[jcranmer]

... That's the claim of an eclipse in Joshua? It's baloney.

I've seen a total eclipse in person. The most dramatic part of it, which doesn't seem to come out in most modern accounts, is the speed and intensity of what happens when totality happens: 98% coverage is much tamer than than 100%. The temperature drops by several degrees--it feels like at least 10°F--and the sky goes from "it feels cloudy" to "it's dusk except I see light in all directions."

For someone in a pre-Axial Age religion (such as then-contemporary Judaism), which makes a heavy theme out of the idea that humans need to perform rituals to literally keep the universe going, the first thoughts are going to be "how did we screw up?" and even after things return to normal, it's likely to still leave people with the impression that they narrowly avoided the end of the universe.

It's difficult to see even a liberal priest making rhetorical flourishes to older traditions converting an eclipse to that kind of depiction. The text pretty much has a running theme of "gee, it would be nice if the day were longer so I could finish slaughtering my enemies;" eclipses (even if not total) are notable for their very distinct darkening of the sky. The text also emphasizes that the sun and moon stand still, yet an eclipse is one of the few times where you can clearly observe the sun and the moon moving against each other, where you can see clear motion in real time. It's also worth pointing out that the text also says "nothing like this has ever happened before or since." This part of the Hebrew bible is suspected of being written somewhere in the 600s BC, which is more than enough time for other accounts of eclipses to filter through.

[kobeya]

Ring of fire eclipses, which is what this one was, are very different. The sky doesn't get dark. The temperature doesn't drop. Birds don't go crazy.