The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (feel good fiction books TXT) đź“•
CHAPTER II.
THE DIAL OF AHAZ
The Narrative--Suggested Explanations--The "Dial of Ahaz," probably a Staircase--Probable History and Position of the Staircase--Significance of the Sign 385
CHAPTER III.
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
The Narrative--No Astronomical Details given--Purpose of the Scripture Narrative--Kepler's suggested Identification of the Star--The New Star of 1572--Legend of
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But the narrative told by the writer of the Babylonian story is one single account; even if it were a combination of two separate traditions, they have been so completely fused that they cannot now be broken up so as to form two distinct narratives, each complete in itself.
"The whole story precisely as it was written down travelled to Canaan,"—so we are told. And there,—we are asked to believe,—two Hebrew writers of very different temperaments and schools of thought, each independently worked up a complete story of the Deluge from this Gilgamesh legend. They chose out different incidents, one selecting what the other rejected, and vice versa, so that their two accounts were "mutually contradictory." They agreed, however, in cleansing it from its polytheistic setting, and giving it a strictly monotheistic tone. Later, an "editor" put the two narratives together, with all their inconsistencies and contradictions, and interlocked them into one, which presents all the main features of the original Gilgamesh story except its polytheism. In other words, two Hebrew scribes each told in his own way a part of the account of the Deluge which he had derived from Babylon, and a third unwittingly so recombined them as to make them represent the Babylonian original!
The two accounts of the Deluge, supposed to be present in Genesis, therefore cannot be derived from the Gilgamesh epic, nor be later than it, seeing that what is still plainly separable in Genesis is inseparably fused in the epic.
On the other hand, can the Babylonian narrative be later than, and derived from, the Genesis account? Since so many of the same circumstances are represented in both, this is a more reasonable proposition, if we assume that the Babylonian narrator had the Genesis account as it now stands, and did not have to combine two separate statements. For surely if he had the separate Priestly and Jehovistic narratives we should now be able to decompose the Babylonian narrative just as easily as we do the one in Genesis. The Babylonian adapter of the Genesis story must have either been less astute than ourselves, and did not perceive that he had really two distinct (and "contradictory") narratives to deal with, or he did not consider this circumstance of the slightest importance, and had no objection to merging them inextricably into one continuous account.
It is therefore possible that the Babylonian account was derived from that in Genesis; but it is not probable. The main circumstances are the same in both, but the details, the presentment, the attitude of mind are very different. We can better explain the agreement in the general circumstances, and even in many of the details, by presuming that both are accounts—genuine traditions—of the same actual occurrence. The differences in detail, presentment, and attitude, are fully and sufficiently explained by supposing that we have traditions from two, if not three, witnesses of the event.
We have also the pictorial representation of the Flood given us in the constellations. What evidence do they supply?
Here the significant points are: the ship grounded upon a high rock; the raven above it, eating the flesh of a stretched-out reptile; a sacrifice offered up by a person, who has issued forth from the ship, upon an altar, whose smoke goes up in a cloud, in which a bow is set.
In this grouping of pictures we have two characteristic features of the Priestly narrative, in the ship grounded on a rock, and in the bow set in the cloud; we have also two characteristic features of the Jehovistic narrative, in the smoking altar of sacrifice, and in the carrion bird. There is therefore manifest connection between the constellation grouping and both the narratives given in Genesis.
But the constellational picture story is the only one of all these narratives that we can date. It must have been designed—as we have seen—about 2700 b.c.
The question again comes up for answer. Were the Genesis and Babylonian narratives, any or all of them, derived from the pictured story in the constellations; or, on the other hand, was this derived from any or all of them?
The constellations were mapped out near the north latitude of 40°, far to the north of Babylonia, so the pictured story cannot have come from thence. We do not know where the Genesis narratives were written, but if the Flood of the constellations was pictured from them, then they must have been already united into the account that is now presented to us in Genesis, very early in the third millennium before Christ.
Could the account in Genesis have been derived from the constellations? If it is a double account, most decidedly not; since the pictured story in the constellations is one, and presents impartially the characteristic features of both the narratives.
And (as in comparing the Genesis and the Babylonian narratives) we see that though the main circumstances are the same—in so far as they lend themselves to pictorial representations—the details, the presentment, the attitude are different. In the Genesis narrative, the bow set in the cloud is a rainbow in a cloud of rain; in the constellation picture, the bow set in the cloud is the bow of an archer, and the cloud is the pillar of smoke from off the altar of sacrifice. In the narratives of Genesis and Babylonia, Noah and Pir-napistim are men: no hint is given anywhere that by their physical form or constitution they were marked off from other men; in the storied picture, he who issues from the ship is a centaur: his upper part is the head and body of a man, his lower part is the body of a horse.
As before, there is no doubt that we can best explain the agreement in circumstance of all the narratives by presuming that they are independent accounts of the same historical occurrence. We can, at the same time, explain the differences in style and detail between the narratives by presuming that the originals were by men of different qualities of mind who each wrote as the occurrence most appealed to him. The Babylonian narrator laid hold of the promise that, though beast, or famine, or pestilence might diminish men, a flood should not again sweep away every living thing, and connected the promise with the signets—the lapis necklace of the goddess Sîrtu that she touched as a remembrancer. The picturer of the constellations saw the pledge in the smoke of the sacrifice, in the spirit of the words of the Lord as given by Asaph, "Gather My saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice." The writer in Genesis saw the promise in the rain-cloud, for the rainbow can only appear with the shining of the sun. The writer in Genesis saw in Noah a righteous man, worthy to escape the flood of desolation that swept away the wickedness around; there is no explanation apparent, at least on the surface, as to why the designer of the constellations made him, who issued from the ship and offered the sacrifice, a centaur—one who partook of two natures.
The comparison of the Deluge narratives from Genesis, from the constellations, and from Babylonia, presents a clear issue. If all the accounts are independent, and if there are two accounts intermingled into one in Genesis, then the chief facts presented in both parts of that dual narrative must have been so intermingled at an earlier date than 2700 b.c. The editor who first united the two stories into one must have done his work before that date.
But if the accounts are not independent histories, and the narrative as we have it in Genesis is derived either in whole or in part from Babylonia or from the constellations—if, in short, the Genesis story came from a Babylonian or a stellar myth—then we cannot escape from this conclusion: that the narrative in Genesis is not, and never has been, two separable portions; that the scholars who have so divided it have been entirely in error. But we cannot so lightly put on one side the whole of the results which the learning and research of so many scholars have given us in the last century-and-a-half. We must therefore unhesitatingly reject the theory that the Genesis Deluge story owes anything either to star myth or to Babylonian mythology. And if the Genesis Deluge story is not so derived, certainly no other portion of Holy Scripture.
FOOTNOTES:[171:1] Babel and Bible, Johns' translation, pp. 42-46.
[176:1] T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia, pp. 102-107.
CHAPTER IV THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL AND THE ZODIACThe earliest reference in Scripture to the constellations of the zodiac occurs in the course of the history of Joseph. In relating his second dream to his brethren he said—
"Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon, and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."
The word "Kochab" in the Hebrew means both "star" and "constellation." The significance, therefore, of the reference to the "eleven stars" is clear. Just as Joseph's eleven brethren were eleven out of the twelve sons of Jacob, so Joseph saw eleven constellations out of the twelve come and bow down to him. And the twelve constellations can only mean the twelve of the zodiac.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the zodiac in question was practically the same as we have now, the one transmitted to us through Aratus and Ptolemy. It had been designed quite a thousand years earlier than the days of Joseph; it was known in Mesopotamia from whence his ancestors had come; it was known in Egypt; that is to say it was known on both sides of Canaan. There have been other zodiacs: thus the Chinese have one of their own: but we have no evidence of any zodiac, except the one transmitted to us by the Greeks, as having been at any time adopted in Canaan or the neighbouring countries.
There is no need to suppose that each of the brethren had a zodiacal figure already assigned to him as a kind of armorial bearing or device. The dream was appropriate, and perfectly intelligible to Jacob, to Joseph, and his brethren, without supposing that any such arrangement had then been made. It is quite true that there are Jewish traditions assigning a constellation to each of the tribes of Israel, but it does not appear that any such traditions can be distinctly traced to a great antiquity, and they are mostly somewhat indefinite. Josephus, for instance, makes a vague assertion about the twelve precious stones of the High Priest's breast-plate, each of which bore the name of one of the tribes, connecting them with the signs of the zodiac:—
"Now the names of all those sons of Jacob were engraven in these stones, whom we esteem the heads of our tribes, each stone having the honour of a name, in the order according to which they were born. . . . And for the twelve stones whether we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call the Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning."[187:1]
But whilst there is no sufficient evidence that each of the sons of Jacob had a zodiacal figure for his coat-of-arms, nor even that the tribes deriving their names from them were so furnished, there is strong and harmonious tradition as to the character of the devices borne on the standards carried by the four divisions of the host in the march through the wilderness. The four divisions, or camps, each contained three tribes, and were
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