Joshua's lost day: NASA never searched for it

NASA responded in writing in the 1960s that this finding never came out of its offices. The chain keeps circulating anyway, forwarded by an uncle or the sister from church, in slideshows and videos with epic music.

From a Yale instructor to a generator salesman

The trail has three names and none of them is an astronomer. In 1890, Charles A. L. Totten, an instructor of military tactics at Yale, published "Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz" and dated the battle of Gibeon with his own chronology.

In 1936, Harry Rimmer picked up the idea in "The Harmony of Science and Scripture" and added a skeptical astronomer who converted upon seeing the numbers.

In the 1960s, Harold Hill, owner of a company that serviced electric generators at Goddard, modernized it with computers and IBM. He told it at every school that invited him and published it in a book in 1974.

He was never a NASA consultant, his company didn't do orbital calculations, and he himself admitted he hadn't seen anything. The 40 minutes appear when someone reads "ten degrees" as degrees of a circle; the 23 hours and 20 minutes were chosen so the sum would give 24, according to Snopes.

What Scripture really says

Here's what the chain claims: the Bible does narrate something extraordinary. "And the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day" (Joshua 10:13, ESV). And in the account of King Hezekiah, the shadow goes back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz (2 Kings 20:9-11, ESV).

The text doesn't give hours, or minutes, or instruments, or a laboratory certificate. It gives something greater: "There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel" (Joshua 10:14, ESV).

No agency signs off on God's miracles. He stopped the sun without asking any computer's permission. What makes the story sticky is that it brings acronyms, titles and a proper name that sound like a case file, and it promises to win the argument against science in one blow.

It also helps that it has a half-truth inside. That's why it's told from the pulpit as if a NASA engineer had confirmed it.

To recognize similar claims, look at three signs: figures that close exactly, borrowed authority from someone who never said anything, and chains that don't link to the original document.

Before forwarding the next fact that "proves" your faith, look for the document. If it doesn't appear, don't share it: the credibility that gets lost isn't the chain's, but the message's. What story of this kind did they tell you that later turned out to be false?