Paula

Another perspective on “the sun stood still”:

It’s no different than saying “sunrise” or “sunset”. Even in the most literal context, where we really mean the time we first see the sun or the last time we see it in a day, the expression itself is figurative. The figure of speech itself is poetic if you will, but the reference is to something very literal. This is standard textual analysis.

So if “the sun stood still”, what matters is that there was a literal miracle where the sun, from our perspective, did not move. Likewise, in creation week everything is from our perspective. And while we can’t get into complex theories of space-time here, there is no scientific reason to deny that what may have taken a gazillion years out in space, from that vantage point, could have appeared from Earth to take a day.

But while this deals with distant starlight in a young universe, it does not impinge upon the fact of “our perspective” as to the length of creation days. The Hebrew wording– “evening and morning, day [n]” (the two terms together rule out vague periods of time) is clearly indicative of literal solar days from our common experience, from our perspective; whatever happens on Earth is from that perspective. So if Moses was told by God to write “evening and morning, day [n]”, then that is what literally happened here on Earth. Not even the poetry defense can stand against that.