How Joshua's Sun Stood Still While the World Turned

I've been reading John Walton's Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. It's a little on the dry side, but it gives you a flavor of the world of the Old Testament. One part that caught my attention was Walton's interpretation of the episode of Joshua and the sun standing still.

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. [Joshua 10:12-13]

This story is usually summarized as follows: The Israelites were battling the Amorites but were running out of daylight. So Joshua commanded the sun to stop--which it did by God's concurrence--giving them extended light in order to conquer the Amorites. That requires a bit of inference, however, since the scripture never says what Joshua's motivation was. And one thing that doesn't make sense is that Gibeon is east of Ajalon. If the sun was over Gibeon and the moon over Ajalon, it suggests that Joshua was in between them, and that it was actually morning. Why would Joshua be concerned about daylight in the morning?

The story has been a frequent focal point for battles over the nature of miracles, with defenders asserting the power of God and the need for faith and critics (who might otherwise be believers) pointing out the unlikely nature of such an occurrence. Some, such as John A. Widtsoe, took a middle ground: defending the power of God on the one hand, but recognizing that other means may have been used, or the story may have been poorly transmitted.

John Walton takes a different path that relies on knowledge of ancient Near Eastern culture. The ancients believed that the movements of celestial objects were manifestations of the power of the gods and that they communicated information about the disposition of the gods. Since these cultures used a lunar calendar to establish months, the new moon (beginning) and full moon (middle) were of particular interest to their timekeeping.

The point of full moon was determined when the sun and moon were at opposition, which is to say that the sun and moon were on opposite horizons for a few minutes. If opposition occurred on the fourteenth day of the month, then all of the days were full days (i.e. 1/30 of a month), which was a good omen. If opposition occurred on the wrong day (the fifteenth, for example), then the days of the month were not the right length, which was a bad omen. Mesopotamian omen literature contains various interpretations of celestial happenings, and commonly uses terms like stand, wait, and stop to refer to relationships between celestial objects. Walton:

When the moon and/or sun do not wait, the moon sinks over the horizon before the sun rises and no opposition occurs. When the moon and sun wait or stand, it indicates that the opposition occurs for the determination of the full moon day.

With this as background, Walton translates the Joshua passage as follows:

"O sun, wait over Gibeon and moon over the valley of Aijalon." So the sun waited and the moon stood before the nation took vengeance on its enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar, "The sun stood in the midst of the sky and did not hurry to set as on a day of full length?"

The shift in meaning is quite subtle, with most of the change being in the last phrase. "And hasted not to go down about a whole day," becomes "and did not hurry to set as on a day of full length."

I looked at a couple of alternate Bible translations to see what they do with this passage, especially the last phrase. The NIV and NRSV are both consistent with the KJV. However, Young's Literal Translation renders it as follows: "and hath not hasted to go in -- as a perfect day," which supports Walton. Thus, the way this passage is translated seems to hinge on what you think the original authors had in mind. If you didn't know about the surrounding omen literature, you wouldn't have any reason to think anything other than that the length of daylight was significantly extended.

There is still a little uncertainty as to what the exact scenario was. Some have thought that Joshua wanted a good omen for the Israelites. Walton thinks that Joshua wanted opposition to occur on the wrong day so that the Amorites would be demoralized by a bad omen.

Joshua's knowledge of the Amorites' dependence on omens may have led him to ask the Lord for one that he knew would deflate their morale-for the opposition to occur on an unpropitious day. This does not change the general idea that God fought on behalf of Israel, but it does give the interpreter a more accurate picture of the way in which God did so.

Whatever the exact details, a little background on the culture radically transforms this story and renders debate over the size of the miracle mostly moot.

Before ending, let me head off a potential objection. Helaman 12:14-15 does not authenticate the traditional interpretation of the Joshua story. Mormon does not specifically mention Joshua, so it is possible that the parallel is a coincidence. However, even if Mormon did have Joshua in mind, he may have misunderstood the meaning (or we have misunderstood Mormon's meaning) since he was long removed from ancient Near Eastern culture, as are we.

Further Reading:
See also Walton's original essay, "Joshua 10:12-15 and Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts," most of which can be read here.

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The Book of Abraham and the Great Toilet Paper Test

In light of the recent controversy over whether and how the length of the original scroll of Hor (the source of Facsimile 1) can be determined, I thought I would have a little fun and try my hand at the problem. (For background see here, here, and here.) However, not having any papyri to measure, I decided to use toilet paper as a model. Below I describe my procedure and present my results.

Methods
I did not want to use a complete roll of toilet paper because that would be a lot of work, so I searched my house for a partially used one. Having located a suitable roll, I located the end of the roll and drew a line along the edge to the cardboard center. I knew that I would not be able to draw a precise line because I needed to use a marker, which bled a little. In order to have a better defined mark along the edge, I used a knife to cut along the line. I then gradually unrolled the roll and measured the length between marks (winding length), rounding to the nearest millimeter (0.1 cm). I found that this particular brand of toilet paper could stretch a few millimeters, so I tried to always measure it while it was relaxed but straight.

The last winding was not directly measured; the circumference of the cardboard tube was used instead. This alternate method was used because it was difficult to obtain an accurate measure of the last winding due to the way the toilet paper was glued to the tube. A small length of paper extended beyond the last mark, but was ignored for convenience. Having completed this series of measurements, I rewound the toilet paper. Anyone who has rewound toilet paper knows that it is never the same as before, with the windings being somewhat more loose. The purpose of this was to simulate thicker toilet paper of the same length. I cut and marked the opposite end of the roll, and measured the new winding lengths. This time I was able to measure the last (innermost) winding length directly.

Exterior windings can be used to calculate the maximum length of missing inner roll using the Hoffmann formula. John Gee has given the formula as Z=((E²-6.25)/2S)-E, where Z = the missing remainder of the roll, E = the length of the last existing winding, and S = the average change in winding length. Andrew Cook has given the Hoffmann formula as Z=(E²–6.25)/(2S)–E+S/2. Not having access to Hoffmann's original publication, I can't say which is correct. However, I found that the two formulas agreed to within a centimeter, so for my purposes the difference is irrelevant. Here I report the form given by Gee.

Cook and Smith expressed their formula as L_n = (W_n²-W_N²)/(4piT). Although it looks different, this formula is almost identical to the Hoffmann formula, which is illustrated to the right where I have colored identical terms. Hoffmann uses 6.25 (i.e. 2.5²) assuming that the missing innermost winding would be no less than 2.5 cm. For the toilet paper, I used the actual last winding measurement in its place. T represents the change in radius, while change in winding length (S) can be thought of as circumference. Thus S = 2(pi)T (i.e. circumference = 2(pi)r), and 2S = 4(pi)T. According to Cook,

Our centered convention for the winding numbers and definition of where the missing section begins removed the factor of –E+S/2 from the right-hand side.

I don't quite understand how that works, so I just went ahead and compared the results of the equations in a straightforward manner. I don't know which is most appropriate, but I found that using Cook's expression yielded a remainder of zero on the last winding, while Hoffmann's (via Gee) gave a negative number, which suggests to me that Cook's expression is better.

Results
The results of my two tests are shown below (click for large). Each graph represents the predicted maximum length of roll remaining at each winding based on the two formulas, compared to the actual remaining length. For each test, S (or T) was calculated from either a running average of change in winding length (i.e. average of all previous windings), or as a sliding window of the average of the three previous windings. (Note that the sliding window begins at winding 4; the running average begins at winding 2.)

The Hoffmann and Cook formulas gave nearly identical results, which is not surprising since the equations are essentially the same. Test 1 using a running average S (or T) tended to overestimate the maximum remaining length, but gave fairly consistent results. In contrast, the sliding window of S (or T) gave predictions that often varied from the true remainder, sometimes dramatically.

Results for the running average S (or T) for Test 2 tended to underestimate the maximum remaining length, while the running average gave more accurate predictions. I believe that this can be accounted for by the fact that I rerolled the toilet paper by hand, which resulted in the outer windings being looser than the inner ones. The initially large changes in winding length (S) of the outer windings--as the winding became tighter--had a large impact on the running average S (and T). The sliding window, in contrast, used only local changes in S (or T) and so calculations for inner windings were not affected by the loose outer windings.

In his rebuttal to Gee, Cook wrote:

Another way of determining a scroll’s original length, which involves less math, is to plot the lengths of the extant windings and fit a straight line to the results. The missing windings will reliably lie along the straight line.

I tested this by doing a linear regression (using the spreadsheet trend function) on either the first (outer) 3 or 10 windings. Using only 3 windings yielded a prediction that was reasonably accurate for Test 1, but clearly inaccurate for Test 2. However, in both cases using 10 windings yielded predictions that agreed well with the actual length.

Cook's rebuttal contains the first seven measured winding lengths of the Hor scroll, as well as 12 remaining interpolated winding lengths. I applied the Cook/Smith formula to the first seven windings using the T value reported in their original article. I then compared that to the length given by linear regression based on the same seven windings. Agreement between the two was quite good. Finally, I compared these results to a linear regression based on only the first three winding lengths, which gave the same result to within 3 cm of the other regression.

Note: Spreadsheet is available here

Conclusions

I undertook this toilet paper test primarily as a fun exercise, and its results are only as good as my competence and accuracy, both of which may be called into question. Nevertheless, based on my exercise I conclude the following:

1. The Hoffmann and Cook/Smith formulas are essentially the same and give very similar results. Why exactly Gee found otherwise will remain unknown until he is more specific about his method. Cook has suggested that Gee mistakenly applied Cook and Smith's derived value of T for the Hor scroll to the Royal Ontario Museum, not understanding that T is unique to each scroll and derived from the winding lengths.

2. Although they may be sound in theory, these formulas can give inaccurate results, which I think can partially be attributed to uneven tightness in winding. Whatever the source of error, I think it is wise to treat the results with caution, as my results in some ways mirror those of Gee's for the Royal Ontario Museum scroll.

3. Linear regression based on as few as 10 windings gave reasonably accurate results in both tests. This may represent a better approach and, at the very least, can serve as a cross-check.

4. In the particular case of the Hor scroll, linear regression based on Cook and Smith's measurements of extant winding lengths agrees well with results obtained from using their formula, even when the regression is done using as few as three windings. I therefore think that their conclusion that the missing inner portion of the scroll was 56 cm is correct to within 10 cm. (Cook has revised the length to 51 cm because of a calculation error. My linear regression using seven windings put the missing portion at 60 cm. However, if we assume that winding lengths could be as small as an unrealistic 0.2 cm, the linear regression puts the missing length at 65 cm.)

In summary, although I believe Gee has legitimate reason to be wary of the application of these formulas, Cook and Smith's estimate of the lost portion of the Hor scroll seems correct. What, if anything, this means for the Book of Abraham depends on other assumptions and considerations.

References:
1. John Gee, Some Puzzles from the Joseph Smith Papyri.

2. Andrew Cook and Chris Smith, The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr (pdf).

3. John Gee, Formulas and Faith.

4. John Gee, Book of Abraham, I Presume.

5. Andrew Cook, Formulas and Facts: A Response to John Gee.

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The Joseph Smith Papyri: Updating the Length Controversy

Last June I blogged about attempts to determine the original length of a scroll of papyrus that Joseph Smith possessed, and from which he may have derived the Book of Abraham. At the very least we know it is the source of Facsimile 1. Andrew Cook and Chris Smith (neither of which are believing Church members, as I understand) developed a mathematical approach to determining the winding length of the scroll, which is more precise and sophisticated than simply eyeballing the papyri, and then applied a formula to determine the original length of the scroll. Their conclusion was that the scroll of Hor was too short to have contained the Book of Abraham.

John Gee, an Egyptologist associated with FARMS/Maxwell Institute, published an article in which he criticized Cook and Smith's method. According to Gee, their formula gave inaccurate results when applied to an actual complete scroll. However, I noted that I found Gee's article unsatisfactory because it did not engage Cook and Smith's article in the level of detail that it deserved. Further, in laboring to discredit their work, Gee missed or ignored the fact that their conclusion was compatible with what Gee claims to be a popular LDS view: that the Book of Abraham was more a product of revelation than a translation of text.

There have been a couple of additional developments in this little controversy, and so the story needs updating. I will take them in chronological order.

Last month Gee spoke at the annual FAIR conference and his talk touched on this issue. After briefly introducing his own attempts to apply a standard mathematical formula (developed by someone named Hoffmann), Gee said,

Andy Cook developed a slightly different formula and he and Chris Smith applied it to one of the papyri and they’ve been loudly proclaiming that they who have never worked with papyri know more than I who have been working with papyri for a quarter of a century.

Gee then showed his previously published figure that compares a known full scroll with application of Hoffmann's formula compared to Cook and Smith's. Gee claimed to have found 5 errors in Cook and Smith's work, though he did not specify what they were. He then showed the results of fixing one of those unspecified errors, which greatly improved the results (red), compared to the real scroll length (blue) and Cook and Smith's original formula (green). (For some reason, he could not be bothered to label his data series or axes.)

Gee commented:

The errors are therefore something in Cook’s formula and methodology and not something in the papyrus measurements. It shows us that Cook’s methodology is fundamentally flawed.

Now, I attribute Cook’s mistakes to working in a new field, where neither he nor Chris Smith have had any experience working with papyrus before. And there were some math mistakes that for some reason Cook did not catch. As you can see, if he corrected one mistake it would have made a big difference in his results.

Gee concluded by saying that both the Hoffmann and Cook/Smith formulas make some "fallacious assumptions" and that they can, at best, "give a ballpark estimate."

Andrew Cook has responded in the most recent issue of Dialogue. The article, "Formulas and Facts: A Response to John Gee" (subscription required) hits back at Gee on several counts. According to Cook,

1. Gee misunderstands the Cook/Smith equation, not realizing that it is the same as the Hoffmann equation, though expressed slightly differently.

2. As a corollary, Gee's representation of differences of result between the Hoffmann and Cook/Smith formulas is incorrect. They should be exactly the same.

3. Gee erroneously accuses Cook and Smith of estimating the thickness of the papyri in order to derive winding lengths, when in reality Cook and Smith measured winding lengths in order to derive thickness.

4. Differences in the smoothness of the two lines suggest that Gee did not treat the formulas consistently, which had the effect of exaggerating the alleged inferiority of Cook and Smith's formula. Further, it appears that he applied the thickness derived by Cook and Smith for the Hor scroll to the known Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) scroll instead of deriving a new value for the ROM scroll.

5. Cook obtained winding measurements for the same ROM scroll, and applied the Hoffmann and Cook/Smith formulas, and compared the results to the actual scroll length. The results of the two formulas were identical, and both were nearly identical to the actual scroll.

6. The novel contribution of the Cook/Smith paper was the autocorrelation method of identifying the winding lengths, which has been mostly overlooked. Accurate measurement is important for the reliability of the result.

7. Cook concedes that their paper contains a calculation error. However, it is not known whether that was among the errors Gee claimed to find, and anyway it only made a difference of 5 cm in the final result.

I can't adjudicate all of these points, but I think Cook makes a good case. For example, take point #3. In his "Formulas and Faith" article, Gee wrote:

Cook and Smith use the thickness of the papyri (which they did not measure but only estimated) as an indication of the change in diameter to calculate the difference between the lengths of successive windings in the scroll. Hoffmann—knowing that most papyri are already mounted, thus rendering it impossible to measure the thickness—uses the average difference between successive windings for the same purpose....

With the data gleaned from this intact roll in Toronto (that is, the individual winding lengths), I applied each of the mathematical formulas, using the assumptions made by the authors of the formulas concerning papyrus thickness, air-gap size, and size of smallest interior winding.

But as Cook correctly points out, they clearly did not begin by estimating the thickness and air-gap size. Rather, they used a similar method to that of Hoffmann--using winding length to derive effective thickness (i.e. change in radius). "Our primary task therefore, is to determine the effective thickness of the papyrus from the winding lengths." I can't help but conclude that Gee is wrong here.

It appears to me that on the technical merits Cook and Smith really do have the upper hand. Gee may have a quarter of a century experience working with papyri, but it's not obvious to me why that should give him mathematical superiority, particularly when his adversary (Cook) is apparently a theoretical physicist. We are talking about physical dimensions here, after all. If Gee ends up eating humble pie after having trashed Cook and Smith's work, he's only got himself to blame.

However, I do think that Gee's sense of caution is legitimate. I will explain why in my next post.

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Important Experimental Evolution Result Detailed

In 1988 biologist Richard Lenski started 12 identical cultures of E. coli bacteria and began propagating them every day to study their evolution. Along the way, he and his students froze cultures so that they could always go back and study them more closely. A few years ago his lab reported that after about 31,000 generations the bacteria had gained the ability to live on citrate as a food source. The results received a lot of fanfare and attracted the interest of anti-evolutionists. However, the paper describing the result was not fully satisfying because it didn't look into the underlying genetic changes that gave rise to the citrate-eating ability.

This week Lenski's lab published a follow-up paper and we now know what happened....mostly. E. coli already have a gene (citT) for a protein that imports citrate into the bacterial cell, but it isn't turned on in the presence of oxygen. When they looked at the citrate-eating bacteria, they found that the area around that gene had been duplicated, but in a way that put the duplicated gene under a new promoter, which is a section of DNA that regulates when genes are turned on. This is illustrated in Figure 2 of the paper:

The new arrangement allowed citT to be turned on in the presence of oxygen and, lo and behold, citrate-eating bacteria were born. However, they weren't very efficient at first so further tweaks to the new arrangement refined their ability. Some of these tweaks included further duplications of the new arrangement to increase the amount of the importer protein produced.

This would all be interesting enough, but they also found that if they went back and inserted the new gene arrangement into ancestral bacteria from before generation 20,000, it hardly worked. But it did work if they put it in ancestral bacteria after generation 20,000. This fits with their previous results where they found that the ability to eat citrate could re-evolve in cultures started from stocks after generation 20,000. It thus appears that other unspecified mutations elsewhere in the genome set the table for the gene duplication and rearrangement to be useful. Unfortunately we may never know what those other mutations were because even with the genome sequence, figuring out which mutations were important would be an enormous amount of work. Interestingly, when they looked at the genomes of the bacteria from the re-play experiments, they found that the same kind of gene duplication and rearrangement often occurred but that no two were exactly alike. In a few cases the genetic event was quite different while giving the same basic result.

The authors propose that evolution often proceeds in a manner that can be divided into three parts: potentiation, actualization and refinement. First, mutations accumulate that are of little significance on their own. Second, some kind of genetic event occurs that results in a new function or new regulation of the function. This genetic event is able to be accommodated because of the previously unimportant mutations. Third, the new ability is refined by further mutation.

The whole study is quite elegant and was clearly a lot of work, and it will go down as a landmark in experimental evolution. Yet, its results are not surprising. These kinds of genetic events can be inferred to have occurred many times in the genomes of all manner of organisms, including humans. But now we have a detailed record of one that occurred (and re-occurred) in a laboratory. This study is also a clear refutation of the ridiculous but frequent claim by creationists that mutations can only degrade genetic information.


See also Carl Zimmer's summary: The Birth of the New, The Rewiring of the Old

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Genome Junk

A mini scientific controversy has broken out this week, exacerbated by anti-evolutionists, that has to do with how much of the human genome is functional. It may surprise you to learn that only about 1% of the genome codes for proteins. Since proteins are the foundation of all of the building blocks of the body and all of its chemistry, it is reasonable to wonder what the rest of the 99% of the genome is for.

Although it has become common in both popular and scientific publications to claim that the rest was long dismissed as junk, this ahistorical claim is not correct. Biologists have long recognized that other non-coding parts of the genome (i.e. not coding for protein) play important regulatory roles in gene expression. For example, in order for a protein to be made, DNA must first be transcribed into RNA, which is then used as the template for protein synthesis. In order for transcription to occur a collection of proteins must assemble around DNA upstream of the gene, which then proceed along the DNA while copying it into RNA form. Some stretches of DNA are particularly attractive places for the transcription machinery to assemble, and these are known as promoters (because they promote gene transcription; get it?). Over the decades additional methods of regulation have been recognized. More recently it has been recognized that RNA molecules themselves can serve important regulatory functions. But the basic point to be made here is that biologists have long understood that not all non-coding DNA is worthless junk.

However, biologists have also come to understand that over 50% of the genome is made of the remnants of viruses and other self-replicating pieces of DNA. In addition, there are extra broken copies of genes scattered around the genome. Although there are some interesting cases where these elements have taken on a function by helping to turn on/off a particular gene, or something similar, it is hard for many biologists to imagine that all of it has important function. After all, the genome is not static and these are ongoing phenomena. Sometimes a novel insertion of one of these elements can cause disease. Yet there are some biologists who think that most, if not all, of the genome has function because of stringent natural selection.

This debate would probably attract little attention if it weren't for anti-evolutionists. The notion that much of the genome is full of dispensable junk built up over millions of years is offensive to people who think that God created the human genome out of whole cloth. Why would he load it up with useless junk? As the Intelligent Design movement was taking shape, ID proponents made what they claimed was a scientific prediction based on ID: that there is no junk DNA. The reasoning is that if the human genome is designed, then it won't contain lots of non-functional DNA [1]. ID proponents have been pushing this and have trumpeted every report of DNA being moved from the non-functional category to the functional.

This week a high-profile paper was published claiming that 80% of the genome is functional, and most of the reporting has followed along with the narrative that whereas scientists used to think that the genome was mostly junk, it turns out to almost all be functional. However, a lot turns on the meaning of the word functional, and the lead author of the paper has admitted to setting the bar extremely low. For example, if a section of DNA is transcribed into RNA it is deemed functional. But what is missing is evidence that all of that RNA actually does anything important for the cells in question. After all, the basic interactions of DNA with its environment are governed by the laws of chemistry (and the underlying laws of physics), and there is going to be noise. Should we really believe that none of those RNA transcripts are accidental by-products of chemistry? Similar questions can be raised about the other criteria used to judge a piece of DNA functional, like protein binding, etc. Critics suspect, based on comments by the lead author, that the 80% bit was really a gambit to increase the splash of the paper.

Evolutionary biologist T. Ryan Gregory has been writing about the junk DNA issue for years at his blog. Since most vertebrates have about the same number of genes (20,000-30,000), an often unstated assumption is that more complex organisms need more extra DNA to regulate those same number of genes in more complex ways. However, it turns out that genome size does not correlate with organismal complexity, which has led Gregory to propose the onion test.

The onion test is a simple reality check for anyone who thinks they have come up with a universal function for non-coding DNA. Whatever your proposed function, ask yourself this question: Can I explain why an onion needs about five times more non-coding DNA for this function than a human?

I'm with the critics on this one, and not just because it defies the ID brand. The claim that 80% of the genome is functional just doesn't pass the smell test (or, in my view, the onion test), and it renders the term functional virtually meaningless.

For more on this controversy, see Nature's blog post, Fighting about ENCODE and junk. T. Ryan Gregory and Larry Moran have been blogging about this at a furious pace. You can find entries into their analysis here. For more general background on junk DNA, Gregory has a nice collection of older posts (both his and others').



Notes:
1. Like so much else with ID, lack of junk DNA is not a scientific prediction based on ID. This is because ID proponents also disclaim any knowledge of the designer's motives or identity. That being the case, there is no reason to think that the designer would avoid accumulation of junk DNA. For example, the designer could have started life, or a few lineages of life, and let them evolve from there. If these lineages accumulated junk DNA, they would still be in line with the central claims of ID. You cannot claim that junk DNA is incompatible with design while simultaneously claiming not to know anything about the methods or motives of the designer. Well, actually you can because it's a free country, so you can say anything you want. But we're talking about logical discourse here.

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Arctic Sea Ice is Recovering

The summer of 2007 saw a record in seasonal Arctic sea ice melt. A few years later in an online discussion, I was told that Arctic sea ice was recovering. This was based on the fact that sea ice melt in subsequent years had not reached the low point of 2007. A look at decade-scale trends did not support the assertion, but hey--trends shmends!

This summer is smashing the 2007 record low (source).

We've already passed the previous record, and we probably have not hit bottom quite yet.

But here's the good news: Seasonal Arctic sea ice melt in the next couple of years will probably not reach this year's low. And that means Arctic sea ice is recovering! Yay!

Skeptical Science illustrates how this game is played (note that 2012 is not shown (yet?)):

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Another Utah Geology Report

Last month our family took a trip to Utah. I always enjoy my visits there--which sadly seem to be increasingly spaced apart. Having been an easterner for most of my life, I love the change in scenery that Utah offers and I try to incorporate learning a little geology each time I visit. This post is my show-and-tell report, focusing on southeastern Utah again. (Previous reports here, here, and here).

Let me pause to highlight two helpful resources for learning about Utah's geological history. The Utah Geological Survey website has lots of good information that can help you get a general feel for the history. Also, I spent a lot of time with Utah's Spectacular Geology: How it Came to Be, by Lehi Hintze, in my hand. Hintze divides the geological history into nine chapters. But the best part of the book is toward the end where 19 areas are given individual treatment, including photographs with labels. (See modest recreation of one image below.) I found the book to be very helpful and informative. Its one defect is the lack of an index (!).

OK, moving on. We spent a day down at Arches National Park (ANP). But first we stopped at Dead Horse Point (DHP), which is near by and a must-see if you've never been there. When you turn west off Highway 191 onto 313 toward DHP, look to the right and you will see this, (but without labels). (Click for larger.)

The labeling is based on a similar image in Hintze's book. The Wingate Sandstone is pretty easily identifiable at both DHP and ANP, and the Chinle Formation is rather distinct with its green coloring. The Chinle Formation contains uranium--too bad I didn't have a Geiger counter to play with.

On this trip I experimented with taking images that could be viewed in 3D. This was easily done by snapping a picture, taking a step to the side, and taking another picture. I've put them side-by-side below. Look between the two pictures and relax your eyes, as though you are looking through your screen. With a little practice, you should be able to bring the two images together such that you see three images. You'll be focused on the one in the middle, which should lock into place and become 3D. Once you are successful, should be able to keep the effect while moving through the pictures. You can see slightly larger versions by clicking on them, but you may have more difficulty bringing them together. I find it helps to back away from the screen a little, and then once I have the image I can look closer.

Dead Horse Point

Arches National Park

This next picture is of the Fiery Furnace at ANP. I didn't realize at the time that my life was in danger, but when I looked at the picture I saw that the Grim Reaper was coming after me.

Book Cliffs

On the east side of the road between Price and Green River are what are known as the Book Cliffs. Some Internet sources say that they get their name because they look like shelves of books. However, I have it on pretty good authority that it's actually because of their appearance from above--they look like pages at the edge of an open book. The grey rocks are Mancos shale, which was laid down over 65 million years ago when the interior of North America was covered by sea (picture the Gulf of Mexico stretching up through Canada) with Utah as the western shoreline.

North of Price is a small town called Helper. Just north of the merger of Highway 6 with 191, Highway 6 cuts through rock. That black strip is a coal seam.

We only spent a day in the Moab area, but those are the geological highlights of our trip. I took a lot of pictures that I would like to share, but they just don't do the area justice! Go see it for yourself; I don't think you'll be disappointed. I can't wait to go back.

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Surely it is the Earth that Moveth

The Book of Mormon seems to be explicitly heliocentric. In a passage expressing his frustration with mankind, Mormon writes about God (with an apparent allusion to Joshua):

14 Yea, if he say unto the earth—Thou shalt go back, that it lengthen out the day for many hours—it is done;

15 And thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun. (Helaman 12:14-15)

What is this kind of statement doing in a document that purports to be ancient? Did the Nephites understand the workings of the solar system better than most of the ancients? Is it an anachronism that gives away Joseph as a fraud? Or is it possible that the scientific clarification was a commentary made during the translation process?

In the latest issue of BYU Studies, David Grandy argues that none of the above are correct. In his article, "Why Things Move: A New Look at Helaman 12:15" (subscription required), Grandy draws on the work of John Walton to contend that this is a case of our failure to understand ancient ways of thinking. We are the children of Newton, who think of matter as inanimate and passively following physical laws, like machines. God doesn't need to push the earth around the sun, gravity does that. In contrast, the ancients saw God's hand in all aspects of the world, including motion. If we look at the larger context of Mormon's statement, we see that he emphasizes that everything on earth obeys and moves according to God's command--except man. The verses surrounding 14 and 15 are all about how various parts of the earth (dust, hills, mountains, water) move, shake, part, rock, dry, etc, as commanded.

Grandy writes:

Rather than confirming Copernican cosmology, this verse suggests that Mormon is invoking Joshua’s event, not because Joshua’s account is scientifically inaccurate and therefore in need of correction, but because it reinforces Mormon’s own admonition that humans, being indigenous to the earth (their bodies made of the dust of the earth), should follow the many examples of responsive obedience they witness among things with which they are intimate—dust, hills, mountains, the foundation of the earth, the great deep, and so on.

This is all well and good, but Mormon specifically says, "the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still...for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun." Grandy notes that although this sounds like it assumes axial rotation and orbiting, those are assumptions that we bring to the passage. If he was like other ancients, Mormon did not share our concept of a sphere sitting in space. He would instead have pictured something like the picture to the left [image source]. The focus in these verses is on movements of the earth; it can move back and forth, and thus "goeth back." The contrast drawn with the sun is simply tailoring language to keep focus on the earth.

I'm not sure whether I buy this. I am quite sympathetic to attributing differences between scripture and science to differences in culture and worldview, so when Grandy asserts that Mormon did not share our scientific outlook, I'm on board. My trouble is that verse 15 is so suggestive to me of Copernican motion. If I try to empty my head of orbits and revolutions, does Mormon's statement make sense given the context? I guess it kind of does--maybe I just need to get used to it. I think it helps to keep in mind that Mormon referred to "the earth," not "Earth." That's a subtle but perhaps important difference.

I don't know whether he is right or not, but I think Grandy's argument is at least worth considering.

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