This is clear in Spinoza's earlier treatment of Joshua 10:13:
In the time of Joshua the Jews believed, as the vulgar do at the present time, that the sun was in motion and the earth at rest. They did not fail accordingly to accommodate to this opinion the account of the miracle which befell in the great battle against the five kings; for they have not said simply that the day on which the battle took place seemed longer than usual, but that the sun and moon stood still in their course, ceased from their motions. Now this manner of stating the event was obviously well calculated to impress the minds of the heathen of those times who worshipped the sun, with the conviction that this luminary was under the control of another more powerful divinity, at whose nod it could be made to pause in its course against all former experience. Partly on religious grounds, therefore, partly from preconceived opinions, the Jews apprehended and related the event of the long day during the battle with the five kings very differently from the way in which it occurred in fact.--TTP, chapter 6
Leaving aside how Spinoza deals with the reported miracle, he argues plainly that "this manner of stating the event was obviously well calculated to impress the minds of the heathen of those times who worshipped the sun, with the conviction that this luminary was under the control of another more powerful divinity, at whose nod it could be made to pause in its course against all former experience." According to Spinoza, this particular Biblical text is written in such a way such that it conforms to heathen experience, that is, those that worshipped the sun as God. Spinoza would have been familiar of such a view from Plato's Apology, and the accusation that Anaxagoras (and, perhaps, Socrates) denied this much. So, here, Spinoza is suggesting that the Book of Jashar, or the account derived from it in the Hebrew Bible, was, in part, intended to convince pagan readers of the superiority of the Israelite god on pagan terms. On Spinoza's view, then, the Hebrew Bible is not just a political document that is intended to unify a community at its re-founding; it is so, in part, as a polemical work designed to convince those Israelites to forsake pagan beliefs.
As it happens, Spinoza also claims that the historical Joshua, too, would have believed that the Sun moved around the Earth (TTP Ch 2), even though Spinoza reminds the reader that "Joshua the warrior" would not have been "a competent astronomer." Spinoza himself hints that he thinks it is possible that a natural cause (e.g., "the ice and hail which then filled the air (vide Joshua x. 11), and which might have given rise to a higher refractive power in the atmosphere than usual, or, in fine, to any other condition, into the nature of which it is not our business to inquire") could have caused the phenomenon described in the Book of Jashar.**
What has all of this to do with Newton?
In his treatment of in chapter 2 of the TTP, Spinoza rightly points out that what Joshua would have experienced, strictly speaking, was "the longer continuance of the light which he witnessed." That is, that the "light of the sun" remained "longer above the horizon than" normally. That is, the verse from Joshua 10:18/Book of Jashar does not report what Joshua would have seen, but rather attributes to Joshua a theory-mediated experience/appearance (based on a false theory--Spinoza and Newton agree about this).
This does not fatally undermine Janiak's reading of Newton, nor even Newton's Biblical Hermeneutics, but it does suggest a non-trivial correction to Janiak's analysis. For, the distinction between what Joshua would have seen and what a theory-mediated description of this would be, is available to Newton. So, if one agrees with Janiak that we should attribute to Newton the desire to make the literal reading of the Bible come out true, we can only do so relative to the beliefs of the agents described in Scripture; but we should not claim that Newton would have thought that in doing so he was describing the appearances.
*[Disclosure: Andrew and I have edited a volume together on Newton.]
+The great Bible commentator, Rashi, suggests this should be read as "This matter is written in the Torah," and that we can understand the fame acquired by Joshua's miracle and victory as the prophetic fulfillment of Jacob's blessing of Ephraim. In his commentary on 2 Samuel 1:18, Rashi suggests that the Book of Jashar, is "the Book of Gen., which is the book of the just: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Rashi's position relies on the idea that a book of the just [ הַיׇּשׇׁר, that is just/straight/upright)] must refer to the Patriarchs and, so, to Genesis. But, given that David's lamentation is not found there, his reading is unpersuasive.
**Spinoza's strategy is odd here because he tends to frown on attempts to rationalize Scripture and he also thinks that the true meaning of Scripture is opaque to us.
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