Case file · Cosmic event
The sun stands still at Gibeon
Joshua 10 says the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Aijalon until Israel had defeated the Amorite kings.
1,200 BCE · 31.85, 35.19 · status: legend
The account
The passage quotes a lost 'Book of Jashar'. Some writers have tried to match it to a solar eclipse; a 2017 paper proposed an annular eclipse on 30 October 1207 BC. Immanuel Velikovsky famously linked it to a near-collision with Venus.
The sceptical view
Most scholars read it as poetry; the eclipse dating is speculative, and Velikovsky's theory is rejected by astronomers.