Jim writes:

> To which I reply: Nonsense!
>
>  Aristotle wasn't born until 384 BC, and Copernicus wasn't even born until
>  1473 AD, so it would be quite impossible for Joshua and company to have
been
>  Copernicans.  Joshua assumed command circa 1407 BC, so the early Israelites
>  couldn't really be called Aristotleans either.
>
>  My guess would be they were Jewish...

The Jews, having spent time in both Egypt and Babylon, were as obviously
influenced as any people would be by the prevailing thoughts of their time,
just as Aristotle was. The only theory at the time -- indeed it was not a
"theory", but a truth inviolate -- was the the Earth was at the center of the
universe and that the firmament rotated daily and yearly around the Earth.

I didn't mean to imply that Aristotle predated Joshua. I simply used
"Aristotlean" as shorthand. In that regard, a very brief timeline of ancient
astronomical views is available at:

    http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/AstSub/astro104/Notes/stars01.pdf

The notions of a geocentric (what we commonly call an Aristotlean) universe
were well over 3000 years old by the time of Joshua. The Egyptians had a
calendar that wasn't again duplicated in its accuracy until the Gregorian
nearly 4000 years later.

Every agrarian society becomes an astronomical society, but no group until
only recently  became so good at it as did the
Mesopotamians/Sumerians/Egyptians. These people lived in deserts, with
magnificent black skies, and a life-sustaining dependency on predicting the
seasons.

Wirt Atmar

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