The fourth angel sounded, and one third of the sun was struck, and one third of the moon, and one third of the stars; so that one third of them would be darkened, and the day wouldn’t shine for one third of it, and the night in the same way.
One-third of the sun, the moon, and the stars can be 'struck' so that they go dark, reducing daylight and starlight by a third.
Astronomy
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The cited passage
What current science says
The sun is a sphere of hydrogen plasma 1.4 million km in diameter — you can't 'strike' a ball of gas with a surface temperature of 5,500°C. 'Reducing it by a third' would require removing roughly 330,000 Earths' worth of matter from a nuclear fusion reactor. Stars are other suns, many light-years away — 'striking a third of the stars' means attacking objects spread across a volume of space millions of light-years across simultaneously. And the moon only reflects sunlight, so dimming the sun already dims the moon automatically. The passage treats the cosmos like a room of adjustable light fixtures when it's actually a universe of nuclear furnaces and reflected photons governed by gravity and fusion physics.
What the text says
This comes from Revelation 8:12. The text describes the sun, moon, and stars being 'smitten' so that 'the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.' It treats celestial bodies as objects that can be selectively dimmed like lamps.
Three honest ways to read this passage
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As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
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As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
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As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.