Our modern knowledge of the mechanics of movement is irrelevant. Movement in and of itself is relative, and can't ever be described without of point of reference.
And the biblical point of reference is an earth which is fixed in place with all movement being relative to the fixed earth.
Yes, it literally moved across the sky and one day literally stopped.
Absolutely. That is the only possible literal interpretation of Joshua 13 as Martin Luther pointed out. "Joshua told the sun to stop, not the earth."
They merely described movement, and were literal and right in doing so.
Well, they certainly believed their description was literal.
Most of us no longer accept their descriptions as legitimately literal.
But for some reason I cannot fathom, some people want to have their cake and eat it too: accept the current scientific model of the universe, dispense with the literal meaning of scriptural passages referring to a different model, and still claim to be interpreting scripture literally. It's laughable. Today's scientific models don't allow for any fixed point of reference, view the diurnal "motion" of the sun as a reflection of the actual motion of the earth, view the earth as moving not fixed, and the whole solar system in motion relative to the rest of the galaxy and the whole universe as expanding. There is no way to reconcile this with a literal understanding of the relevant scriptural passages, based as they are on a view which sees the earth as literally fixed in place and the heavens in motion about it.
If fact, we may be way off today in our understandings of the mechanics of movement. That doesn't mean we're not speaking literally when we speak of sunsets.
Yes, it does, because in our frame of reference the sun does not literally set; the earth turns on its axis away from the sun. So in our frame of reference "sunset" is a figure of speech, not a literal description.
Glu I've corrected you on this before, and I hope it sticks this time. Earth in their nomenclature simply meant land, and the land is fixed on a foundation.
Makes no difference. True the dry land is fixed on foundations--but where? In the abyss--the infinite ocean which fills all space outside of the earth and its protecting firmament overhead. Even the heavenly bodies moved across the firmament on its underside, near the earth, not above the boundary of the firmament. Up there is only water. It is quite meaningless to attribute motion to the earth in any sense in biblical terminology. It does not move through the abyss, because it is fixed on foundations within the circle circumscribed by God as he began creation (Proverbs 8:27-29)
The writers were not talking about a land/sea unit in the shape of a globe or disc. They may have had ideas about that, but never spoke from those ideas. "And God called the dry land, earth." It's just a word for land.
It is true they were not speaking of a globe. But several verses refer to the earth as a circle i.e. a disc. Whether that refers only to the dry land, or to the dry land and its encircling ring of ocean does not seem to be relevant.
But even if the police officer didn't know that, it wouldn't matter. The office is still speaking literally. Knowledge of mechanics is irrelevant.
I thought it was the motorist who was objecting that he could not stop because even if he brought his vehicle to a standstill he was still moving. In fact, the only way he could conceive of saying such a thing is that he does have a rudimentary understanding of celestial mechanics, and he (probably correctly) thinks that the officer does as well. So yes, they both understand that the officer's command "stop" is literal, and also relative.
My point is that from the perspective of the biblical authors it is not relative since the earth is not moving. A stop is both literally and actually a stop. They would not be able to conceive of the possibility that even standing still they are still in motion due to the movement of the earth, the solar system, the galaxy etc. These notions were not part of their understanding and would have seemed nonsensical to them if they were proposed.
Yes, and then they would explain to you what earth meant when you start talking about planet earth.
You are assuming that I am always speaking of earth as a planet. But while that is our modern view, it is not the biblical view. Earth was never considered to be a planet until Copernicus' model of the solar system was accepted. (Furthermore, planets were considered to be stars not-fixed to a constellation and to be the same sort of substance as other stars, not like the earth at all.)
To me it seems you are trying to conflate two incompatible models: the earth/dry land, fixed to its foundations in the abyss, yet the earth/ocean unit as a globe circumnavigating the sun. In the biblical view, earth is no part of a globe at all, not even in a geocentric model such as the Greeks later developed.
So when we want to understand the literal meaning of what the biblical authors wrote and how it was understood by their audience, we have to use their model. They were literally referring to that model which has nothing to do with earth as a globe or earth as a planet or any view in which the earth moves relative to anything else. Rather all physical motion is relative to the one still point: the earth. So all the movements of sun, moon and stars are as literal as the movement of a chariot on the surface of the earth.
