Gibeon

Gibeon was a town in the hill country north of Jerusalem, now the village of al-Jib. James Pritchard's Penn Museum excavations from 1956 to 1962 confirmed the identification: dozens of storage-jar handles were scratched with the name gb'n. He also uncovered a great cylindrical shaft cut into the bedrock with a spiral stairway down to water, and evidence of large-scale wine production.

In Joshua 10, five Amorite kings attack Gibeon, and Joshua comes to its defense. The text says the LORD threw great stones from heaven on the fleeing enemy, killing more than the sword, and that Joshua said, 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon.' The sun stayed in the sky about a whole day, a passage the text attributes to the lost Book of Jasher.

Readers have proposed eclipses, meteor showers or poetic language for the episode. Most scholars treat it as a quotation from an old victory poem rather than an astronomical record.