‘Miracle’ in the Bible was actually a real solar eclipse, researchers say

A “miracle” described in the Bible was actually a solar eclipse more than 3,000 years ago – and scientists have now been able to precisely date it.

The Old Testament describes how the ‘Sun stood still and the Moon stopped’ in the book of Joshua.

Scientists now believe the passage referred to a real “ring of fire” eclipse on October 30, 1207BC – and the find may also allow researchers to accurately date the reign of Egyptian pharaohs such as Ramesses the Great.

When Joshua leads the Israelites to victory, the Bible says, “Joshua spoke to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered the Amorites (semi-nomadic people from the Middle East region) before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still upon Gibeon.”

Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, of Cambridge University’s Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy said: “If these words are describing a real observation, then a major astronomical event was taking place – the question for us to figure out is what the text actually means.

“Going back to the original Hebrew text, we determined that an alternative meaning could be that the sun and moon just stopped doing what they normally do – they stopped shining.”

Evidence that the Israelites were in Canaan between 1500 and 1050 BC can be found in the Merneptah Stele, an Egyptian text dating from the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah, son of the well-known Ramesses the Great.

The large granite block, held in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, says that it was carved in the fifth year of Merneptah’s reign and mentions a campaign in Canaan in which he defeated the people of Israel.

Earlier historians tried to date the eclipse using this evidence – but only looked at total eclipses, in which the disc of the sun appears to be completely covered by the moon as the moon passes directly between the earth and the sun.

What the earlier historians failed to consider whether the event was an annular eclipse, in which the moon passes directly in front of the sun, but is too far away to cover the disc completely.

The further distance creates a “ring of fire” appearance.

From their calculations, they determined that the only annular eclipse visible from Canaan between 1500 and 1050 BC was on 30 October 1207 BC, in the afternoon - one of the first known recordings of an eclipse in history.

Professor Humphreys said, “This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Hebrew word translated ‘stand still’ has the same root as a Babylonian word used in ancient astronomical texts to describe eclipses.”