In 1207 BCE, as an army of Israelites waged a bitter conflict against soldiers from Canaan, the sun all but disappeared. The event had all the markings of divine intervention, and the auspicious occurrence would go on to be recorded in the Old Testament. Today, eclipses have lost the aura of religious significance, but this particular occasion was special. It’s the first time we can confirm that an eclipse was ever recorded for posterity, say researchers from Cambridge University.
Their work drew from not only the Bible, but an Egyptian stele and complex calculations describing the movements of heavenly bodies. The new insights provide both a better timeframe for the Egyptian pharaonic dynasties and more precise measurements of changes in the Earth’s rotational speed.
The researchers began with the Biblical passage, one translation of which reads: “And the Sun stood still, and the Moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance ...
