[Greetings, friends, from Austin! The internet (or at least the corner that seems to find me) is all abuzz about the second “Great American Solar Eclipse” scheduled to occur later today, April 8, 2024. “Sign of Jonah.” “Nineveh.” “Salem.” “Rapture.” These are just a few words that seem to be floating around in a whole host of videos (mostly from evangelical Christians) claiming this eclipse marks the beginning of the end times (a claim also made by many in 2017).
After seeing a few of these types of videos and finding that Austin will be in the “path of totality,” I decided to educate myself—not only on today’s solar eclipse, specifically, but on solar eclipses generally and their role throughout history. As it turns out, eclipses across time have greatly influenced human behavior.
How is the topic of the rest of today’s essay.]
Later today, April 8, 2024, millions across the United States will watch as the moon’s shadow covers the sun. Along the path of totality, where the moon fully covers the sun, temperatures will drop, the stars will come out, and birds will fall silent suddenly at the moment the solar orb passes behind its lunar counterpart. For a few minutes, day will become night, and subtle rays of light will bend behind the moon in a wonderful display.
Introduction
As a phenomenon, solar eclipses happen around twice a year but are only visible along a particular path, making any one individual’s observation of an eclipse somewhat rare.
The oldest surviving records of solar eclipses come from ancient China, dating as far back as 2136 B.C. (in the case of the text of Shijing) or 1302 B.C. in the case of an inscription translated as: “Three flames ate the sun and big stars were seen.”1 For many of the ancient civilizations, which saw the sun as their source of life, the event often brought terror, as they watched the thing that gave them life gobbled up by darkness in what was supposed to be mid-day. For them, minutes of darkness must have felt like an eternity.
Throughout history, astronomical events have stoked fears as the ancients took celestial events as messages from the gods or bad omens foretelling of some looming catastrophe—like the death of a king, defeat in battle, or the destruction of a nation.
No more surprises now, no stunning miracles, no thought
unthinkable, now that Heaven’s father Zeus has wrought
sheer midnight at high noon, and blacked the brilliant sun,
its shining stanched, and fear and trembling fell on everyone.2
What follows is an overview of a few of ancient history’s most impactful eclipses.
The Nineveh Eclipse (Assyria, 763 B.C.)
One particular solar eclipse with bearing on the Biblical story of Jonah is known as the Bur-Sagale eclipse (or the Assyrian eclipse), recorded in the Assyrian eponym lists and dated around June 15, 763 B.C. The entry from Assyrian records (which I cannot find online) reportedly reads:
“[year of] Bur-Sagale of Guzana. Revolt in the city of Assur. In the month Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place.”
The Assyrian capital city of Nineveh is thought to have been in the path of the Bur-Sagale eclipse during the middle of the reign of Jeroboam II (who ruled Israel from 786 to 746 B.C). 2 Kings 14:23-29 tells us that the prophet Jonah lived and prophesied in Jeroboam's reign, making it possible that the eclipse took place over Nineveh around the time that Jonah arrived and urged the people to repent. Given the ongoing chaos of the empire reported in those days (revolts, famines, plagues) and the view of ancient cultures, like Assyria, that saw eclipses as omens of imminent destruction, this could explain the dramatic repentance of the people of Nineveh as described in the Book of Jonah.3
The Thales Eclipse (Greece, 585 B.C.)
By the time the spring of 585 B.C. came around in the Eastern Mediterranean, the kingdoms of the Medes and the Lydians had been locked in a brutal war for six years. The competing legions took turns gaining the upper hand and the cost climbed. The war became one of attrition… whoever could outlast the other would be the victor.
But then a day came when the battlefield turned blacked at midday. Seeing this celestial event (predicted by the philosopher Thales) as a sign from the gods, the armies agreed to put down their arms and make peace. Herodotus tells the story in his Histories:
[T]here had arisen war between the Lydians and the Medes lasting five years; in which years the Medes often discomfited the Lydians and the Lydians often discomfited the Medes (and among others they fought also a battle by night): and as they still carried on the war with equally balanced fortune, in the sixth year a battle took place in which it happened, when the fight had begun, that suddenly the day became night. And this change of the day Thales the Milesian had foretold to the Ionians laying down as a limit this very year in which the change took place. The Lydians however and the Medes, when they saw that it had become night instead of day, ceased from their fighting and were much more eager both of them that peace should be made between them.4
The Peloponnesian Eclipse (Greece, 413 B.C.)
Deep into the decades-long struggle between Athens and Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War, Athenian soldiers found themselves losing a battle against Syracuse (a Sicilian city-state allied with Sparta). Sensing an imminent defeat, the Athenian commander, Nicias, ordered a temporary retreat of his troops.
As the army prepared to sail home, a lunar eclipse occurred in the sky and prompted Nicias to postpone his soldiers’ departure. Taking advantage of the Athenians’ delay, the Syracusians staged another attack and overcame the Athenians. It was a defeat that marked the beginning of the end of Athenian dominance in the Mediterranean. To summarize the old adage: we often meet fate on the road we take to avoid it. Plutarch tells the story in Parallel Lives:
But just as everything was prepared for this and none of the enemy were on the watch, since they did not expect the move at all, there came an eclipse of the moon by night. This was a great terror to Nicias and all those who were ignorant or superstitious enough to quake at such a sight. The obscuration of the sun towards the end of the month was already understood, even by the common folk as caused somehow or other by the moon; but what what it was that the moon encountered, and how, being at the full, she should on a sudden lose her light and emit all sorts of colors, this was no easy thing to comprehend…
[I]t was the lot of Nicias at this time to be without even a soothsayer who was expert. The one who had been his associate, and who used to set him free from most of his superstition, Stilbides, had died a short time before. For indeed the sign from Heaven, as Philochorus observed, was not an obnoxious one to fugitives, but rather very propitious; concealment is just what deeds of fear need, whereas light is an enemy to them… Nicias persuaded the Athenians to wait for another full period of the moon, as if, forsooth, he did not see that the planet was restored to purity and splendor just as soon as she had passed beyond the region which was darkened and obscured by the earth.
Abandoning almost everything else, Nicias lay there sacrificing and divining until the enemy came up against him. With their land forces they laid siege to his walls and camp, and with their fleet they took possession of the harbor round about...5
Conclusion
Nowadays, we understand what we are watching during a solar eclipse: a semi-annual passing of the moon in front of the sun when all of the planets come into alignment. But when it comes to why it happens—why the universe is structured in such a way that something as wonderful to behold as the solar eclipse happens at all—we are as clueless as our ancestors.
Just because we no longer see the solar eclipse as a bad omen and don’t subscribe to the superstition of those claiming the eclipse is ushering in the end times doesn't mean we can’t see the celestial wonder as a sign of sorts… a beautiful sign, I’d argue, of a created world—something like God’s annual reminder that something outside of ourselves is moving the universe. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”6
Perhaps there is a Creator who knew humanity would need regular reminders to look up, so He set up a universe that gives an occasional wink and a nudge…. He gives scheduled invitations to humility and recollection of the fall that always follows our failure to denounce our pride.
For whatever we think of the solar eclipse, and whether we are religious or not, for the first time in a while, millions of members of humanity will be lifted outside of themselves for a few minutes as they watch the wonders of the sky. In a country that needs unity now more than ever, may today help us remember we are all one.
—
P.S. For those of you not in the path of the eclipse, there are a number of live streams available on YouTube, including the below broadcast from NASA:
Examination of early Chinese records of solar moon's somewhat regular passing and Heritage, text available at: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003JAHH....6...53L#:~:text=Three%20flames%20ate%20the%20Sun%2C%20and%20a%20big%20star%20could,the%20big%20star%20as%20Mercury.
Archilochus, Fragment 122.
Amos, who also preached during the reign of Jeroboam II, linked an eclipse with warnings of imminent doom: “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.” See Amos 8:9.
Herodotus, Histories, Book I, text available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2707/2707-h/2707-h.htm.
Plutarch, Parallel Lives: the Life of Nicias, text available at: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0051%3Achapter%3D23.
Psalm 19:1.