The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (feel good fiction books TXT) ๐
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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And the Hebrews took a different view from the Babylonians of the story told by these constellations. The Hebrews always coupled Orion with the Pleiades; the Babylonians coupled Orion with Cetusโthat is, Merodach with Tiamat.
The view that has come down to us through the Greeks agrees much better with the association of the constellations as held amongst the Hebrews, rather than amongst the Babylonians. The Hunter Orion, according to the Greeks, chased the Pleiadesโthe little company of Seven Virgins, or Seven Dovesโand he was confronted by the Bull. In their view, too, the Sea-monster was not warring against Orion, but against the chained woman, Andromeda.
FOOTNOTES:[234:1] But the fact that Napoleon's name was thus coupled with this constellation does not warrant us in asserting that Napoleon had no historical existence, and that his long contest with the great sea-power (England), with its capital on the river Thames (? tehom), was only a stellar myth, arising from the nearness of Orion to the Sea-monster in the skyโa variant, in fact, of the great Babylonian myth of Marduk and Tiamat, the dragon of the deep.
It seems necessary to make this remark, since the process of astrologizing history, whether derived from the Bible or from secular writers, has been carried very far. Thus Dr. H. Winckler writes down the account of the first three Persian kings, given us by Herodotus, as myths of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini; David and Goliath, too, are but Marduk and Tiamat, or Orion and Cetus, but David has become the Giant, and Goliath the Dragon, for "Goliath" is claimed as a word-play on the Babylonian galittu, "ocean." Examining an Arabic globe of date 1279 a.d.โthat is to say some 4,000 years after the constellations were devised,โDr. Winckler found that Orion was represented as left-handed. He therefore used this left-handed Orion as the link of identification between Ehud, the left-handed judge of Israel, and Tyr, the left-handed Mars of the Scandinavian pantheon. Dr. Winckler seems to have been unaware of the elementary fact that a celestial globe necessarily shows its figures "inside out." We look up to the sky, to see the actual constellations from within the sphere; we look down upon a celestial globe from without, and hence see the designs upon it as in the looking-glass.
[238:1] Dr. Cheyne says, in a note on p. 52 of Job and Solomon, "Heb. Kโsฤซl, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The Chaldeo-Assyrian astrology gave the name Kisiluv to the ninth month, connecting it with the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. But there are valid reasons for attaching the Hebrew popular myth to Orion." So Col. Conder, in p. 179 of The Hittites and their Language, translates the name of the Assyrian ninth month, Cisleu, as "giant." Now Sagittarius is in the heavens just opposite to Orion, so when in the ninth month the sun was in conjunction with Sagittarius, Orion was in opposition. In Cisleu, therefore, the giant, Orion, was riding the heavens all night, occupying the chamber of the south at midnight, so that the ninth month might well be called the month of the giant.
[241:1] Dr. L. W. King, Tablets of Creation, appendix iii. p. 208.
CHAPTER VIII MAZZAROTHWe have no assistance from any cuneiform inscriptions as to the astronomical significance of โAyish, Kฤซmah, and Kฤsฤซl, but the case is different when we come to Mazzaroth. In the fifth tablet of the Babylonian Creation epic we readโ
2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac, he fixed.
3. He ordained the year, and into sections (mizrฤta) he divided it;
4. For the twelve months he fixed three stars.
5. After he had [. . .] the days of the year [. . .] images
6. He founded the station of Nibir to determine their bounds;
7. That none might err or go astray.
8. He set the station of Bฤl and Ea along with him."
In the third line mizrฤta, cognate with the Hebrew Mazzฤrลth, means the sections or divisions of the year, corresponding to the signs of the zodiac mentioned in the second line. There can therefore be little doubt that the translators who gave us our English versions are practically correct in the rendering of Job xxxviii. 32 which they give in the margin, "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth (or the twelve signs) in his season?"
The foregoing extract from the fifth tablet of Creation has no small astronomical interest. Merodach is represented as setting in order the heavenly bodies. First of all he allots their stations to the great gods, dividing to them the constellations of the zodiac, and the months of the year; so that the arrangement by which every month had its tutelary deity or deities, is here said to be his work. Next, he divides up the constellations of the zodiac; not merely arranging the actual stars, but appropriating to each constellation its special design or "image." Third, he divides up the year to correspond with the zodiac, making twelve months with three "stars" or constellations to each. In other words, he carries the division of the zodiac a step further, and divides each sign into three equal parts, the "decans" of the astrologers, each containing 10ยฐ (deka) of the ecliptic.
The statement made in line 4 refers to an important development of astronomy. The constellations of the zodiac, that is, the groups made up of the actual stars, are very unequal in size and irregular in shape. The numerous theories, ancient or modern, in which the constellations are supposed to owe their origin to the distinctive weather of the successive months, each constellation figure being a sort of hieroglyph for its particular month, are therefore all manifestly erroneous, for there never could have been any real fixed or steady correlation between the constellations and the months. Similarly, the theories which claim that the ancient names for the months were derived from the constellations are equally untenable. Some writers have even held both classes of theory, overlooking the fact that they mutually contradict each other.
But there came a time when the inconvenience of the unequal division of the zodiac by the constellations was felt to be an evil, and it was remedied by dividing the ecliptic into twelve equal parts, each part being called after the constellation with which it corresponded most nearly at the time such division was made. These equal divisions have been called the Signs of the zodiac. It must be clearly understood that they have always and at all times been imaginary divisions of the heavens, that they were never associated with real stars. They were simply a picturesque mode of expressing celestial longitude; the distance of a star from the place of the sun at the spring equinox, as measured along the ecliptic,โthe sun's apparent path during the year.
The Signs once arranged, the next step was an easy one. Each sign was equivalent to 30 degrees of longitude. A third of a sign, a "decan," was 10 degrees of longitude, corresponding to the "week" of ten days used in Egypt and in Greece.
This change from the constellations to the Signs cannot have taken place very early. The place of the spring equinox travels backwards amongst the stars at the rate of very little more than a degree in 72 years. When the change was made the spring equinox was somewhere in the constellation Aries, the Ram, and therefore Aries was then adopted as the first Sign, and must always remain such, since the Signs move amongst the stars with the equinox.
POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, B.C. 2700.ToList
We cannot fix when this change was made within a few years, but it cannot have been before the time when the sun at the spring equinox was situated just below Hamal, the brightest star of the Ram. This was about 700 b.c. The equal division of the zodiac must have taken place not earlier than this, and with it, the Bull must have been deposed from the position it had always held up to that time, of leader of the zodiac. It is probable that some direct method of determining the equinox itself was introduced much about the same time. This new system involved nothing short of a revolution in astronomy, but the Babylonian Creation story implies that this revolution had already taken place when it was composed, and that the equal division of the zodiac was already in force. It is possible that the sixth and seventh lines of the poem indicate that the Babylonians had already noticed a peculiar fact, viz. that just as the moon passes through all the signs in a month, whilst the sun passes through only one sign in that time; so the sun passes through all the signs in a year, whilst Jupiter passes through but one sign. Nibir was the special Babylonian name of the planet Jupiter when on the meridian; and Merodach, as the deity of that planet, is thus represented as pacing out the bounds of the zodiacal Signs by his movement in the course of the year. The planet also marks out the third part of a sign, i. e. ten degrees; for during one-third of each year it appears to retrograde, moving from east to west amongst the stars instead of from west to east. During this retrogression it covers the breadth of one "decan" = ten degrees.
POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, A.D. 1900.ToList
The Babylonian Creation epic is therefore quite late, for it introduces astronomical ideas not current earlier than 700 b.c. in Babylonia or anywhere else. This new development of astronomy enables us also to roughly date the origin of the different orders of systematic astrology.
Astrology, like astronomy, has passed through successive stages. It began at zero. An unexpected event in the heavens was accounted portentous, because it was unexpected, and it was interpreted in a good or bad sense according to the state of mind of the beholder. There can have been at first no system, no order, no linking up of one specific kind of prediction with one kind of astronomical event. It can have been originally nothing but a crude jumble of omens, just on a level with the superstitions of some of our peasantry as to seeing hares, or cats, or magpies; and the earliest astrological tablets from Mesopotamia are precisely of this character.
But the official fortune-tellers at the courts of the kings of Nineveh or Babylon must speedily have learned the necessity of arranging some systems of prediction for their own protectionโsystems definite enough to give the astrologer a groundwork for a prediction which he could claim was dependent simply upon the heavenly bodies, and hence for which the astrologer could not be held personally responsible, and at the same time elastic enough to enable him to shape his prediction to fit in with his patron's wishes. The astrology of to-day shows the same essential features.
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