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Title: The Astronomy of the Bible

Author: E. Walter Maunder

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Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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THE ASTRONOMY
OF THE BIBLE

From the Painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the Birmingham Art Gallery.

THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
"We have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him."
[Frontispiece.]ToList

THE ASTRONOMY
OF THE BIBLE

AN ELEMENTARY COMMENTARY ON THE
ASTRONOMICAL REFERENCES
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

BY

E. WALTER MAUNDER, F.R.A.S.
AUTHOR OF
'THE ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH: ITS HISTORY AND WORK,'
AND 'ASTRONOMY WITHOUT A TELESCOPE'

WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

To

MY WIFE

My helper in this Book
and in all things.

PREFACE
Why should an astronomer write a commentary on the Bible?
Because commentators as a rule are not astronomers, and therefore either
pass over the astronomical allusions of Scripture in silence, or else annotate
them in a way which, from a scientific point of view, leaves much to be
desired.
Astronomical allusions in the Bible, direct and indirect, are not few in
number, and, in order to bring out their full significance, need to be treated
astronomically. Astronomy further gives us the power of placing ourselves
to some degree in the position of the patriarchs and prophets of old. We
know that the same sun and moon, stars and planets, shine upon us as shone
upon Abraham and Moses, David and Isaiah. We can, if we will, see the
unchanging heavens with their eyes, and understand their attitude towards
them.
It is worth while for us so to do. For the immense advances in science,
made since the Canon of Holy Scripture was closed, and especially during
the last three hundred years, may enable us to realize the significance of a
most remarkable fact. Even in those early ages, when to all the nations
surrounding Israel the heavenly bodies were objects for divination or
idolatry, the attitude of the sacred writers toward them was perfect in its
sanity and truth.
Astronomy has a yet further part to play in Biblical study. The dating of the
several books of the Bible, and the relation of certain heathen mythologies
to the Scripture narratives of the world's earliest ages, have received much
attention of late years. Literary analysis has thrown much light on these
subjects, but hitherto any evidence that astronomy could give has been
almost wholly neglected; although, from the nature of the case, such
evidence, so far as it is available, must be most decisive and exact.
I have endeavoured, in the present book, to make an astronomical
commentary on the Bible, in a manner that shall be both clear and

interesting to the general reader, dispensing as far as possible with
astronomical technicalities, since the principles concerned are, for the most
part, quite simple. I trust, also, that I have taken the first step in a new
inquiry which promises to give results of no small importance.
E. Walter Maunder.
St. John's, London, S.E.
January 1908.

CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE HEAVENLY BODIES
Chapter I. The Hebrew and Astronomy

Modern Astronomy—Astronomy in the Classical Age—The Canon
of Holy Scripture closed before the Classical Age—Character of the
Scriptural References to the Heavenly Bodies—Tradition of
Solomon's Eminence in Science—Attitude towards Nature of the
Sacred Writers—Plan of the Book 3

Chapter II. The Creation

Indian Eclipse of 1898—Contrast between the Heathen and
Scientific Attitudes—The Law of Causality—Inconsistent with
Polytheism—Faith in One God the Source to the Hebrews of
Intellectual Freedom—The First Words of Genesis the Charter of
the Physical Sciences—The Limitations of Science
—"Explanations" of the First Chapter of Genesis—Its Real
Purposes—The Sabbath 12

Chapter III. The Deep

Babylonian Creation Myth—Tiamat, the Dragon of Chaos—
Overcome by Merodach—Similarity to the Scandinavian Myth—
No Resemblance to the Narrative in Genesis—Meanings of the
Hebrew Word tehom—Date of the Babylonian Creation Story 25

Chapter IV. The Firmament

Twofold Application of the Hebrew Word raqia‘—Its Etymological
Meaning—The Idea of Solidity introduced by the "Seventy"—Not
the Hebrew Idea—The "Foundations" of Heaven and Earth—The

"Canopy" of Heaven—The "Stories" of Heaven—Clouds and Rain
—The Atmospheric Circulation—Hebrew Appreciation even of the
Terrible in Nature—The "Balancings" and "Spreadings" of the
Clouds—The "Windows of Heaven"—Not Literal Sluice-gates—
The Four Winds—The Four Quarters—The Circle of the Earth—
The Waters under the Earth—The "Depths" 35

Chapter V. The Ordinances of the Heavens

The Order of the Heavenly Movements—Daily Movement of the
Sun—Nightly Movements of the Stars—The "Host of Heaven"—
Symbolic of the Angelic Host—Morning Stars—The Scripture View
of the Heavenly Order 55

Chapter VI. The Sun

The Double Purpose of the Two Great Heavenly Bodies—Symbolic
Use of the Sun as Light-giver—No Deification of the Sun or of
Light—Solar Idolatry in Israel—Shemesh and Ḥeres—Sun-spots—
Light before the Sun—"Under the Sun"—The Circuit of the Sun—
Sunstroke—"Variableness"—Our present Knowledge of the Sun—
Sir William Herschel's Theory—Conflict between the Old Science
and the New—Galileo—A Question of Evidence—A Question of
Principle 63

Chapter VII. The Moon

Importance of the Moon in Olden Times—Especially to the
Shepherd—Jewish Feasts at the Full Moon—The Harvest Moon—
The Hebrew Month a Natural one—Different Hebrew Words for
Moon—Moon-worship forbidden—"Similitudes" of the Moon—
Worship of Ashtoreth—No mention of Lunar Phases—The Moon
"for Seasons" 79

Chapter VIII. The Stars

Number of the Stars—"Magnitudes" of the Stars—Distances of the
Stars 95

Chapter IX. Comets

Great Comets unexpected Visitors—Description of Comets—
Formation of the Tail—Possible References in Scripture to Comets
103

Chapter X. Meteors

Aerolites—Diana of the Ephesians—Star-showers—The Leonid
Meteors—References in Scripture—The Aurora Borealis 111

Chapter XI. Eclipses of the Sun and Moon

Vivid Impression produced by a Total Solar Eclipse—Eclipses not
Omens to the Hebrews—Eclipses visible in Ancient Palestine—
Explanation of Eclipses—The Saros—Scripture References to
Eclipses—The Corona—The Egyptian "Winged Disc"—The
Babylonian "Ring with Wings"—The Corona at Minimum 118

Chapter XII. Saturn and Astrology

The "Seven Planets"—Possible Scripture References to Venus and
Jupiter—"Your God Remphan" probably Saturn—The Sabbath and
Saturn's Day—R. A. Proctor on the Names of the Days of the Week
—Order of the Planets—Alexandrian Origin of the Weekday Names
—The Relation of Astrology to Astronomy—Early Babylonian
Astrology—Hebrew Contempt for Divination 130

BOOK II
THE CONSTELLATIONS
Chapter I. The Origin of the Constellations

The "Greek Sphere"—Aratus—St Paul's Sermon at Athens—The
Constellations of Ptolemy's Catalogue—References to the
Constellations in Hesiod and Homer—The Constellation Figures on
Greek Coins—And on Babylonian "Boundary-stones"—The
Unmapped Space in the South—Its Explanation—Precession—Date

and Place of the Origin of the Constellations—Significant Positions
of the Serpent Forms in the Constellations—The Four "Royal
Stars"—The Constellations earlier than the Old Testament 149

Chapter II. Genesis and the Constellations

The Bow set in the Cloud—The Conflict with the Serpent—The
Seed of the Woman—The Cherubim—The "Mighty Hunter" 162

Chapter III. The Story of the Deluge

Resemblance between the Babylonian and Genesis Deluge Stories
—The Deluge Stories in Genesis—Their Special Features—The
Babylonian Deluge Story—Question as to its Date—Its
Correspondence with both the Genesis Narratives—The
Constellation Deluge Picture—Its Correspondence with both the
Genesis Narratives—The Genesis Deluge Story independent of Star
Myth and Babylonian Legend 170

Chapter IV. The Tribes of Israel and the Zodiac

Joseph's Dream—Alleged Association of the Zodiacal Figures with
the Tribes of Israel—The Standards of the Four Camps of Israel—
The Blessings of Jacob and Moses—The Prophecies of Balaam—
The Golden Calf—The Lion of Judah 186

Chapter V. Leviathan

The Four Serpent-like Forms in the Constellations—Their
Significant Positions—The Dragon's Head and Tail—The Symbols
for the Nodes—The Dragon of Eclipse—Hindu Myth of Eclipses—
Leviathan—References to the Stellar Serpents in Scripture—Rahab
—Andromeda—"The Eyelids of the Morning"—Poetry, Science,
and Myth 196

Chapter VI. The Pleiades

Difficulty of Identification—The most Attractive Constellations—
Kimah—Not a Babylonian Star Name—A Pre-exilic Hebrew Term
—The Pleiades traditionally Seven—Mädler's Suggestion—Pleiades
associated in Tradition with the Rainy Season—And with the
Deluge—Their "Sweet Influences"—The Return of Spring—The
Pleiades in recent Photographs—Great Size and Distance of the
Cluster 213

Chapter VII. Orion

Kesil—Probably Orion—Appearance of the Constellation—
Identified in Jewish Tradition with Nimrod, who was probably
Merodach—Altitude of Orion in the Sky—Kesilim—The "Bands"
of Orion—The Bow-star and Lance-star, Orion's Dogs—
Identification of Tiamat with Cetus 231

Chapter VIII. Mazzaroth

Probably the "Signs of the Zodiac"—Babylonian Creation Story—
Significance of its Astronomical References—Difference between
the "Signs" and the "Constellations" of the Zodiac—Date of the
Change—And of the Babylonian Creation Epic—Stages of
Astrology—Astrology Younger than Astronomy by 2000 Years—
Mazzaroth and the "Chambers of the South"—Mazzaloth—The
Solar and Lunar Zodiacs—Mazzaroth in his Season 243

Chapter IX. Arcturus

‘Ash and ‘Ayish—Uncertainty as to their Identification—Probably
the Great Bear—Mezarim—Probably another Name for the Bears
—"Canst thou guide the Bear?"—Proper Motions of the Plough-
stars—Estimated Distance 258

BOOK III
TIMES AND SEASONS
Chapter I. The Day and its Divisions

Rotation Period of Venus—Difficulty of the Time Problem on Venus
—The Sun and Stars as Time Measurers—The apparent Solar Day
the First in Use—It began at Sunset—Subdivisions of the Day
Interval—Between the Two Evenings—The Watches of the Night—
The 12-hour Day and the 24-hour Day 269

Chapter II. The Sabbath and the Week

The Week not an Astronomical Period—Different Weeks employed
by the Ancients—Four Origins assigned for the Week—The
Quarter-month—The Babylonian System—The Babylonian Sabbath
not a Rest Day—The Jewish Sabbath amongst the Romans—
Alleged Astrological Origin of the Week—Origin of the Week given
in the Bible 283

Chapter III. The Month

The New Moon a Holy Day with the Hebrews—The Full Moons at
the Two Equinoxes also Holy Days—The Beginnings of the Months
determined from actual Observation—Rule for finding Easter—
Names of the Jewish Months—Phœnician and Babylonian Month
Names—Number of Days in the Month—Babylonian Dead
Reckoning—Present Jewish Calendar 293

Chapter IV. The Year

The Jewish Year a Luni-solar one—Need for an Intercalary Month
—The Metonic Cycle—The Sidereal and Tropical Years—The
Hebrew a Tropical Year—Beginning near the Spring Equinox—
Meaning of "the End of the Year"—Early Babylonian Method of
determining the First Month—Capella as the Indicator Star—The
Triad of Stars—The Tropical Year in the Deluge Story 305

Chapter V. The Sabbatic Year and the Jubilee

Law of the Sabbatic Year—A Year of Rest and Release—The
Jubilee—Difficulties connected with the Sabbatic Year and the
Jubilee—The Sabbatic Year, an Agricultural one—Interval between

the Jubilees, Forty-nine Years, not Fifty—Forty-nine Years an
Astronomical Cycle 326

Chapter VI. The Cycles of Daniel

The Jubilee Cycle possessed only by the Hebrews—High
Estimation of Daniel and his Companions entertained by
Nebuchadnezzar—Due possibly to Daniel's Knowledge of Luni-
solar Cycles—Cycles in Daniel's Prophecy—2300 Years and 1260
Years as Astronomical Cycles—Early Astronomical Progress of the
Babylonians much overrated—Yet their Real Achievements not
Small—Limitations of the Babylonian—Freedom of the Hebrew
337

BOOK IV
THREE ASTRONOMICAL MARVELS
Chapter I. Joshua's Long Day

Method of Studying the Record—To be discussed as it stands—An
early Astronomical Observation. Before the Battle—Movements
of the Israelites—Reasons for the Gibeonites' Action—Rapid
Movements of all the Parties. Day, Hour, and Place of the Miracle
—Indication of the Sun's Declination—Joshua was at Gibeon—And
at High Noon—On the 21st Day of the Fourth Month. Joshua's
Strategy—Key to it in the Flight of the Amorites by the Beth-horon
Route—The Amorites defeated but not surrounded—King David as
a Strategist. The Miracle—The Noon-day Heat, the great
Hindrance to the Israelites—Joshua desired the Heat to be tempered
—The Sun made to "be silent"—The Hailstorm—The March to
Makkedah—A Full Day's March in the Afternoon—"The Miracle"
not a Poetic Hyperbole—Exact Accord of the Poem and the Prose
Chronicle—The Record made at the Time—Their March, the
Israelites' Measure of Time 351

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 the Well of Bethlehem—True
Significance of the Reticence of the Gospel Narrative 393

A Table of Scriptural Reference 401

Index 405

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Star of Bethlehem (Burne-Jones) Frontispiece
The Rainbow (Rubens) 2
Merodach and Tiamat 25
Cirrus and Cumuli 47
A Corner of the Milky Way 94
The Great Comet of 1843 102
Fall of an Aerolite 110
Meteoric Shower of 1799 115
The Assyrian 'Ring With Wings' 126
Corona of Minimum Type 127
St. Paul Preaching at Athens (Raphael) 148
The Ancient Constellations South of the Ecliptic 155
The Celestial Sphere 156
The Midnight Constellations of Spring, b.c. 2700 164
The Midnight Constellations of Winter, b.c. 2700 165
Ophiuchus and the Neighbouring Constellations 189
Aquarius and the Neighbouring Constellations 192
Hercules and Draco 197
Hydra and the Neighbouring Constellations 200
Andromeda and Cetus 207
Stars of the Pleiades 219
Inner Nebulosities of the Pleiades 227
Stars of Orion 232
Orion and the Neighbouring Constellations 236

Position of Spring Equinox, b.c. 2700 246
Position of Spring Equinox, a.d. 1900 247
Stars of the Plough, as the Winnowing Fan 263
'Blow up the Trumpet in the New Moon' 268
Position of the New Moon at the Equinoxes 316
Boundary-stone in the Louvre 318
Worship of the Sun-God at Sippara 322
'Sun, stand Thou still upon Gibeon, and Thou Moon in the
350
Valley of Ajalon'
Map of Southern Palestine 357
Bearings of the Rising and Setting Points of the Sun from
363
Gibeon

By permission of the Autotype Co. 74, New Oxford Street, London W.C.

THE RAINBOW (by Rubens).
"The bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain."ToList

THE ASTRONOMY OF THE BIBLE

BOOK I
THE HEAVENLY BODIES

CHAPTER I
THE HEBREW AND ASTRONOMY

Modern astronomy began a little more than three centuries ago with the
invention of the telescope and Galileo's application of it to the study of the
heavenly bodies. This new instrument at once revealed to him the
mountains on the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and the spots on the sun,
and brought the celestial bodies under observation in a way that no one had
dreamed of before. In our view to-day, the planets of the solar system are
worlds; we can examine their surfaces and judge wherein they resemble or
differ from our earth. To the ancients they were but points of light; to us
they are vast bodies that we have been able to measure and to weigh. The
telescope has enabled us also to penetrate deep into outer space; we have
learnt of other systems besides that of our own sun and its dependents,
many of them far more complex; clusters and clouds of stars have been
revealed to us, and mysterious nebulæ, which suggest by their forms that
they are systems of suns in the making. More lately the invention of the
spectroscope has informed us of the very elements which go to the
composition of these numberless stars, and we can distinguish those which
are in a similar condition to our sun from those differing from him. And
photography has recorded for us objects too faint for mere sight to detect,
even when aided by the most powerful telescope; too detailed and intricate
for the most skilful hand to depict.
Galileo's friend and contemporary, Kepler, laid the foundations of another
department of modern astronomy at about the same time. He studied the
apparent movements of the planets until they yielded him their secret so far
that he was able to express them in three simple laws, laws which, two
generations later, Sir Isaac Newton demonstrated to be the outcome of one
grand and simple law of universal range, the law of gravitation. Upon this
law the marvellous mathematical conquests of astronomy have been based.
All these wonderful results have been attained by the free exercise of men's
mental abilities, and it cannot be imagined that God would have intervened

to hamper their growth in intellectual power by revealing to men facts and
methods which it was within their own ability to discover for themselves.
Men's mental powers have developed by their exercise; they would have
been stunted had men been led to look to revelation rather than to diligent
effort for the satisfaction of their curiosity. We therefore do not find any
reference in the Bible to that which modern astronomy has taught us. Yet it
may be noted that some expressions, appropriate at any time, have become
much more appropriate, much more forcible, in the light of our present-day
knowledge.
The age of astronomy which preceded the Modern, and may be called the
Classical age, was almost as sharply defined in its beginning as its
successor. It lasted about two thousand years, and began with the
investigations into the movements of the planets made by some of the early
Greek mathematicians. Classical, like Modern astronomy, had its two sides,
—the instrumental and the mathematical. On the instrumental side was the
invention of graduated instruments for the determination of the positions of
the heavenly bodies; on the mathematical, the development of geometry and
trigonometry for the interpretation of those positions when thus determined.
Amongst the great names of this period are those of Eudoxus of Knidus
(b.c. 408-355), and Hipparchus of Bithynia, who lived rather more than two
centuries later. Under its first leaders astronomy in the Classical age began
to advance rapidly, but it soon experienced a deadly blight. Men were not
content to observe the heavenly bodies for what they were; they
endeavoured to make them the sources of divination. The great school of
Alexandria (founded about 300 b.c.), the headquarters of astronomy,
became invaded by the spirit of astrology, the bastard science which has
always tried—parasite-like—to suck its life from astronomy. Thus from the
days of Claudius Ptolemy to the end of the Middle Ages the growth of
astronomy was arrested, and it bore but little fruit.
It will be noticed that the Classical age did not commence until about the
time of the completion of the last books of the Old Testament; so we do not
find any reference in Holy Scripture to the astronomical achievements of
that period, amongst which the first attempts to explain the apparent
motions of sun, moon, stars, and planets were the most considerable.

We have a complete history of astronomy in the Modern and Classical
periods, but there was an earlier astronomy, not inconsiderable in amount,
of which no history is preserved. For when Eudoxus commenced his
labours, the length of the year had already been determined, the equinoxes
and solstices had been recognized, the ecliptic, the celestial equator, and the
poles of both great circles were known, and the five principal planets were
familiar objects. This Early astronomy must have had its history, its stages
of development, but we can only with difficulty trace them out. It cannot
have sprung into existence full-grown any more than the other sciences; it
must have started from zero, and men must have slowly fought their way
from one observation to another, with gradually widening conceptions,
before they could bring it even to that stage of development in which it was
when the observers of the Museum of Alexandria began their work.
The books of the Old Testament were written at different times during the
progress of this Early age of astronomy. We should therefore naturally
expect to find the astronomical allusions written from the standpoint of such
scientific knowledge as had then been acquired. We cannot for a moment
expect that any supernatural revelation of purely material facts would be
imparted to the writers of sacred books, two or three thousand years before
the progress of science had brought those facts to light, and we ought not to
be surprised if expressions are occasionally used which we should not
ourselves use to-day, if we were writing about the phenomena of nature
from a technical point of view. It must further be borne in mind that the
astronomical references are not numerous, that they occur mostly in poetic
imagery, and that Holy Scripture was not intended to give an account of the
scientific achievements, if any, of the Hebrews of old. Its purpose was
wholly different: it was religious, not scientific; it was meant to give
spiritual, not intellectual enlightenment.
An exceedingly valuable and interesting work has recently been brought out
by the most eminent of living Italian astronomers, Prof. G. V. Schiaparelli,
on this subject of "Astronomy in the Old Testament," to which work I
should like here to acknowledge my indebtedness. Yet I feel that the
avowed object of his book,[7:1]—to "discover what ideas the ancient Jewish
sages held regarding the structure of the universe, what observations they
made of the stars, and how far they made use of them for the measurement
and division of time"—is open to this criticism,—that sufficient material for

carrying it out is not within our reach. If we were to accept implicitly the
argument from the silence of Scripture, we should conclude that the
Hebrews—though their calendar was essentially a lunar one, based upon the
actual observation of the new moon—had never noticed that the moon
changed its apparent form as the month wore on, for there is no mention in
the Bible of the lunar phases.
The references to the heavenly bodies in Scripture are not numerous, and
deal with them either as time-measurers or as subjects for devout allusion,
poetic simile, or symbolic use. But there is one characteristic of all these
references to the phenomena of Nature, that may not be ignored. None of
the ancients ever approached the great Hebrew writers in spiritual elevation;
none equalled them in poetic sublimity; and few, if any, surpassed them in
keenness of observation, or in quick sympathy with every work of the
Creator.
These characteristics imply a natural fitness of the Hebrews for successful
scientific work, and we should have a right to believe that under propitious
circumstances they would have shown a pre-eminence in the field of
physical research as striking as is the superiority of their religious
conceptions over those of the surrounding nations. We cannot, of course,
conceive of the average Jew as an Isaiah, any more than we can conceive of
the average Englishman as a Shakespeare, yet the one man, like the other, is
an index of the advancement and capacity of his race; nor could Isaiah's
writings have been preserved, more than those of Shakespeare, without a
true appreciation of them on the part of many of his countrymen.
But the necessary conditions for any great scientific development were
lacking to Israel. A small nation, planted between powerful and aggressive
empires, their history was for the most part the record of a struggle for bare
existence; and after three or four centuries of the unequal conflict, first the
one and then the other of the two sister kingdoms was overwhelmed. There
was but little opportunity during these years of storm and stress for men to
indulge in any curious searchings into the secrets of nature.
Once only was there a long interval of prosperity and peace; viz. from the
time that David had consolidated the kingdom to the time when it suffered
disruption under his grandson, Rehoboam; and it is significant that tradition

has ascribed to Solomon and to his times just such a scientific activity as
the ability and temperament of the Hebrew race would lead us to expect it
to display when the conditions should be favourable for it.
Thus, in the fourth chapter of the First Book of Kings, not only are the
attainments of Solomon himself described, but other men, contemporaries
either of his father David or himself, are referred to, as distinguished in the
same direction, though to a less degree.
"And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding
much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the
seashore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the
children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he
was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman,
and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in
all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs:
and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees,
from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that
springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl,
and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all
people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the
earth, which had heard of his wisdom."
The tradition of his great eminence in scientific research is also preserved in
the words put into his mouth in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, now
included in the Apocrypha.
"For" (God) "Himself gave me an unerring knowledge of the
things that are, to know the constitution of the world, and the
operation of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of
times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of
seasons, the circuits of years and the positions" (margin,
constellations) "of stars; the natures of living creatures and the
ragings of wild beasts, the violences of winds and the thoughts
of men, the diversities of plants and the virtues of roots: all
things that are either secret or manifest I learned, for she that is
the artificer of all things taught me, even Wisdom."

Two great names have impressed themselves upon every part of the East:—
the one, that of Solomon the son of David, as the master of every secret
source of knowledge; and the other that of Alexander the Great, as the
mightiest of conquerors. It is not unreasonable to believe that the traditions
respecting the first have been founded upon as real a basis of actual
achievement as those respecting the second.
But to such scientific achievements we have no express allusion in
Scripture, other than is afforded us by the two quotations just made. Natural
objects, natural phenomena are not referred to for their own sake. Every
thought leads up to God or to man's relation to Him. Nature, as a whole and
in its every aspect and detail, is the handiwork of Jehovah: that is the truth
which the heavens are always declaring;—and it is His power, His wisdom,
and His goodness to man which it is sought to illustrate, when the beauty or
wonder of natural objects is described.

"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"

The first purpose, therefore, of the following study of the astronomy of the
Bible is,—not to reconstruct the astronomy of the Hebrews, a task for
which the material is manifestly incomplete,—but to examine such
astronomical allusions as occur with respect to their appropriateness to the
lesson which the writer desired to teach. Following this, it will be of interest
to examine what connection can be traced between the Old Testament
Scriptures and the Constellations; the arrangement of the stars into
constellations having been the chief astronomical work effected during the
centuries when those Scriptures were severally composed. The use made of
the heavenly bodies as time-measurers amongst the Hebrews will form a
third division of the subject; whilst there are two or three incidents in the
history of Israel which appear to call for examination from an astronomical
point of view, and may suitably be treated in a fourth and concluding
section.

FOOTNOTES:
[7:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 12.

CHAPTER II
THE CREATION

A few years ago a great eclipse of the sun, seen as total along a broad belt
of country right across India, drew thither astronomers from the very ends
of the earth. Not only did many English observers travel thither, but the
United States of America in the far west, and Japan in the far east sent their
contingents, and the entire length of country covered by the path of the
shadow was dotted with the temporary observatories set up by the men of
science.
It was a wonderful sight that was vouchsafed to these travellers in pursuit of
knowledge. In a sky of unbroken purity, undimmed even for a moment by
haze or cloud, there shone down the fierce Indian sun. Gradually a dark
mysterious circle invaded its lower edge, and covered its brightness;
coolness replaced the burning heat; slowly the dark covering crept on;
slowly the sunlight diminished until at length the whole of the sun's disc
was hidden. Then in a moment a wonderful starlike form flashed out, a
noble form of glowing silver light on the deep purple-coloured sky.
There was, however, no time for the astronomers to devote to admiration of
the beauty of the scene, or indulgence in rhapsodies. Two short minutes
alone were allotted them to note all that was happening, to take all their
photographs, to ask all the questions, and obtain all the answers for which
this strange veiling of the sun, and still stranger unveiling of his halo-like
surroundings, gave opportunity. It was two minutes of intensest strain, of
hurried though orderly work; and then a sudden rush of sunlight put an end
to all. The mysterious vision had withdrawn itself; the colour rushed back to
the landscape, so corpse-like whilst in the shadow; the black veil slid
rapidly from off the sun; the heat returned to the air; the eclipse was over.
But the astronomers from distant lands were not the only people engaged in
watching the eclipse. At their work, they could hear the sound of a great

multitude, a sound of weeping and wailing, a people dismayed at the
distress of their god.
It was so at every point along the shadow track, but especially where that
track met the course of the sacred river. Along a hundred roads the pilgrims
had poured in unceasing streams towards Holy Mother Gunga; towards
Benares, the sacred city; towards Buxar, where the eclipse was central at the
river bank. It is always meritorious—so the Hindoo holds—to bathe in that
sacred river, but such a time as this, when the sun is in eclipse, is the most
propitious moment of all for such lustration.
Could there be a greater contrast than that offered between the millions
trembling and dismayed at the signs of heaven, and the little companies
who had come for thousands of miles over land and sea, rejoicing in the
brief chance that was given them for learning a little more of the secrets of
the wonders of Nature?
The contrast between the heathen and the scientists was in both their
spiritual and their intellectual standpoint, and, as we shall see later, the
intellectual contrast is a result of the spiritual. The heathen idea is that the
orbs of heaven are divine, or at least that each expresses a divinity. This
does not in itself seem an unnatural idea when we consider the great
benefits that come to us through the instrumentality of the sun and moon. It
is the sun that morning by morning rolls back the darkness, and brings light
and warmth and returning life to men; it is the sun that rouses the earth after
her winter sleep and quickens vegetation. It is the moon that has power over
the great world of waters, whose pulse beats in some kind of mysterious
obedience to her will.
Natural, then, has it been for men to go further, and to suppose that not only
is power lodged in these, and in the other members of the heavenly host, but
that it is living, intelligent, personal power; that these shining orbs are
beings, or the manifestations of beings; exalted, mighty, immortal;—that
they are gods.
But if these are gods, then it is sacrilegious, it is profane, to treat them as
mere "things"; to observe them minutely in the microscope or telescope; to
dissect them, as it were, in the spectroscope; to identify their elements in the

laboratory; to be curious about their properties, influences, relations, and
actions on each other.
And if these are gods, there are many gods, not One God. And if there are
many gods, there are many laws, not one law. Thus scientific observations
cannot be reconciled with polytheism, for scientific observations demand
the assumption of one universal law. The wise king expressed this law thus:
—
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be." The actual language of
science, as expressed by Professor Thiele, a leading Continental
astronomer, states that—
"Everything that exists, and everything that happens, exists or
happens as a necessary consequence of a previous state of
things. If a state of things is repeated in every detail, it must lead
to exactly the same consequences. Any difference between the
results of causes that are in part the same, must be explainable
by some difference in the other part of the causes."[15:1]
The law stated in the above words has been called the Law of
Causality. It "cannot be proved, but must be believed; in the
same way as we believe the fundamental assumptions of
religion, with which it is closely and intimately connected. The
law of causality forces itself upon our belief. It may be denied in
theory, but not in practice. Any person who denies it, will, if he
is watchful enough, catch himself constantly asking himself, if
no one else, why this has happened, and not that. But in that
very question he bears witness to the law of causality. If we are
consistently to deny the law of causality, we must repudiate all
observation, and particularly all prediction based on past
experience, as useless and misleading.
"If we could imagine for an instant that the same complete
combination of causes could have a definite number of different
consequences, however small that number might be, and that
among these the occurrence of the actual consequence was, in
the old sense of the word, accidental, no observation would ever
be of any particular value."[16:1]

So long as men hold, as a practical faith, that the results which attend their
efforts depend upon whether Jupiter is awake and active, or Neptune is
taking an unfair advantage of his brother's sleep; upon whether Diana is
bending her silver bow for the battle, or flying weeping and discomfited
because Juno has boxed her ears—so long is it useless for them to make or
consult observations.
But, as Professor Thiele goes on to say—
"If the law of causality is acknowledged to be an assumption
which always holds good, then every observation gives us a
revelation which, when correctly appraised and compared with
others, teaches us the laws by which God rules the world."
By what means have the modern scientists arrived at a position so different
from that of the heathen? It cannot have been by any process of natural
evolution that the intellectual standpoint which has made scientific
observation possible should be derived from the spiritual standpoint of
polytheism which rendered all scientific observation not only profane but
useless.
In the old days the heathen in general regarded the heavenly host and the
heavenly bodies as the heathen do to-day. But by one nation, the Hebrews,
the truth that—
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"
was preserved in the first words of their Sacred Book. That nation declared
—
"All the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord made the
heavens."
For that same nation the watchword was—
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord."
From these words the Hebrews not only learned a great spiritual truth, but
derived intellectual freedom. For by these words they were taught that all
the host of heaven and of earth were created things—merely "things," not
divinities—and not only that, but that the Creator was One God, not many

gods; that there was but one law-giver; and that therefore there could be no
conflict of laws. These first words of Genesis, then, may be called the
charter of all the physical sciences, for by them is conferred freedom from
all the bonds of unscientific superstition, and by them also do men know
that consistent law holds throughout the whole universe. It is the intellectual
freedom of the Hebrew that the scientist of to-day inherits. He may not
indeed be able to rise to the spiritual standpoint of the Hebrew, and
consciously acknowledge that—
"Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the
heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things
that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and Thou
preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth Thee."
But he must at least unconsciously assent to it, for it is on the first great
fundamental assumption of religion as stated in the first words of Genesis,
that the fundamental assumption of all his scientific reasoning depends.
Scientific reasoning and scientific observation can only hold good so long
and in so far as the Law of Causality holds good. We must assume a pre-
existing state of affairs which has given rise to the observed effect; we must
assume that this observed effect is itself antecedent to a subsequent state of
affairs. Science therefore cannot go back to the absolute beginnings of
things, or forward to the absolute ends of things. It cannot reason about the
way matter and energy came into existence, or how they might cease to
exist; it cannot reason about time or space, as such, but only in the relations
of these to phenomena that can be observed. It does not deal with things
themselves, but only with the relations between things. Science indeed can
only consider the universe as a great machine which is in "going order," and
it concerns itself with the relations which some parts of the machine bear to
other parts, and with the laws and manner of the "going" of the machine in
those parts. The relations of the various parts, one to the other, and the way
in which they work together, may afford some idea of the design and
purpose of the machine, but it can give no information as to how the
material of which it is composed came into existence, nor as to the method
by which it was originally constructed. Once started, the machine comes
under the scrutiny of science, but the actual starting lies outside its scope.

Men therefore cannot find out for themselves how the worlds were
originally made, how the worlds were first moved, or how the spirit of man
was first formed within him; and this, not merely because these beginnings
of things were of necessity outside his experience, but also because
beginnings, as such, must lie outside the law by which he reasons.
By no process of research, therefore, could man find out for himself the
facts that are stated in the first chapter of Genesis. They must have been
revealed. Science cannot inquire into them for the purpose of checking their
accuracy; it must accept them, as it accepts the fundamental law that
governs its own working, without the possibility of proof.
And this is what has been revealed to man:—that the heaven and the earth
were not self-existent from all eternity, but were in their first beginning
created by God. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses it:
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of
God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do
appear." And a further fact was revealed that man could not have found out
for himself; viz. that this creation was made and finished in six Divine
actings, comprised in what the narrative denominates "days." It has not
been revealed whether the duration of these "days" can be expressed in any
astronomical units of time.
Since under these conditions science can afford no information, it is not to
be wondered at that the hypotheses that have been framed from time to time
to "explain" the first chapter of Genesis, or to express it in scientific terms,
are not wholly satisfactory. At one time the chapter was interpreted to mean
that the entire universe was called into existence about 6,000 years ago, in
six days of twenty-four hours each. Later it was recognized that both
geology and astronomy seemed to indicate the existence of matter for
untold millions of years instead of some six thousand. It was then pointed
out that, so far as the narrative was concerned, there might have been a
period of almost unlimited duration between its first verse and its fourth;
and it was suggested that the six days of creation were six days of twenty-
four hours each, in which, after some great cataclysm, 6,000 years ago, the
face of the earth was renewed and replenished for the habitation of man, the
preceding geological ages being left entirely unnoticed. Some writers have
confined the cataclysm and renewal to a small portion of the earth's surface

—to "Eden," and its neighbourhood. Other commentators have laid stress
on the truth revealed in Scripture that "one day is with the Lord as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," and have urged the
argument that the six days of creation were really vast periods of time,
during which the earth's geological changes and the evolution of its varied
forms of life were running their course. Others, again, have urged that the
six days of creation were six literal days, but instead of being consecutive
were separated by long ages. And yet again, as no man was present during
the creation period, it has been suggested that the Divine revelation of it
was given to Moses or some other inspired prophet in six successive visions
or dreams, which constituted the "six days" in which the chief facts of
creation were set forth.
All such hypotheses are based on the assumption that the opening chapters
of Genesis are intended to reveal to man certain physical details in the
material history of this planet; to be in fact a little compendium of the
geological and zoological history of the world, and so a suitable
introduction to the history of the early days of mankind which followed it.
It is surely more reasonable to conclude that there was no purpose whatever
of teaching us anything about the physical relationships of land and sea, of
tree and plant, of bird and fish; it seems, indeed, scarcely conceivable that it
should have been the Divine intention so to supply the ages with a
condensed manual of the physical sciences. What useful purpose could it
have served? What man would have been the wiser or better for it? Who
could have understood it until the time when men, by their own intellectual
strivings, had attained sufficient knowledge of their physical surroundings
to do without such a revelation at all?
But although the opening chapters of Genesis were not designed to teach
the Hebrew certain physical facts of nature, they gave him the knowledge
that he might lawfully study nature. For he learnt from them that nature has
no power nor vitality of its own; that sun, and sea, and cloud, and wind are
not separate deities, nor the expression of deities that they are but "things,"
however glorious and admirable; that they are the handiwork of God; and—

"The works of the Lord are great,
Sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.

His work is honour and majesty;
And His righteousness endureth for ever.
He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered."
What, then, is the significance of the detailed account given us of the works
effected on the successive days of creation? Why are we told that light was
made on the first day, the firmament on the second, dry land on the third,
and so on? Probably for two reasons. First, that the rehearsal, as in a
catalogue, of the leading classes of natural objects, might give definiteness
and precision to the teaching that each and all were creatures, things made
by the word of God. The bald statement that the heaven and the earth were
made by God might still have left room for the imagination that the powers
of nature were co-eternal with God, or were at least subordinate divinities;
or that other powers than God had worked up into the present order the
materials He had created. The detailed account makes it clear that not only
was the universe in general created by God, but that there was no part of it
that was not fashioned by Him.
The next purpose was to set a seal of sanctity upon the Sabbath. In the
second chapter of Genesis we read—
"On the seventh day God ended His work which He had made;
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He
had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it:
because that in it He had rested from all His work which God
created and made."
In this we get the institution of the week, the first ordinance imposed by
God upon man. For in the fourth of the ten commandments which God gave
through Moses, it is said—
"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou
shalt not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh
day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed
it."
And again, when the tabernacle was being builded, it was commanded—

"The children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the
sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It
is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever: for in
six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh
day He rested, and was refreshed."
God made the sun, moon, and stars, and appointed them "for signs, and for
seasons, and for days, and years." The sun marks out the days; the moon by
her changes makes the months; the sun and the stars mark out the seasons
and the years. These were divisions of time which man would naturally
adopt. But there is not an exact number of days in the month, nor an exact
number of days or months in the year. Still less does the period of seven
days fit precisely into month or season or year; the week is marked out by
no phase of the moon, by no fixed relation between the sun, the moon, or
the stars. It is not a division of time that man would naturally adopt for
himself; it runs across all the natural divisions of time.
What are the six days of creative work, and the seventh day—the Sabbath—
of creative rest? They are not days of man, they are days of God; and our
days of work and rest, our week with its Sabbath, can only be the figure and
shadow of that week of God; something by which we may gain some faint
apprehension of its realities, not that by which we can comprehend and
measure it.
Our week, therefore, is God's own direct appointment to us; and His
revelation that He fulfilled the work of creation in six acts or stages,
dignifies and exalts the toil of the labouring man, with his six days of effort
and one of rest, into an emblem of the creative work of God.

FOOTNOTES:
[15:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, Theory of
Observations, p. 1.
[16:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, Theory of
Observations, p. 1.

MERODACH AND TIAMAT.
Sculpture from the Palace of Assur-nazir-pel, King of Assyria. Now in
the British Museum.
Damaged by fire. Supposed to represent the defeat of Tiamat by
Merodach.ToList
[To face p. 25.

CHAPTER III
THE DEEP

The second verse of Genesis states, "And the earth was without form and
void [i. e. waste and empty] and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
The word tehōm, here translated deep, has been used to support the theory
that the Hebrews derived their Creation story from one which, when exiles
in Babylon, they heard from their conquerors. If this theory were
substantiated, it would have such an important bearing upon the subject of
the attitude of the inspired writers towards the objects of nature, that a little
space must be spared for its examination.
The purpose of the first chapter of Genesis is to tell us that—
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
From it we learn that the universe and all the parts that make it up—all the
different forms of energy, all the different forms of matter—are neither
deities themselves, nor their embodiments and expressions, nor the work of
conflicting deities. From it we learn that the universe is not self-existent,
nor even (as the pantheist thinks of it) the expression of one vague,
impersonal and unconscious, but all-pervading influence. It was not self-
made; it did not exist from all eternity. It is not God, for God made it.
But the problem of its origin has exercised the minds of many nations
beside the Hebrews, and an especial interest attaches to the solution arrived
at by those nations who were near neighbours of the Hebrews and came of
the same great Semitic stock.
From the nature of the case, accounts of the origin of the world cannot
proceed from experience, or be the result of scientific experiment. They
cannot form items of history, or arise from tradition. There are only two
possible sources for them; one, Divine revelation; the other, the invention of
men.

The account current amongst the Babylonians has been preserved to us by
the Syrian writer Damascius, who gives it as follows:—
"But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass over
in silence the one principle of the Universe, and they constitute
two, Tavthê and Apasôn, making Apasôn the husband of Tavthê,
and denominating her "the mother of the gods." And from these
proceeds an only-begotten son, Mumis, which, I conceive, is no
other than the intelligible world proceeding from the two
principles. From them also another progeny is derived, Lakhê
and Lakhos; and again a third, Kissarê and Assôros, from which
last three others proceed, Anos and Illinos and Aos. And of Aos
and Dakhê is born a son called Bêlos, who, they say, is the
fabricator of the world."[26:1]
The actual story, thus summarized by Damascius, was discovered by Mr.
George Smith, in the form of a long epic poem, on a series of tablets,
brought from the royal library of Kouyunjik, or Nineveh, and he published
them in 1875, in his book on The Chaldean Account of Genesis. None of the
tablets were perfect; and of some only very small portions remain. But
portions of other copies of the poem have been discovered in other
localities, and it has been found possible to piece together satisfactorily a
considerable section, so that a fair idea of the general scope of the poem has
been given to us.
It opens with the introduction of a being, Tiamtu—the Tavthê of the account
of Damascius,—who is regarded as the primeval mother of all things.

"When on high the heavens were unnamed,
Beneath the earth bore not a name:
The primeval ocean was their producer;
Mummu Tiamtu was she who begot the whole of them.
Their waters in one united themselves, and
The plains were not outlined, marshes were not to be seen.
When none of the gods had come forth,
They bore no name, the fates (had not been determined)
There were produced the gods (all of them)."[27:1]

The genealogy of the gods follows, and after a gap in the story, Tiamat, or
Tiamtu, is represented as preparing for battle, "She who created everything
. . . produced giant serpents." She chose one of the gods, Kingu, to be her
husband and the general of her forces, and delivered to him the tablets of
fate.
The second tablet shows the god Anšar, angered at the threatening attitude
of Tiamat, and sending his son Anu to speak soothingly to her and calm her
rage. But first Anu and then another god turned back baffled, and finally
Merodach, the son of Ea, was asked to become the champion of the gods.
Merodach gladly consented, but made good terms for himself. The gods
were to assist him in every possible way by entrusting all their powers to
him, and were to acknowledge him as first and chief of all. The gods in
their extremity were nothing loth. They feasted Merodach and, when
swollen with wine, endued him with all magical powers, and hailed him—

"Merodach, thou art he who is our avenger,
(Over) the whole universe have we given thee the
kingdom."[28:1]

At first the sight of his terrible enemy caused even Merodach to falter, but
plucking up courage he advanced to meet her, caught her in his net, and,
forcing an evil wind into her open mouth—

"He made the evil wind enter so that she could not close her
lips.
The violence of the winds tortured her stomach, and
her heart was prostrated and her mouth was twisted.
He swung the club, he shattered her stomach;
he cut out her entrails; he over-mastered (her) heart;
he bound her and ended her life.
He threw down her corpse; he stood upon it."[28:2]

The battle over and the enemy slain, Merodach considered how to dispose
of the corpse.

"He strengthens his mind, he forms a clever plan,

And he stripped her of her skin like a fish, according to his
plan."[28:3]
Of one half of the corpse of Tiamat he formed the earth, and of the other
half, the heavens. He then proceded to furnish the heavens and the earth
with their respective equipments; the details of this work occupying
apparently the fifth, sixth, and seventh tablets of the series.
Under ordinary circumstances such a legend as the foregoing would not
have attracted much attention. It is as barbarous and unintelligent as any
myth of Zulu or Fijian. Strictly speaking, it is not a Creation myth at all.
Tiamat and her serpent-brood and the gods are all existent before Merodach
commences his work, and all that the god effects is a reconstruction of the
world. The method of this reconstruction possesses no features superior to
those of the Creation myths of other barbarous nations. Our own
Scandinavian ancestors had a similar one, the setting of which was certainly
not inferior to the grotesque battle of Merodach with Tiamat. The prose
Edda tells us that the first man, Bur, was the father of Bör, who was in turn
the father of Odin and his two brothers Vili and Ve. These sons of Bör slew
Ymir, the old frost giant.
"They dragged the body of Ymir into the middle of
Ginnungagap, and of it formed the earth. From Ymir's blood
they made the sea and waters; from his flesh, the land; from his
bones, the mountains; and his teeth and jaws, together with
some bits of broken bones, served them to make the stones and
pebbles."
It will be seen that there is a remarkable likeness between the Babylonian
and Scandinavian myths in the central and essential feature of each, viz. the
way in which the world is supposed to have been built up by the gods from
the fragments of the anatomy of a huge primæval monster. Yet it is not
urged that there is any direct genetic connection between the two; that the
Babylonians either taught their legend to the Scandinavians or learnt it from
them.
Under ordinary circumstances it would hardly have occurred to any one to
try to derive the monotheistic narrative of Gen. i. from either of these pagan
myths, crowded as they are with uncouth and barbarous details. But it

happened that Mr. George Smith, who brought to light the Assyrian
Creation tablets, brought also to light a Babylonian account of the Flood,
which had a large number of features in common with the narrative of Gen.
vi.-ix. The actual resemblance between the two Deluge narratives has
caused a resemblance to be imagined between the two Creation narratives.
It has been well brought out in some of the later comments of Assyriologists
that, so far from there being any resemblance in the Babylonian legend to
the narrative in Genesis, the two accounts differ in toto. Mr. T. G. Pinches,
for example, points out that in the Babylonian account there is—
"No direct statement of the creation of the heavens and the
earth;
"No systematic division of the things created into groups and
classes, such as is found in Genesis;
"No reference to the Days of Creation;
"No appearance of the Deity as the first and only cause of the
existence of things."[30:1]
Indeed, in the Babylonian account, "the heavens and the earth are
represented as existing, though in a chaotic form, from the first."
Yet on this purely imaginary resemblance between the Biblical and
Babylonian Creation narratives the legend has been founded "that the
introductory chapters of the Book of Genesis present to us the Hebrew
version of a mythology common to many of the Semitic peoples." And the
legend has been yet further developed, until writers of the standing of Prof.
Friedrich Delitzsch have claimed that the Genesis narrative was borrowed
from the Babylonian, though "the priestly scholar who composed Genesis,
chapter i. endeavoured of course to remove all possible mythological
features of this Creation story."[31:1]
If the Hebrew priest did borrow from the Babylonian myth, what was it that
he borrowed? Not the existence of sea and land, of sun and moon, of plants
and animals, of birds and beasts and fishes. For surely the Hebrew may be
credited with knowing this much of himself, without any need for a
transportation to Babylon to learn it. "In writing an account of the Creation,

statements as to what are the things created must of necessity be inserted,"
[31:2]
whenever, wherever, and by whomsoever that account is written.
What else, then, is there common to the two accounts? Tiamat is the name
given to the Babylonian mother of the universe, the dragon of the deep; and
in Genesis it is written that "darkness was upon the face of the deep
(tehōm)."
Here, and here only, is a point of possible connection; but if it be evidence
of a connection, what kind of a connection does it imply? It implies that the
Babylonian based his barbarous myth upon the Hebrew narrative. There is
no other possible way of interpreting the connection,—if connection there
be.
The Hebrew word would seem to mean, etymologically, "surges," "storm-
tossed waters,"—"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts."
Our word "deep" is apt to give us the idea of stillness—we have the
proverb, "Still waters run deep,"—whereas in some instances tehōm is used
in Scripture of waters which were certainly shallow, as, for instance, those
passed through by Israel at the Red Sea:—
"Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea: his
chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea. The depths
have covered them."
In other passages the words used in our Authorized Version, "deep" or
"depths," give the correct signification.
But deep waters, or waters in commotion, are in either case natural objects.
We get the word tehōm used continually in Scripture in a perfectly matter-
of-fact way, where there is no possibility of personification or myth being
intended. Tiamat, on the contrary, the Babylonian dragon of the waters, is a
mythological personification. Now the natural object must come first. It
never yet has been the case that a nation has gained its knowledge of a
perfectly common natural object by de-mythologizing one of the
mythological personifications of another nation. The Israelites did not learn
about tehōm, the surging water of the Red Sea, that rolled over the
Egyptians in their sight, from any Babylonian fable of a dragon of the
waters, read by their descendants hundreds of years later.

Yet further, the Babylonian account of Creation is comparatively late; the
Hebrew account, as certainly, comparatively early. It is not merely that the
actual cuneiform tablets are of date about 700 b.c., coming as they do from
the Kouyunjik mound, the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib and
Assurbanipal, built about that date. The poem itself, as Prof. Sayce has
pointed out, indicates, by the peculiar pre-eminence given in it to
Merodach, that it is of late composition. It was late in the history of
Babylon that Merodach was adopted as the supreme deity. The astronomical
references in the poem are more conclusive still, for, as will be shown later
on, they point to a development of astronomy that cannot be dated earlier
than 700 b.c.
On the other hand, the first chapter of Genesis was composed very early.
The references to the heavenly bodies in verse 16 bear the marks of the
most primitive condition possible of astronomy. The heavenly bodies are
simply the greater light, the lesser light, and the stars—the last being
introduced quite parenthetically. It is the simplest reference to the heavenly
bodies that is made in Scripture, or that, indeed, could be made.
There may well have been Babylonians who held higher conceptions of
God and nature than those given in the Tiamat myth. It is certain that very
many Hebrews fell short of the teaching conveyed in the first chapter of
Genesis. But the fact remains that the one nation preserved the Tiamat
myth, the other the narrative of Genesis, and each counted its own Creation
story sacred. We can only rightly judge the two nations by what they
valued. Thus judged, the Hebrew nation stands as high above the
Babylonian in intelligence, as well as in faith, as the first chapter of Genesis
is above the Tiamat myth.

FOOTNOTES:
[26:1] Records of the Past, vol. i. p. 124.
[27:1] The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and
Babylonia, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16.

[28:1] The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and
Babylonia, by T. G. Pinches, p. 16.
[28:2] Records of the Past, vol. i. p. 140.
[28:3] Ibid. p. 142.
[30:1] The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and
Babylonia, by T. G. Pinches, p. 49.
[31:1] Babel and Bible, Johns' translation, pp. 36 and 37.
[31:2] The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and
Babylonia, by T. G. Pinches, p. 48.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRMAMENT

The sixth verse of the first chapter of Genesis presents a difficulty as to the
precise meaning of the principal word, viz. that translated firmament.
"And God said, Let there be a rāqiā‘ in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the
rāqiā‘, and divided the waters which were under the rāqiā‘ from
the waters which were above the rāqiā‘: and it was so. And God
called the rāqiā‘ Shamayim. And the evening and the morning
were the second day."
It is, of course, perfectly clear that by the word rāqiā‘ in the preceding
passage it is the atmosphere that is alluded to. But later on in the chapter the
word is used in a slightly different connection. "God said, Let there be
lights in the firmament of heaven."
As we look upward from the earth, we look through a twofold medium.
Near the earth we have our atmosphere; above that there is inter-stellar
space, void of anything, so far as we know, except the Ether. We are not
able to detect any line of demarcation where our atmosphere ends, and the
outer void begins. Both therefore are equally spoken of as "the firmament";
and yet there is a difference between the two. The lower supports the
clouds; in the upper are set the two great lights and the stars. The upper,
therefore, is emphatically reqiā‘ hasshamayim, "the firmament of heaven,"
of the "uplifted." It is "in the face of"—that is, "before," or "under the eyes
of," "beneath,"—this higher expanse that the fowls of the air fly to and fro.
The firmament, then, is that which Tennyson sings of as "the central blue,"
the seeming vault of the sky, which we can consider as at any height above
us that we please. The clouds are above it in one sense; yet in another, sun,
moon and stars, which are clearly far higher than the clouds, are set in it.

There is no question therefore as to what is referred to by the word
"firmament"; but there is a question as to the etymological meaning of the
word, and associated with that, a question as to how the Hebrews
themselves conceived of the celestial vault.
The word rāqiā‘, translated "firmament," properly signifies "an expanse,"
or "extension," something stretched or beaten out. The verb from which this
noun is derived is often used in Scripture, both as referring to the heavens
and in other connections. Thus in Job xxxvii. 18, the question is asked,
"Canst thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong as a molten
mirror?" Eleazar, the priest, after the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and
Abiram took the brazen censers of the rebels, and they were "made broad
plates for a covering of the altar." The goldsmith described by Isaiah as
making an idol, "spreadeth it over with gold"; whilst Jeremiah says, "silver
spread into plates is brought from Tarshish." Again, in Psalm cxxxvi., in the
account of creation we have the same word used with reference to the earth,
"To him that stretched out the earth above the waters." In this and in many
other passages the idea of extension is clearly that which the word is
intended to convey. But the Seventy, in making the Greek Version of the
Old Testament, were naturally influenced by the views of astronomical
science then held in Alexandria, the centre of Greek astronomy. Here, and at
this time, the doctrine of the crystalline spheres—a misunderstanding of the
mathematical researches of Eudoxus and others—held currency. These
spheres were supposed to be a succession of perfectly transparent and
invisible solid shells, in which the sun, moon, and planets were severally
placed. The Seventy no doubt considered that in rendering rāqiā‘, by
stereōma, i. e. firmament, thus conveying the idea of a solid structure, they
were speaking the last word of up-to-date science.
There should be no reluctance in ascribing to the Hebrews an erroneous
scientific conception if there is any evidence that they held it. We cannot
too clearly realize that the writers of the Scriptures were not supernaturally
inspired to give correct technical scientific descriptions; and supposing they
had been so inspired, we must bear in mind that we should often consider
those descriptions wrong just in proportion to their correctness, for the very
sufficient reason that not even our own science of to-day has yet reached
finality in all things.

There should be no reluctance in ascribing to the Hebrews an erroneous
scientific conception if there is any evidence that they held it. In this case,
there is no such evidence; indeed, there is strong evidence to the contrary.
The Hebrew word rāqiā‘, as already shown, really signifies "extension,"
just as the word for heaven, shamayim means the "uplifted." In these two
words, therefore, significant respectively of a surface and of height, there is
a recognition of the "three dimensions,"—in other words, of Space.
When we wish to refer to super-terrestrial space, we have two expressions
in modern English by which to describe it: we can speak of "the vault of
heaven," or of "the canopy of heaven." "The vault of heaven" is most used,
it has indeed been recently adopted as the title of a scientific work by a
well-known astronomer. But the word vault certainly gives the suggestion
of a solid structure; whilst the word canopy calls up the idea of a slighter
covering, probably of some textile fabric.
The reasons for thinking that the Hebrews did not consider the "firmament"
a solid structure are, first, that the word does not necessarily convey that
meaning; next, that the attitude of the Hebrew mind towards nature was not
such as to require this idea. The question, "What holds up the waters above
the firmament?" would not have troubled them. It would have been
sufficient for them, as for the writer to the Hebrews, to consider that God
was "upholding all things by the word of His power," and they would not
have troubled about the machinery. But besides this, there are many
passages in Scripture, some occurring in the earliest books, which expressly
speak of the clouds as carrying the water; so that the expressions placing
waters "above the firmament," or "above the heavens," can mean no more
than "in the clouds." Indeed, as we shall see, quite a clear account is given
of the atmospheric circulation, such as could hardly be mended by a modern
poet.
It is true that David sang that "the foundations of heaven moved and shook,
because He was wroth," and Job says that "the pillars of heaven tremble
and are astonished at His reproof." But not only are the references to
foundations and pillars evidently intended merely as poetic imagery, but
they are also used much more frequently of the earth, and yet at the same
time Job expressly points out that God "stretcheth out the north over the

empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." The Hebrew formed no
ideas like those of the Hindus, who thought the earth supported by
elephants, the elephants by a tortoise, the tortoise by a snake.
In Scripture, in most cases the word "earth" (eretz) does not mean the solid
mass of this our planet, but only its surface; the "dry land" as opposed to the
"seas"; the countries, the dwelling place of man and beast. The "pillars" or
"foundations" of the earth in this sense are the great systems of the rocks,
and these were conceived of as directly supported by the power of God,
without any need of intermediary structures. The Hebrew clearly recognized
that it is the will of God alone that keeps the whole secure.
Thus Hannah sang—

"The pillars of the earth are the Lord's,
And He hath set the world upon them."

And Asaph represents the Lord as saying:—

"The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved:
I bear up the pillars of it."

Yet again, just as we speak of "the celestial canopy," so Psalm civ. describes
the Lord as He "who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain," and Isaiah
gives the image in a fuller form,—"that stretcheth out the heavens as a
curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." The same expression
of "stretching out the heavens" is repeatedly used in Isaiah; it is indeed one
of his typical phrases. Here, beyond question, extension, spreading out, is
the idea sought to be conveyed, not that of solidity.
The prophet Amos uses yet another parallel. "It is He that buildeth His
stories in the heaven." While Isaiah speaks of the entire stellar universe as
the tent or pavilion of Jehovah, Amos likens the height of the heavens as the
steps up to His throne; the "stories" are the "ascent," as Moses speaks of the
"ascent of Akrabbim," and David makes "the ascent" of the Mount of
Olives. The Hebrews cannot have regarded the heavens as, literally, both
staircase and reservoir.

The firmament, i. e. the atmosphere, is spoken of as dividing between the
waters that are under the firmament, i. e. oceans, seas, rivers, etc., from the
waters that are above the firmament, i. e. the masses of water vapour carried
by the atmosphere, seen in the clouds, and condensing from them as rain.
We get the very same expression as this of the "waters which were above"
in the Psalm of Praise:—

"Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens,
And ye waters that be above the heavens;"

and again in the Song of the Three Children:—

"O all ye waters that be above the heaven, bless ye the
Lord."

In the later books of the Bible the subject of the circulation of water through
the atmosphere is referred to much more fully. Twice over the prophet
Amos describes Jehovah as "He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and
poureth them out upon the face of the earth." This is not merely a reference
to the tides, for the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes expressly points out
that "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place
from whence the rivers come, thither they return again"; and Isaiah seems
to employ something of the same thought:
"For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring
forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the
eater."
Schiaparelli indeed argues that this very passage from Isaiah "expressly
excludes any idea of an atmospheric circulation of waters"[41:1] on the
ground that the water so falling is thought to be transmuted into seeds and
fruits. But surely the image is as true as it is beautiful! The rain is absorbed
by vegetation, and is transmuted into seeds and fruit, and it would go hard
to say that the same particles of rain are again evaporated and taken up
afresh into the clouds. Besides, if we complete the quotation we find that
what is stated is that the rain does not return until it has accomplished its
purpose:—

"So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall
not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I
please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
Elihu describes the process of evaporation precisely:—

"Behold, God is great, and we know Him not;
The number of His years is unsearchable.
For He draweth up the drops of water,
Which distil in rain from His vapour:
Which the skies pour down
And drop upon man abundantly."

Throughout the books of Holy Scripture, the connection between the clouds
and the rain is clearly borne in mind. Deborah says in her song "the clouds
dropped water." In the Psalms there are many references. In lxxvii. 17, "The
clouds poured out water;" in cxlvii. 8, "Who covereth the heaven with
clouds, Who prepareth rain for the earth." Proverbs xvi. 15, "His favour is
as a cloud of the latter rain." The Preacher says that "clouds return after the
rain"; and Isaiah, "I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain
upon it"; and Jude, "Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds."
The clouds, too, were not conceived as being heavy. Nahum says that "the
clouds are the dust of His feet," and Isaiah speaks of "a cloud of dew in the
heat of harvest." The Preacher clearly understood that "the waters above"
were not pent in by solid barriers; that they were carried by the clouds; for
"if the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth." And
Job says of Jehovah, "He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds, and the
cloud is not rent under them;" and, later, Jehovah Himself asks:—

"Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds,
That abundance of waters may cover thee?

Who can number the clouds by wisdom,
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven?"

The Hebrews, therefore, were quite aware that the waters of the sea were
drawn up into the atmosphere by evaporation, and were carried by it in the
form of clouds. No doubt their knowledge in this respect, as in others, was
the growth of time. But there is no need to suppose that, even in the earlier
stages of their development, the Hebrews thought of the "waters that be
above the heavens" as contained in a literal cistern overhead. Still less is
there reason to adopt Prof. Schiaparelli's strange deduction: "Considering
the spherical and convex shape of the firmament, the upper waters could not
remain above without a second wall to hold them in at the sides and the top.
So a second vault above the vault of the firmament closes in, together with
the firmament, a space where are the storehouses of rain, hail, and snow."
[43:1]
There seems to be nowhere in Scripture the slightest hint or suggestion
of any such second vault; certainly not in the beautiful passage to which
Prof. Schiaparelli is here referring.

"Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
And as for darkness, where is the place thereof;
That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof,
And that thou shouldst discern the paths to the house
thereof.

Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow,
Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail,
Which I have reserved against the time of trouble,
Against the day of battle and war?
By what way is the light parted,
Or the east wind scattered upon the earth?
Who hath cleft a channel for the water-flood,
Or a way for the lightning of the thunder;

Hath the rain a father?
Or who hath begotten the drops of dew?
Out of whose womb came the ice?
And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?"

The Song of David, Psalm xviii., clearly shows that its writer held no
fantasy of a solidly built cistern of waters in the sky, but thought of the
"dark waters" in the heavens, as identical with the "thick clouds." The
passage is worth quoting at some length, not merely as supplying a
magnificent word picture of a storm, but as showing the free and
courageous spirit of the Hebrew poet, a spirit more emancipated than can be
found in any other nation of antiquity. It was not only the gentler aspect of
nature that attracted him; even for its most terrible, he had a sympathy,
rising, under the influence of his strong faith in God, into positive
exultation in it.

"In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried unto my God:
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry before Him came into His ears.
Then the earth shook and trembled,
The foundations also of the mountains moved
And were shaken, because He was wroth.
There went up a smoke out of His nostrils,
And fire out of His mouth devoured:
Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down;
And thick darkness was under His feet.
And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly:
Yea, He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness His hiding place,
His pavilion round about Him;
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
At the brightness before Him His thick clouds passed,
Hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High uttered His voice;
Hailstones and coals of fire.
And He sent out His arrows, and scattered them;
Yea lightnings manifold, and discomfited them.
Then the channels of waters appeared,
And the foundations of the world were laid bare,

At Thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
He sent from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from them that hated me, for they were too mighty for
me."
Two other passages point to the circulation of water vapour upward from
the earth before its descent as rain; one in the prophecy of Jeremiah, the
other, almost identical with it, in Psalm cxxxv. 7: "When He uttereth His
voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causeth the
vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; He maketh lightnings for the
rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of His treasuries." Here we get a hint
of a close observing of nature among the Hebrews. For by the
foreshortening that clouds undergo in the distance, they inevitably appear to
form chiefly on the horizon, "at the ends of the earth," whence they move
upwards towards the zenith.
A further reference to clouds reveals not observation only but acute
reflection, though it leaves the mystery without solution. "Dost thou know
the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him Which is perfect
in knowledge?" There is a deep mystery here, which science is far from
having completely solved, how it is that the clouds float, each in its own
place, at its own level; each perfectly "balanced" in the thin air.
"That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level
and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through
an inundation—why is it so heavy? and why does it lie so low,
being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into
splendour of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few
moments more? Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with
outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high
sun full on their fiery flanks—why are they so light—their bases
high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? why will these
melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the
stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapour gains again upon
the earth like a shroud?"[46:1]

The fact of the "balancing" has been brought home to us during the past
hundred years very vividly by the progress of aërial navigation. Balloons
are objects too familiar even to our children to cause them any surprise, and
every one knows how instantly a balloon, when in the air, rises up higher if
a few pounds of ballast are thrown out, or sinks if a little of the gas is
allowed to escape. We know of no balancing more delicate than this, of a
body floating in the air.

CIRRUS FROM SOUTH KENSINGTON, 1906, MAY 29.

CUMULI FROM TUNBRIDGE WELLS, 1906, MAY 20.
(Photographs of clouds, taken by Dr. W. J. S. Lockyer.)
"Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds?"ToList

"The spreadings of the clouds," mentioned by Elihu are of the same nature
as their "balancings," but the expression is less remarkable. The "spreading"
is a thing manifest to all, but it required the mind both of a poet and a man
of science to appreciate that such spreading involved a delicate poising of
each cloud in its place.
The heavy rain which fell at the time of the Deluge is indeed spoken of as if
it were water let out of a reservoir by its floodgates,—"the windows of
heaven were opened;" but it seems to show some dulness on the part of an
objector to argue that this expression involves the idea of a literal stone
built reservoir with its sluices. Those who have actually seen tropical rain in
full violence will find the Scriptural phrase not merely appropriate but
almost inevitable. The rain does indeed fall like hitherto pent-up waters
rushing forth at the opening of a sluice, and it seems unreasonable to try to
place too literal an interpretation upon so suitable a simile.
There is the less reason to insist upon this very matter-of-fact rendering of
the "windows of heaven," that in two out of the three connections in which
it occurs, the expression is certainly used metaphorically. On the occasion
of the famine in the city of Samaria, Elisha prophesied that—
"To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold
for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate
of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned
answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would
make windows in heaven, might this thing be?"
So again Malachi exhorted the Jews after the Return from Babylon:—
"Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be
meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord
of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour
you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to
receive it."
In neither case can the "windows of heaven" have been meant by the
speaker to convey the idea of the sluice-gates of an actual, solidly-built
reservoir in the sky.

One other cloud fact—their dissipation as the sun rises high in the heavens
—is noticed in one of the most tender and pathetic passages in all the
prophetic Scriptures. The Lord, by the mouth of Hosea, is mourning over
the instability of His people. "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O
Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud,
and as the early dew it goeth away."
The winds of heaven were considered as four in number, corresponding to
our own four "cardinal points." Thus the great horn of Daniel's he-goat was
broken and succeeded by four notable horns toward the four winds of
heaven; as the empire of Alexander the Great was divided amongst his four
generals. In Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones the prophet prays, "Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain;" and Jeremiah
foretells that "the four winds from the four quarters of heaven" shall be
brought upon Elam, and scatter its outcasts into every nation.
The circulation of the winds is clearly set forth by the Preacher in the Book
of Ecclesiastes.
"The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the
north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again
according to his circuits."
Of the four quarters, the Hebrews reckoned the east as first. It was to the
east that they supposed themselves always looking. The chief word for east,
therefore, kedem, means "that which is before," "the front"; and the word
next in use is, naturally, mizrach, the rising of the sun. The west is, as
naturally, mebō hasshemesh, the going down of the sun; but as the
Mediterranean Sea lay to the westward of Palestine "the sea" (yam) is
frequently put instead of that point of the compass. With the east in front,
the south becomes the right, and the north the left. The south also was
negeb, the desert, since the desert shut in Palestine to the south, as the sea to
the west. In opposition to tsaphon, the dark or hidden north, the south is
darom, the bright and sunny region.
The phrase "four corners of the earth" does not imply that the Hebrews
thought of the earth as square. Several expressions on the contrary show
that they thought of it as circular. The Lord "sitteth upon the circle of the
earth," and in another passage the same form is applied to the ocean. "He

set a compass (margin circle) upon the face of the depth." This circle is no
doubt the circle of the visible horizon, within which earth and sea are
spread out apparently as a plain; above it "the vault of heaven" (Job xxii.
14; R.V. margin) is arched. There does not appear to be allusion, anywhere
in Scripture, to the spherical form of the earth.
The Hebrew knowledge of the extent of the terrestrial plain was of course
very limited, but it would seem that, like many other nations of antiquity,
they supposed that the ocean occupied the outer part of the circle
surrounding the land which was in the centre. This may be inferred from
Job's statement—

"He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters,
Unto the confines of light and darkness."

The boundary of the world is represented as being "described," or more
properly "circumscribed," drawn as a circle, upon the ocean. This ocean is
considered as essentially one, exactly as by actual exploration we now
know it to be;—"Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto
one place;"—all the oceans and seas communicate.
Beneath the earth there are the waters. The Lord hath founded the world
"upon the seas, and established it upon the floods," and (Psalm cxxxvi. 6)
"stretched out the earth above the waters." This for the most part means
simply that the water surface lies lower than the land surface. But there are
waters,—other than those of the ocean,—which are, in a strict sense,
beneath the earth; the subterranean waters, which though in the very
substance of the earth, and existing there in an altogether different way
from the great masses of water we see upon the surface, form a water
system, which may legitimately be termed a kind of ocean underground.
From these subterranean waters our springs issue forth, and it is these
waters we tap in our wells. Of the cedar in Lebanon Ezekiel spoke: "The
waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running
round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers (margin, conduits) unto
all the trees of the field." The "deep," tehōm, applies therefore, not merely
to the restless waters of the ocean, but to these unseen waters as well; and
means, not merely "surging waters," but depths of any kind. When in the
great Deluge the floodgates of heaven were opened, these "fountains of the

great deep were broken up" as well. And later both fountains and windows
were "stopped." So the Lord asks Job, "Hast thou entered into the springs of
the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?" and in Proverbs it
is said of the Lord, "By His knowledge the depths are broken up, and the
clouds drop down the dew."
The tides upon the sea-coast of Palestine are very slight, but some have
seen a reference to them in Jer. v. 22 where the Lord says, I "have placed
the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass
it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail;
though they roar, yet can they not pass over it." More probably the idea to
be conveyed is merely that of the restraint of the sea to its proper basin, as
in the passage where the Lord asks Job, "Who shut up the sea with doors
when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?" And the writer of
Proverbs sums all up:—
"When He prepared the heavens I [Wisdom] was there: when He
set a compass upon the face of the depth: when He established
the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the
deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should
not pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations
of the earth."

FOOTNOTES:
[41:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 33 note.
[43:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 32.
[46:1] Ruskin, Modern Painters, part vii. chap. i.

CHAPTER V
THE ORDINANCES OF THE HEAVENS

As has been already pointed out, the astronomical references in Scripture
are not numerous, and probably give but an inadequate idea of the actual
degree of progress attained by the Hebrews in astronomical science. Yet it is
clear, even from the record which we have, that there was one great
astronomical fact which they had observed, and that it had made a deep
impression upon them.
That fact was the sublime Order of the heavenly movements. First amongst
these was the order of the daily progress of the sun; rising in the east and
moving slowly, majestically, and resistlessly upward to the meridian,—the
"midst" or "bisection" of heaven, of Josh. x. 13,—and then passing
downwards as smoothly and unfalteringly to his setting in the west.
This motion of the sun inspires the simile employed by the Psalmist in the
astronomical psalm, the nineteenth. He sings—

"The heavens declare the glory of God.

In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
And his circuit unto the ends of it:
And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

The night revealed another Order, in its way more majestic still. As the
twilight faded away the bright and silent watchers of the heavens mustered
each in his place. And each, like the sun during the day, was moving,
slowly, majestically, resistlessly, "without haste, without rest." Each had its
appointed place, its appointed path. Some moved in small circles in the

north; some rose in the east, and swept in long curves over towards their
setting in the west, some scarcely lifted themselves above the southern
horizon. But each one kept its own place. None jostled another, or hurried
in advance, or lagged behind. It is no wonder that as the multitude of the
stars was observed, and the unbroken order of their going, that the simile
suggested itself of an army on the march—"the host of heaven." And the
sight of the unbroken order of these bright celestial orbs suggested a
comparison with the unseen army of exalted beings, the angels; the army or
host of heaven in another sense, marshalled, like the stars, in perfect
obedience to the Divine will. So in the vision of Micaiah, the son of Imlah,
the "host of heaven" are the thousands of attendant spirits waiting around
the throne of God to fulfil His bidding.

"I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven
standing by him on His right hand and on His left."
But more frequently it is the starry, not the angelic, army to which reference
is made.
So Jeremiah prophesies—

"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered,
Neither the sand of the sea measured:
So will I multiply the seed of David My servant,
And the Levites that minister unto Me."

The prophets of Israel recognized clearly, that the starry host of heaven and
the angelic host were distinct; that the first, in their brightness, order, and
obedience formed fitting comparison for the second; but that both were
created beings; neither were divinities.
The heathen nations around recognized also the hosts both of the stars and
of spiritual beings, but the first they took as the manifestations of the
second, whom they counted as divinities. There was often a great confusion
between the two, and the observance or worship of the first could not be
kept distinguished from the recognition or worship of the other; the very
ideogram for a god was an 8-rayed star.
The Hebrews were warned again and again lest, confusing in their minds
these two great hosts of stars and angels, they should deem the one the
divine manifestation of the other, the divinity, not accounting them both
fellow-servants, the handiwork of God.
Thus, in the wilderness, the Lord commands them through Moses—
"Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, . . . lest thou lift
up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the
moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be
driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy
God hath divided [distributed] unto all nations under the whole
heaven."

But the one celestial army continually suggests the other, and the two are
placed in the closest parallelism when reference is made to the time when
the foundations of the earth were fastened, and the corner stone thereof was
laid,

"When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy."

So when Deborah sings of the deliverance which the Lord gave to Israel at
the battle of the Kishon, she puts the stars for the angelic legions that she
feels assured were engaged in warring in their support.

"They fought from heaven;
The stars in their courses fought against Sisera."

The "courses" of the stars are the paths which they appear to follow as they
move round the pole of the heavens as the night proceeds, whilst the stars
themselves stand for the heavenly helpers who, unseen, had mingled in the
battle and discomforted the squadrons of Sisera's war-chariots. It almost
reads as if to Deborah had been vouchsafed such a vision as Elisha prayed
might be given to his servant:—
"Therefore sent the King of Syria thither horses, and chariots,
and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the
city about.
"And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and
gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses
and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master!
how shall we do?
"And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more
than they that be with them.
"And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes
that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young
man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses
and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

The solemn procession of the starry host through the long night—the rising
in the east, the southing, and the setting in the west—is not the only ordered
movement of the stars of heaven that may be recognized. As night by night
brightens to its dawn, if we watch the eastern horizon and note what stars
are the last to rise above it before the growing daylight overpowers the
feeble stellar rays, then we see that some bright star, invisible on the
preceding mornings, shines out for a few moments low down in the
glimmer of the dawn. As morning succeeds morning it rises earlier, until at
last it mounts when it is yet dark, and some other star takes its place as the
herald of the rising sun. We recognize to-day this "heliacal rising" of the
stars. Though we do not make use of it in our system of time-measuring, it
played an important part in the calendar-making of the ancients. Such
heralds of the rising sun were called "morning stars" by the Hebrews, and
they used them "for seasons" and "for years." One star or constellation of
stars would herald by its "heliacal rising" the beginning of spring, another
the coming of winter; the time to plough, the time to sow, the time of the
rains, would all be indicated by the successive "morning stars" as they
appeared. And after an interval of three hundred and sixty-five or three
hundred and sixty-six days the same star would again show itself as a
morning star for a second time, marking out the year, whilst the other
morning stars would follow, each in its due season. So we read in Job, that
God led "forth the Mazzaroth in their season."
This wonderful procession of the midnight sky is not known and admired
by those who live in walled cities and ceiled houses, as it is by those who
live in the open, in the wilderness. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that
we find praise of these "works of the Lord . . . sought out of all them that
have pleasure therein," mostly amongst the shepherds, the herdsmen, the
wanderers in the open—in the words and prophecies of Job, of Jacob,
Moses, David and Amos.
The thought that each new day, beginning with a new outburst of light, was,
in its degree, a kind of new creation, an emblem of the original act by which
the world was brought into being, renders appropriate and beautiful the
ascription of the term "morning stars" to those "sons of God," the angels. As
the stars in the eastern sky are poetically thought of as "singing together" to
herald the creation of each new day, so in the verses already quoted from

the Book of Job, the angels of God are represented as shouting for joy when
the foundations of the earth were laid.
The "morning star" again stands as the type and earnest of that new creation
which God has promised to His servants. The epistle to Thyatira concludes
with the promise—"He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the
end, . . . I will give him the morning star."
The brightest of these heralds of the sun is the planet Venus, and such a
"morning star" for power, glory, and magnificence, the king of Babylon had
once been; like one of the angels of God. But as addressed in Isaiah's
prophecy, he has been brought down to Sheol:—
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning! . . . For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God . . . I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most
High."
But the "morning star" is taken as a higher type, even of our Lord Himself,
and of His future coming in glory. St. Peter bids the disciples, to whom he
writes, take heed unto the word of prophecy as unto a lamp shining in a
dark place "until the day dawn, and the Day star arise in your hearts." In
almost the last words of the Bible, the Lord uses the same image Himself:
—
"I, Jesus, have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things
in the Churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the
bright and morning star."
In the sublime and ordered movements of the various heavenly bodies, the
Hebrews recognized the ordinances of God. The point of view always taken
in Scripture is the theo-centric one; the relation sought to be brought out is
not the relation of thing to thing—which is the objective of physical science
—but the relation of creature to Creator. We have no means of knowing
whether they made attempt to find any mechanical explanation of the
movements; such inquiry would lie entirely outside the scope of the books
of Holy Scripture, and other ancient Hebrew literature has not been
transmitted to us.

The lesson which the Psalmists and the Prophets desired to teach was not
the daily rotation of the earth upon its axis, nor its yearly revolution round
the sun, but that—
"If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then
the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me
for ever."
In the Bible all intermediate steps are omitted, and the result is linked
immediately to the first Cause. God Himself is the theme, and trust in Him
the lesson.
"Lift up your eyes on high, and see Who hath created these, That
bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by name;
by the greatness of His might, and for that He is strong in power,
not one is lacking.
"Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is
hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed away from my
God. Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? the everlasting
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not,
neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He
giveth power to the faint; and to him that hath no might He
increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the
Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings
as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and
not faint."

CHAPTER VI
THE SUN

"And God said Let there be lights in the firmament of the
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons and for days, and years: and let them be
for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the
earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater
light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He
made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the
heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and
over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and
God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning
were the fourth day."
A double purpose for the two great heavenly bodies is indicated here,—
first, the obvious one of giving light; next, that of time measurement. These,
from the human and practical point of view, are the two main services
which the sun and moon render to us, and naturally sufficed for the object
that the writer had before him. There is no evidence that he had any idea
that the moon simply shone by reflecting the light of the sun; still less that
the sun was a light for worlds other than our own; but if he had known these
facts we can hardly suppose that he would have mentioned them; there
would have been no purpose to be served by so doing.
But it is remarkable that no reference is made either to the incalculable
benefits conferred by the action of the sun in ripening the fruits of the earth,
or to the services of the moon as a time-measurer, in dividing off the
months. Both these actions are clearly indicated later on in the Scriptures,
where Moses, in the blessing which he pronounced upon the tribe of
Joseph, prayed that his land might be blessed "for the precious things of the
fruits of the sun," so that we may take their omission here, together with the
omission of all mention of the planets, and the slight parenthetical reference

to the stars, as indicating that this chapter was composed at an exceedingly
early date.
The chief purpose of the sun is to give light; it "rules" or regulates the day
and "divides the light from the darkness." As such it is the appropriate
emblem of God Himself, Who "is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all."
These images are frequently repeated in the Scriptures, and it is only
possible to give a few instances. David sings, "The Lord is my light and my
salvation." "The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light," is the promise
made to Zion. St. John expressly uses the term of the Son of God, our Lord:
"That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world." Whilst the more concrete emblem is used as often. In the eighty-
fourth psalm, the psalm of pilgrimage, we read, "The Lord God is a sun and
shield;" Malachi predicts that "the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with
healing in His wings," and St James, with the same thought of the sun in his
mind, speaks of God as "the Father of lights."
But in none of these or the other parallel passages is there the remotest
approach to any deification of the sun, or even of that most ethereal of
influences, light itself. Both are creatures, both are made by God; they are
things and things only, and are not even the shrines of a deity. They may be
used as emblems of God in some of His attributes; they do not even furnish
any indication of His special presence, for He is equally present where sun
and light are not. "The darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth
as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."
The worship of the sun and of other heavenly bodies is one of the sins most
unsparingly denounced in Scripture. It was one of the first warnings of the
Book of Deuteronomy that Israel as a people were to take heed "lest thou
lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon,
and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship
them and serve them," and the utter overthrow of the nation was foretold
should they break this law. And as for the nation, so for the individual, any
"man or woman that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy
God, in transgressing His covenant and hath gone and served other gods,
and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven"
was when convicted of working "such abomination" unsparingly to be put
to death.

Yet with all this, sun-worship prevailed in Israel again and again. Two of
the reforming kings of Judah, Asa and Josiah, found it necessary to take
away "the sun-images;" indeed, the latter king found that the horses and
chariots which his predecessors, Manasseh and Amon, had dedicated to sun
worship were kept at the very entrance to the temple. In spite of his
reformation, however, the evil spread until the final corruption of Jerusalem
was shown in vision to Ezekiel, "Seventy men of the ancients"—that is the
complete Sanhedrim—offered incense to creeping things and abominable
beasts; the women wept for Tammuz, probably the sun-god in his decline to
winter death; and deepest apostasy of all, five and twenty men, the high-
priest, and the chief priests of the twenty-four courses, "with their backs
toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they
worshipped the sun toward the east." The entire nation, as represented in its
chief members in State, Society, and Church, was apostate, and its ruin
followed. Five years more and the temple was burned and Jerusalem
destroyed, and in captivity and exile the nation learned to abhor the idolatry
that had brought about its overthrow.
Four words are translated "sun" in our Authorized Version. Of these one,
used Job xxxi. 26, should really be "light," as in the margin—"If I beheld
the light when it shined,"—though the sun is obviously meant. The second
word is one used in poetry chiefly in conjunction with a poetical word for
the moon, and refers to the sun's warmth, as the other does to the whiteness
of the moon. Thus the Bride in the Song of Solomon is described as "fair as
the moon, clear as the sun." The third word has given use to some
ambiguity. In the eighth chapter of Judges in the Authorized Version, it is
stated that "Gideon, the son of Joash, returned from the battle before the sun
was up," but in the Revised Version that he "returned from the battle from
the ascent of Heres." There was a mount Ḥeres, a mount of the sun, in the
portion of the Danites held by the Amorites, but that cannot have been the
Ḥeres of Gideon. Still the probability is that a mount sacred to the sun is
meant here as well as in the reference to the Danites; though ḥeres as
meaning the sun itself occurs in the story of Samson's riddle, for the men of
the city gave him the answer to it which they had extorted from his wife,
"before the sun (ḥeres) went down." Shemesh, the Samas of the
Babylonians, is the usual word for the sun; and we find it in Beth-shemesh,
the "house of the sun," a Levitical city within the tribe of Judah, the scene

of the return of the ark after its captivity amongst the Philistines. There was
another Beth-shemesh in Naphtali on the borders of Issachar, and Jeremiah
prophesies that Nebuchadnezzar "shall break also the images of Beth-
shemesh, that is in the land of Egypt," probably the obelisks of the sun in
On, or Heliopolis. It was from this city that Joseph, when vizier of Egypt,
took his wife, the daughter of the high priest there. The images of the sun,
and of Baal as the sun-god, seem to have been obelisks or pillars of stone,
and hence had to be "broken down"; whilst the Asherah, the "groves" of the
Authorized Version, the images of Ashtoreth as the moon-goddess, were
wooden pillars, to be "cut" or "hewn down."
Another "city of the sun" in the land of Egypt is also mentioned by Isaiah,
in his prophecy of the conversion and restoration of the Egyptians. "Five
cities in the land of Egypt shall speak the language of Canaan, and swear to
the Lord of hosts; one shall be called The city of destruction;" lit. of Ḥeres,
or of the sun. It was upon the strength of this text that Onias, the son of
Onias the high priest, appealed to Ptolemy Philometer to be allowed to
build a temple to Jehovah in the prefecture of Heliopolis (the city of the
sun), and obtained his permission to do so, b.c. 149.[68:1]
The epithet applied to the sun in Cant. vi. already quoted, "Clear as the
sun," may be taken as equivalent to "spotless." That is its ordinary
appearance to the naked eye, though from time to time—far more
frequently than most persons have any idea—there are spots upon the sun
sufficiently large to be seen without any optical assistance. Thus in the
twenty years from 1882 to 1901 inclusive, such a phenomenon occurred on
the average once in each week. No reference to the existence of sun-spots
occurs in Scripture. Nor is this surprising, for it would not have fallen
within the purpose of Scripture to record such a fact. But it is surprising that
whilst the Chinese detected their occasional appearance, there is no distinct
account of such an observation given either on Babylonian tablets or by
classical or mediæval writers.
The achievement of the Chinese in this direction is very notable, for the
difficulty of looking directly at the sun, under ordinary circumstances is so
great, and the very largest sunspots are so small as compared with the entire
disc, that it argues great perseverance in watching such appearances on the

part of the Chinese, for them to have assured themselves that they were not
due to very small distant clouds in our own atmosphere.
It has often been the subject of comment that light is mentioned in Gen. i. as
having been created on the first day, but the sun not until the fourth. The
order is entirely appropriate from an astronomical point of view, for we
know that our sun is not the only source of light, since it is but one out of
millions of stars, many of which greatly exceed it in splendour. Further,
most astronomers consider that our solar system existed as a luminous
nebula long ages before the sun was formed as a central condensation.
But the true explanation of the creation of light being put first is probably
this—that there might be no imagining that, though gross solid bodies, like
earth and sea, sun and moon might require a Creator, yet something so
ethereal and all-pervading as light was self-existent, and by its own nature,
eternal. This was a truth that needed to be stated first. God is light, but light
is not God.
The other references to the sun in Scripture do not call for much comment.
Its apparent unchangeableness qualifies it for use as an expression for
eternal duration, as in the seventy-second, the Royal, Psalm, "They shall
fear Thee as long as the sun and moon endure;" and again, "His name shall
endure for ever: His name shall be continued as long as the sun." And again,
in the eighty-ninth Psalm, it is said of David: "His seed shall endure for
ever, and his throne as the sun before Me."
The daily course of the sun from beyond the eastern horizon to beyond the
western gives the widest expression for the compass of the whole earth.
"The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth, from
the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof." "From the rising of the
sun, unto the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised."
The sun's rays penetrate everywhere. "His going forth is from the end of the
heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the
heat thereof." Whilst in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the melancholy words of
the Preacher revert over and over again to that which is done "under the
sun." "What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the
sun?"

It should be noted that this same Book of Ecclesiastes shows a much clearer
idea of the sun's daily apparent motion than was held by many of the writers
of antiquity. There is, of course, nowhere in Scripture any mention of the
rotation of the earth on its axis as the mechanical explanation of the sun's
daily apparent motion; any more than we should refer to it ourselves to-day
except when writing from a purely technical point of view. As said already,
the Hebrews had probably not discovered this explanation, and would
certainly have not gone out of their way to mention it in any of their
Scriptures if they had.
One passage of great beauty has sometimes been quoted as if it contained a
reference to the earth's rotation, but when carefully examined it is seen to be
dealing simply with the apparent motion of the sun in the course of the year
and of the day.

"Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days;
And caused the dayspring to know his place;
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
That the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal;
And they stand as a garment."

The earth appears to be spoken of as being "turned" to the sun, the
dayspring; and this, we know, takes place, morning by morning, in
consequence of the diurnal rotation. But the last two lines are better
rendered in the Revised Version—

"It is changed as clay under the seal;
And all things stand forth as a garment."

The ancient seals were cylinders, rolled over the clay, which, formless
before, took upon it the desired relief as the seal passed over it. So a
garment, laid aside and folded up during the night, is shapeless, but once
again takes form when the wearer puts it on. And the earth, formless in the
darkness, gains shape and colour and relief with the impress upon it of the
morning light.

It is quite clear that the Hebrews did not suppose that it was a new sun that
came up from the east each morning, as did Xenophanes and the Epicureans
amongst the Greeks. It was the same sun throughout. Nor is there any idea
of his hiding himself behind a mysterious mountain during the night. "The
sun," the Preacher tells us, "ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to
his place where he arose." The Hebrew was quite aware that the earth was
unsupported in space, for he knew that the Lord "stretcheth out the north
over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." There was
therefore nothing to hinder the sun passing freely under the earth from west
to east, and thus making his path, not a mere march onward ending in his
dissolution at sunset, but a complete "circuit," as noted by the writer of the
nineteenth Psalm.
The fierceness of the sun's heat in Palestine rendered sun-stroke a serious
danger. The little son of the Shunammite was probably so smitten as he
watched his father at work with the reapers. So the promise is given to
God's people more than once: "The sun shall not smite thee by day." "They
shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them." The
martyrs who pass through the great tribulation "shall hunger no more,
neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."
There are fewer references in Scripture to the vivifying effects of sunlight
upon vegetation than we might have expected. The explanation is possibly
to be found in the terrible perversion men had made of the benefits which
came to them by means of this action of sunlight, by using them as an
excuse for plunging into all kinds of nature-worship. Yet there are one or
two allusions not without interest. As already mentioned, "the precious
fruits brought forth by the sun" were promised to the tribe of Joseph, whilst
the great modern discovery that nearly every form of terrestrial energy is
derived ultimately from the energy of the sun's rays gives a most striking
appropriateness to the imagery made use of by St. James.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the Father of Lights, with Whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning."
God, that is to say, is the true Sun, the true Origin of all Lights, the true
bestower of every good and perfect gift. The word rendered "variableness,"

is a technical word, used by ourselves in modern English as "parallax," and
employed in the Septuagint Version to denote the revolutions of the
heavenly bodies, described in the thirty-eighth chapter of the book of Job,
as "the ordinances of the heavens." With the natural sun, therefore, there is
"variableness," that is to say, real or apparent change of place; there is none
with God. Neither is there with Him any darkness of eclipse; any "shadow"
caused as in the case of the material sun, by the "turning" of earth and moon
in their orbits. The knowledge of "the alternations of the turning of the sun,"
described in the Book of Wisdom as a feature of the learning of Solomon,
was a knowledge of the laws of this "variableness" and "turning"; especially
of the "turning" of its rising and setting points at the two solstices; and St.
James may well have had that passage in his mind when he wrote. For
Science deals with the knowledge of things that change, as they change, and
of their changes, but Faith with the knowledge of Him that abideth for ever,
and it is to this higher knowledge that St. James wished to point his readers.
Science deals with the knowledge of things that change, as they change and
of their changes. The physical facts that we have learned in the last years
about that changeful body the sun are briefly these:—
Its core or inner nucleus is not accessible to observation, its nature and
constitution being a mere matter of inference. The "photosphere" is a shell
of incandescent cloud surrounding the nucleus, but the depth, or thickness
of this shell is quite unknown. The outer surface—which we see—of the
photosphere is certainly pretty sharply defined, though very irregular, rising
at points into whiter aggregations, called "faculæ," and perhaps depressed at
other places in the dark "spots." Immediately above the photosphere lies the
"reversing layer" in which are found the substances which give rise to the
gaps in the sun's spectrum—the Fraunhofer lines. Above the "reversing
layer" lies the scarlet "chromosphere" with "prominences" of various forms
and dimensions rising high above the solar surface; and over, and
embracing all, is the "corona," with its mysterious petal-like forms and rod-
like rays.
The great body of the sun is gaseous, though it is impossible for us to
conceive of the condition of the gaseous core, subjected, as it is, at once to
temperature and pressure both enormously great. Probably it is a gas so
viscous that it would resist motion as pitch or putty does. Nor do we know

much of the nature of either the sun-spots or the solar corona. Both seem to
be produced by causes which lie within the sun; both undergo changes that
are periodical and connected with each other. They exercise some influence
upon the earth's magnetism, but whether this influence extends to terrestrial
weather, to rainfall and storms, is still a matter of controversy.
The sun itself is distant from the earth in the mean, about 92,885,000 miles,
but this distance varies between January and June by 3,100,000 miles. The
diameter of the sun is 866,400 miles, but perhaps this is variable to the
extent of some hundreds of miles. It would contain 1,305,000 times the bulk
of the earth, but its mean density is but one-quarter that of the earth. The
force of gravity at its surface is 27-1/2 times that at the surface of the earth,
and it rotates on its axis in about 25 days. But the sun's surface does not
appear to rotate as a whole, so this time of rotating varies by as much as two
days if we consider a region on the sun's equator or at a distance from it of
45°. The intensity of sunlight at the surface of the sun is about 190,000
times that of a candle-flame, and the effective temperature of the solar
surface is eight or ten thousand degrees centigrade.
Such are some of the facts about the sun that are received, or, as it would be
technically expressed, "adopted" to-day. Doubtless a very few years will
find them altered and rendered more accurate as observations accumulate.
In a few hundred years, knowledge of the constitution of the sun may have
so increased that these data and suggestions may seem so erroneous as to be
absurd. It is little more than a century since one of the greatest of
astronomers, Sir William Herschel, contended that the central globe of the
sun might be a habitable world, sheltered from the blazing photosphere by a
layer of cool non-luminous clouds. Such an hypothesis was not
incompatible with what was then known of the constitution of the heavenly
bodies, though it is incompatible with what we know now. It was simply a
matter on which more evidence was to be accumulated, and the holding of
such a view does not, and did not, detract from the scientific status of Sir
William Herschel.
The hypotheses of science require continual restatement in the light of new
evidence, and, as to the weight and interpretation to be given to such
evidence, there is continual conflict—if it may so be called—between the
old and the new science, between the science that is established and the

science that is being established. It is by this conflict that knowledge is
rendered sure.
Such a conflict took place rather more than 300 years ago at the opening of
the Modern Era of astronomy. It was a conflict between two schools of
science—between the disciples of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy on the
one hand and the disciples of Copernicus on the other. It has often been
represented as a conflict between religion and science, whereas that which
happened was that the representatives of the older school of science made
use of the powers of the Church to persecute the newer school as
represented by Galileo. That persecution was no doubt a flagrant abuse of
authority, but it should be impossible at the present day for any one to claim
a theological standing for either theory, whether Copernican or Ptolemaic.
So long as evidence sufficient to demonstrate the Copernican hypothesis
was not forthcoming, it was possible for a man to hold the Ptolemaic,
without detracting from his scientific position, just as it is thought no
discredit to Sir William Herschel that he held his curious idea of a cool sun
under the conditions of knowledge of a hundred years ago. Even at the
present day, we habitually use the Ptolemaic phraseology. Not only do we
speak of "sunrise" and "sunset," but astronomers in strictly technical papers
use the expression, "acceleration of the sun's motion" when "acceleration of
the earth's motion" is meant.
The question as to whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun goes
round the earth has been decided by the accumulation of evidence. It was a
question for evidence to decide. It was an open question so long as the
evidence available was not sufficient to decide it. It was perfectly possible
at one time for a scientific or a religious man to hold either view. Neither
view interfered with his fundamental standing or with his mental attitude
towards either sun or earth. In this respect—important as the question is in
itself—it might be said to be a mere detail, almost a matter of indifference.
But it is not a mere detail, a matter of indifference to either scientist or
religious man, as to what the sun and earth are—whether he can treat them
as things that can be weighed, measured, compared, analyzed, as, a few
pages back, we have shown has been done, or whether, as one of the chief
astrologers of to-day puts it, he—

"Believes that the sun is the body of the Logos of this solar
system, 'in Him we live and move and have our being.' The
planets are his angels, being modifications in the consciousness
of the Logos,"
and that the sun
"Stands as Power, having Love and Will united."
The difference between these two points of view is fundamental, and one of
root principle. The foundation, the common foundation on which both the
believer and the scientist build, is threatened by this false science and false
religion. The calling, the very existence of both is assailed, and they must
stand or fall together. The believer in one God cannot acknowledge a Sun-
god, a Solar Logos, these planetary angels; the astronomer cannot admit the
intrusion of planetary influences that obey no known laws, and the
supposed effects of which are in no way proportional to the supposed
causes. The Law of Causality does not run within the borders of astrology.
It is the old antithesis restated of the Hebrew and the heathen. The believer
in one God and the scientist alike derive their heritage from the Hebrew,
whilst the modern astrologer claims that the astrology of to-day is once
more a revelation of the Chaldean and Assyrian religions. But polytheism—
whether in its gross form of many gods, of planetary angels, or in the more
subtle form of pantheism,—is the very negation of sane religion; and
astrology is the negation of sane astronomy.
"For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him
not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory
of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible
man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things."

FOOTNOTES:
[68:1] Josephus, Antiquities, XIII. iii. 1.

CHAPTER VII
THE MOON

"The balmy moon of blessed Israel
Floods all the deep-blue gloom with beams divine:
All night the splintered crags that wall the dell
With spires of silver shine."

So, in Tennyson's words, sang Jephthah's daughter, as she recalled the days
of her mourning before she accomplished her self-sacrifice.
It is hard for modern dwellers in towns to realize the immense importance
of the moon to the people of old. "The night cometh when no man can
work" fitly describes their condition when she was absent. In sub-tropical
countries like Palestine, twilight is short, and, the sun once set, deep
darkness soon covers everything. Such artificial lights as men then had
would now be deemed very inefficient. There was little opportunity, when
once darkness had fallen, for either work or enjoyment.
But, when the moon was up, how very different was the case. Then men
might say—

"This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid."

In the long moonlit nights, travelling was easy and safe; the labours of the
field and house could still be carried on; the friendly feast need not be
interrupted. But of all men, the shepherd would most rejoice at this season;
all his toils, all his dangers were immeasurably lightened during the nights
near the full. As in the beautiful rendering which Tennyson has given us of
one of the finest passages in the Iliad—

"In heaven the stars about the moon

Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart."
A large proportion of the people of Israel, long after their settlement in
Palestine, maintained the habits of their forefathers, and led the shepherd's
life. To them, therefore, the full of the moon must have been of special
importance; yet there is no single reference in Scripture to this phase as
such; nor indeed to any change of the moon's apparent figure. In two cases
in our Revised Version we do indeed find the expression "at the full moon,"
but if we compare these passages with the Authorized Version, we find
them there rendered "in the time appointed," or "at the day appointed." This
latter appears to be the literal meaning, though there can be no question, as
is seen by a comparison with the Syriac, that the period of the full moon is
referred to. No doubt it was because travelling was so much more safe and
easy than in the moonless nights, that the two great spring and autumn
festivals of the Jews were held at the full moon. Indeed, the latter feast,
when the Israelites "camped out" for a week "in booths," was held at the
time of the "harvest moon." The phenomenon of the "harvest moon" may be
briefly explained as follows. At the autumnal equinox, when the sun is
crossing from the north side of the equator to the south, the full moon is
crossing from the south side of the equator to the north. It is thus higher in
the sky, when it souths, on each succeeding night, and is therefore up for a
greater length of time. This counterbalances to a considerable extent its
movement eastward amongst the stars, so that, for several nights in
succession, it rises almost at sundown. These nights of the Feast of
Tabernacles, when all Israel was rejoicing over the ingathered fruits, each
family in its tent or arbour of green boughs, were therefore the fullest of
moonlight in the year.[81:1]
Modern civilization has almost shut us off from the heavens, at least in our
great towns and cities. These offer many conveniences, but they remove us
from not a few of the beauties which nature has to offer. And so it comes
that, taking the population as a whole, there is perhaps less practically
known of astronomy in England to-day than there was under the
Plantagenets. A very few are astronomers, professional and amateur, and

know immeasurably more than our forefathers did of the science. Then
there is a large, more or less cultured, public that know something of the
science at secondhand through books. But the great majority know nothing
of the heavenly bodies except of the sun; they need to "look in the
almanack" to "find out moonshine." But to simpler peoples the difference
between the "light half" of the month, from the first quarter to the last
quarter through the full of the moon, and the "dark half," from the last
quarter to the first quarter, through new, is very great. Indian astronomers so
divide the month to this day.
In one passage of Holy Scripture, the description which Isaiah gives of the
"City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel," there is a reference to
the dark part of the month.
"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon
(literally "month") withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine
everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended."
The parallelism expressed in the verse lies between the darkness of night
whilst the sun is below the horizon, and the special darkness of those nights
when the moon, being near conjunction with the sun, is absent from the sky
during the greater part or whole of the night hours, and has but a small
portion of her disc illuminated. Just as half the day is dark because the sun
has withdrawn itself, so half the nights of the month are dark because the
moon has withdrawn itself.
The Hebrew month was a natural one, determined by actual observation of
the new moon. They used three words in their references to the moon, the
first of which, chodesh, derived from a root meaning "to be new," indicates
the fact that the new moon, as actually observed, governed their calendar.
The word therefore signifies the new moon—the day of the new moon: and
thus a month; that is, a lunar month beginning at the new moon. This is the
Hebrew word used in the Deluge story in the seventh chapter of Genesis;
and in all references to feasts depending on a day in the month. As when the
Lord spake to Moses, saying, "Also in the day of your gladness, and in your
solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with your
trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace
offerings." And again in the Psalm of Asaph to the chief musician upon

Gittith: "Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on
our solemn feast day." This is the word also that Isaiah uses in describing
the bravery of the daughters of Zion, "the tinkling ornaments about their
feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the
bracelets." "The round tires" were not discs, like the full moon, but were
round like the crescent.
Generally speaking, chodesh is employed where either reference is made to
the shape or newness of the crescent moon, or where "month" is used in any
precise way. This is the word for "month" employed throughout by the
prophet Ezekiel, who is so precise in the dating of his prophecies.
When the moon is mentioned as the lesser light of heaven, without
particular reference to its form, or when a month is mentioned as a
somewhat indefinite period of time, then the Hebrew word yarēach, is used.
Here the word has the root meaning of "paleness"; it is the "silver moon."
Yarēach is the word always used where the moon is classed among the
heavenly bodies; as when Joseph dreamed of the sun, the moon, and the
eleven constellations; or in Jer. viii. 2, where the Lord says that they shall
bring out the bones of the kings, princes, priests, prophets, and inhabitants
of Jerusalem, "and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and
all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served,
and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom
they have worshipped."
The same word is used for the moon in its character of "making
ordinances." Thus we have it several times in the Psalms: "He (the Lord)
appointed the moon for seasons." "His seed shall endure for ever, and his
throne as the sun before Me. It shall be established for ever as the moon,
and as a faithful witness in heaven." And again: "The moon and stars rule
by night;" whilst Jeremiah says, "Thus saith the Lord, Which giveth the sun
for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light
by night."
In all passages where reference seems to be made to the darkening or
withdrawing of the moon's light (Eccl. xii. 2; Isa. xiii. 10; Ezek. xxxii. 7;
Joel ii. 10, 31, and iii. 15; and Hab. iii. 11) the word yarēach is employed. A
slight variant of the same word indicates the month when viewed as a

period of time not quite defined, and not in the strict sense of a lunar month.
This is the term used in Exod. ii. 2, for the three months that the mother of
Moses hid him when she saw that he was a goodly child; by Moses, in his
prophecy for Joseph, of "Blessed of the Lord be his land . . . for the
precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put
forth by the months." Such a "full month of days" did Shallum the son of
Jabesh reign in Samaria in the nine and thirtieth year of Uzziah, king of
Judah. Such also were the twelve months of warning given to
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, before his madness fell upon him. The
same word is once used for a true lunar month, viz. in Ezra vi. 15, when the
building of the "house was finished on the third day of the month Adar,
which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king." In all other
references to the months derived from the Babylonians, such as the "month
Chisleu" in Neh. i. 1, the term chodesh is used, since these, like the Hebrew
months, were defined by the observation of the new moon; but for the
Tyrian months, Zif, Bul, Ethanim, we find the term yerach in three out of
the four instances.
In three instances a third word is used poetically to express the moon. This
is lebanah, which has the meaning of whiteness. In Song of Sol. vi. 10, it is
asked—
"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon,
clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"
Isaiah also says—
"Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed,
when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in
Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously."
And yet again—
"Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun,
and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven
days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of His
people, and healeth the stroke of their wound."
It may not be without significance that each of these three passages,
wherein the moon is denominated by its name of whiteness or purity, looks

forward prophetically to the same great event, pictured yet more clearly in
the Revelation—
"And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the
voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings,
saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the
marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself
ready.
"And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen,
clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints."
Chodesh and yarēach are masculine words; lebanah is feminine. But
nowhere throughout the Old Testament is the moon personified, and in only
one instance is it used figuratively to represent a person. This is in the case
of Jacob's reading of Joseph's dream, already referred to, where he said—
"Behold I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and
the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."
And his father quickly rebuked him, saying—
"What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy
mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to
thee to the earth?"
Here Jacob understands that the moon (yarēach) stands for a woman, his
wife. But in Mesopotamia, whence his grandfather Abraham had come out,
Sin, the moon-god, was held to be a male god, high indeed among the
deities at that time, and superior even to Samas, the sun-god. Terah, the
father of Abraham, was held by Jewish tradition to have been an especial
worshipper of the moon-god, whose great temple was in Haran, where he
dwelt.
Wherever the land of Uz may have been, at whatever period Job may have
lived, there and then it was an iniquity to worship the moon or the moon-
god. In his final defence to his friends, when the "three men ceased to

answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes," Job, justifying his
life, said—

"If I beheld the sun when it shined,
Or the moon walking in brightness;
And my heart hath been secretly enticed,
And my mouth hath kissed my hand:
This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges:
For I should have lied to God that is above."

The Hebrews, too, were forbidden to worship the sun, the moon, or the
stars, the host of heaven, and disobeyed the commandment both early and
late in their history. When Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in
the wilderness in the plain over against the Red Sea, he said to them—
"The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard
the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a
voice. . . . Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye
saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto
you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:
"Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the
similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female . . . . And
lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the
sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the
Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole
heaven."
We know what the "similitude" of the sun and the moon were like among
the surrounding nations. We see their "hieroglyphs" on numberless seals
and images from the ruins of Nineveh or Babylon. That of the sun was first
a rayed star or disc, later a figure, rayed and winged. That of the moon was
a crescent, one lying on its back, like a bowl or cup, the actual attitude of
the new moon at the beginning of the new year. Just such moon similitudes
did the soldiers of Gideon take from off the camels of Zebah and Zalmunna;
just such were the "round tires like the moon" that Isaiah condemns among
the bravery of the daughters of Zion.

The similitude or token of Ashtoreth, the paramount goddess of the
Zidonians, was the ashera, the "grove" of the Authorized Version, probably
in most cases merely a wooden pillar. This goddess, "the abomination of the
Zidonians," was a moon-goddess, concerning whom Eusebius preserves a
statement by the Phœnician historian, Sanchoniathon, that her images had
the head of an ox. In the wars in the days of Abraham we find
Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, smiting the Rephaim in
Ashteroth Karnaim, that is, in the Ashtoreths "of the horns." It is impossible
to decide at this date whether the horns which gave the distinctive title to
this shrine of Ashtoreth owed their origin to the horns of the animal merged
in the goddess, or to the horns of the crescent moon, with which she was to
some extent identified. Possibly there was always a confusion between the
two in the minds of her worshippers. The cult of Ashtoreth was spread not
only among the Hebrews, but throughout the whole plain of Mesopotamia.
In the times of the Judges, and in the days of Samuel, we find continually
the statement that the people "served Baalim and Ashtaroth"—the plurals of
Baal and Ashtoreth—these representing the sun and moon, and reigning as
king and queen in heaven. When the Philistines fought with Saul at Mount
Gilboa, and he was slain, they stripped off his armour and put it "in the
house of Ashtaroth." Yet later we find that Solomon loved strange women
of the Zidonians, who turned his heart after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the
Zidonians, and he built a high place for her on the right hand of the Mount
of Olives, which remained for some three and a half centuries, until Josiah,
the king, defiled it. Nevertheless, the worship of Ashtoreth continued, and
the prophet Jeremiah describes her cult:—
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and
the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of
heaven."
This was done in the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, but the Jews
carried the cult with them even when they fled into Egypt, and whilst there
they answered Jeremiah—
"We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our
own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to
pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our
fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in

the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and
were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her,
we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the
sword and by the famine."

Ashtoreth, according to Pinches[90:1] is evidently a lengthening of the name
of the Assyrio-Babylonian goddess Ištar, and the Babylonian legend of the
Descent of Ištar may well have been a myth founded on the varying phases
of the moon. But it must be remembered that, though Ashtoreth or Ištar
might be the queen of heaven, the moon was not necessarily the only aspect
in which her worshippers recognized her. In others, the planet Venus may
have been chosen as her representative; in others the constellation Taurus, at
one time the leader of the Zodiac; in others, yet again, the actual form of a
material bull or cow.
The Hebrews recognized the great superiority in brightness of the sun over
the moon, as testified in their names of the "greater" and "lesser" lights, and
in such passages as that already quoted from Isaiah (xxx. 26). The word
here used for moon is the poetic one, lebanah. Of course no argument can
be founded on the parallelism employed so as to lead to the conclusion that
the Hebrews considered that the solar light exceeded the lunar by only
seven times, instead of the 600,000 times indicated by modern photometric
measurement.
In only one instance in Scripture—that already quoted of the moon
withdrawing itself—is there even an allusion to the changing phases of the
moon, other than that implied in the frequent references to the new moons.
The appointment of certain feasts to be held on the fifteenth day of the
month is a confirmation of the supposition that their months were truly
lunar, for then the moon is fully lighted, and rides the sky the whole night
long from sunset to sunrise. It is clear, therefore, that the Hebrews, not only
noticed the phases of the moon, but made regular use of them. Yet, if we
adopted the argument from silence, we should suppose that they had never
observed its changes of shape, for there is no direct allusion to them in
Scripture. We cannot, therefore, argue from silence as to whether or no they
had divined the cause of those changes, namely that the moon shines by
reflecting the light of the sun.

Nor are there any references to the markings on the moon. It is quite
obvious to the naked eye that there are grey stains upon her silver surface,
that these grey stains are always there, most of them forming a chain which
curves through the upper hemisphere. Of the bright parts of the moon, some
shine out with greater lustre than others, particularly one spot in the lower
left-hand quadrant, not far from the edge of the full disc. The edges of the
moon gleam more brightly as a rule than the central parts. All this was
apparent to the Hebrews of old, as it is to our unassisted sight to-day.
The moon's influence in raising the tides is naturally not mentioned. The
Hebrews were not a seafaring race, nor are the tides on the coast of
Palestine pronounced enough to draw much attention. One influence is
ascribed to the moon; an influence still obscure, or even disputed. For the
promise that—

"The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night,"

quite obvious in its application to the sun, with the moon seems to refer to
its supposed influence on certain diseases and in causing "moon-blindness."
The chief function of the moon, as indicated in Scripture, is to regulate the
calendar, and mark out the times for the days of solemnity. In the words of
the 104th Psalm:—

"He (God) appointed the moon for seasons:
The sun knoweth his going down.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night;
Wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.
The young lions roar after their prey,
And seek their meat from God.
The sun ariseth, they get them away,
And lay them down in their dens.
Man goeth forth unto his work
And to his labour until the evening.
O Lord, how manifold are Thy works!
In wisdom hast Thou made them all:
The earth is full of Thy riches."

A CORNER OF THE MILKY WAY.
The "America Nebula": photographed by Dr. Max Wolf, at
Heidelberg.ToList

FOOTNOTES:
[81:1] How the little children must have revelled in that yearly holiday!
[90:1] T. G. Pinches, The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of
Assyria and Babylonia, p. 278.

CHAPTER VIII
THE STARS

The stars and the heaven, whose host they are, were used by the Hebrew
writers to express the superlatives of number, of height, and of expanse. To
an observer, watching the heavens at any particular time and place, not
more than some two thousand stars are separately visible to the unassisted
sight. But it was evident to the Hebrew, as it is to any one to-day, that the
stars separately visible do not by any means make up their whole number.
On clear nights the whole vault of heaven seems covered with a tapestry or
curtain the pattern of which is formed of patches of various intensities of
light, and sprinkled upon this patterned curtain are the brighter stars that
may be separately seen. The most striking feature in the pattern is the Milky
Way, and it may be easily discerned that its texture is made up of
innumerable minute points of light, a granulation, of which some of the
grains are set more closely together, forming the more brilliant patches, and
some more loosely, giving the darker shades. The mind easily conceives
that the minute points of light whose aggregations make up the varying
pattern of the Milky Way, though too small to be individually seen, are also
stars, differing perhaps from the stars of the Pleiades or the Bears only in
their greater distance or smaller size. It was of all these that the Lord said to
Abram—
"Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to
number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be."
The first catalogue of the stars of which we have record was that of
Hipparchus in 129 b.c. It contained 1,025 stars, and Ptolemy brought this
catalogue up to date in the Almagest of 137 a.d. Tycho Brahé in 1602 made
a catalogue of 777 stars, and Kepler republished this in 1627, and increased
the number to 1,005. These were before the invention of the telescope, and
consequently contained only naked-eye stars. Since astronomers have been
able to sound the heavens more deeply, catalogues have increased in size
and number. Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, made one of 3,310

stars; from the observations of Bradley, the third, a yet more famous
catalogue has been compiled. In our own day more than three hundred
thousand stars have been catalogued in the Bonn Durchmusterung; and the
great International Photographic Chart of the Heavens will probably show
not less than fifty millions of stars, and in this it has limited itself to stars
exceeding the fourteenth magnitude in brightness, thus leaving out of its
pages many millions of stars that are visible through our more powerful
telescopes.
So when Abraham, Moses, Job or Jeremiah speaks of the host of heaven
that cannot be numbered, it does not mean simply that these men had but
small powers of numeration. To us,—who can count beyond that which we
can conceive,—as to the Psalmist, it is a sign of infinite power, wisdom and
knowledge that "He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by
their names."
Isaiah describes the Lord as "He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, . . .
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent
to dwell in." And many others of the prophets use the same simile of a
curtain which we have seen to be so appropriate to the appearance of the
starry sky. Nowhere, however, have we any indication whether or not they
considered the stars were all set on this curtain, that is to say were all at the
same distance from us. We now know that they are not equidistant from us,
but this we largely base on the fact that the stars are of very different orders
of brightness, and we judge that, on an average, the fainter a star appears,
the further is it distant from us. To the Hebrews, as to us, it was evident that
the stars differ in magnitude, and the writer of the Epistle to the Corinthians
expressed this when he wrote—
"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another
star in glory."
The ancient Greek astronomers divided the stars according to their
brightness into six classes, or six "magnitudes," to use the modern technical
term. The average star of any particular magnitude gives about two and a
half times as much light as the average star of the next magnitude. More

exactly, the average first magnitude star gives one hundred times the light
of the average star of the sixth magnitude.
In a few instances we have been able to measure, in the very roughest
degree, the distances of stars; not a hundred stars have their parallaxes
known, and these have all been measured in the course of the last century.
And so far away are these stars, even the nearest of them, that we do not
express their distance from us in millions of miles; we express it in the time
that their light takes in travelling from them to us. Now it takes light only
one second to traverse 186,300 miles, and yet it requires four and a third
years for the light from the nearest star to reach us. This is a star of the first
magnitude, Alpha in the constellation of the Centaur. The next nearest star
is a faint one of between the seventh and eighth magnitudes, and its light
takes seven years to come. From a sixth magnitude star in the constellation
of the Swan, the light requires eight years; and from Sirius, the brightest
star in the heavens, light requires eight and a half years. These four stars are
the nearest to us; from no other star, that we know of, does light take less
than ten years to travel; from the majority of those whose distance we have
succeeded in measuring, the light takes at least twenty years.
To get some conception of what a "light-year" means, let us remember that
light could travel right round the earth at its equator seven times in the
space of a single second, and that there are 31,556,925 seconds in a year.
Light then could girdle the earth a thousand million times whilst it comes
from Alpha Centauri. Or we may put it another way. The distance from
Alpha Centauri exceeds the equator of the earth by as much as this exceeds
an inch and a half; or by as much as the distance from London to
Manchester exceeds the hundredth of an inch.
Of all the rest of the innumerable stars, as far as actual measurement is
concerned, for us, as for the Hebrews, they might all actually lie on the
texture of a curtain, at practically the same distance from us.
We have measured the distances of but a very few stars; the rest—as every
one of them was for the Hebrew—are at a greater distance than any effort of
ours can reach, be our telescopes ever so great and powerful, our measuring
instruments ever so precise and delicate. For them, as for us, the heaven of

stars is "for height," for a height which is beyond measure and therefore the
only fitting image for the immensity of God.
So Zophar the Naamathite said—

"Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do?"

and Eliphaz the Temanite reiterated still more strongly—

"Is not God in the height of heaven?
And behold the height of the stars, how high they are."

God Himself is represented as using the expanse of heaven as a measure of
the greatness of his fidelity and mercy. The prophet Jeremiah writes—
"Thus saith the Lord; if Heaven above can be measured, and the
foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off
all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord."
As if he were using the figure of a great cross, whose height was that of the
heavens, whose arms stretched from east to west, David testifies of the
same mercy and forgiveness:—

"For as the heaven is high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward them that fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far hath He removed our transgressions from us."

THE GREAT COMET OF 1843.
"Running like a road through the constellations" (see p. 105).ToList

CHAPTER IX
COMETS

Great comets are almost always unexpected visitors. There is only one great
comet that we know has been seen more than once, and expect with
reasonable certainty to see again. This is Halley's comet, which has been
returning to a near approach to the sun at somewhat irregular intervals of
seventy-five to seventy-eight years during the last centuries: indeed, it is
possible that it was this comet that was coincident with the invasion of
England by William the Conqueror.
There are other small comets that are also regular inhabitants of the solar
system; but, as with Halley's comet, so with these, two circumstances are to
be borne in mind. First, that each successive revolution round the sun
involves an increasing degradation of their brightness, since there is a
manifest waste of their material at each near approach to the sun; until at
length the comet is seen no more, not because it has left the warm precincts
of the sun for the outer darkness, but because it has spent its substance.
Halley's comet was not as brilliant or as impressive in 1835 as it was in
1759: in 1910 it may have become degraded to an appearance of quite the
second order.
Next, we have no knowledge, no evidence, that any of these comets have
always been members of the solar family. Some of them, indeed, we know
were adopted into it by the influence of one or other of the greater planets:
Uranus we know is responsible for the introduction of one, Jupiter of a
considerable number. The vast majority of comets, great or small, seem to
blunder into the solar system anyhow, anywhere, from any direction: they
come within the attractive influence of the sun; obey his laws whilst within
that influence; make one close approach to him, passing rapidly across our
sky; and then depart in an orbit which will never bring them to his
neighbourhood again. Some chance of direction, some compelling influence
of a planet that it may have approached, so modified the path of Halley's

comet when it first entered the solar system, that it has remained a member
ever since, and may so remain until it has ceased to be a comet at all.
It follows, therefore, that, as to the number of great comets that may be seen
in any age, we can scarcely even apply the laws of probability. During the
last couple of thousand years, since chronicles have been abundant, we
know that many great comets have been seen. We may suppose, therefore,
that during the preceding age, that in which the Scriptures were written,
there were also many great comets seen, but we do not know. And most
emphatically we are not able to say, from our knowledge of comets
themselves and of their motions, that in the days of this or that writer a
comet was flaming in the sky.
If a comet had been observed in those ages we might not recognize the
description of it. Thus in the fourth year of the 101st Olympiad, the Greeks
were startled by a celestial portent. They did not draw fine distinctions, and
posterity might have remained ignorant that the terrifying object was
possibly a comet, had not Aristotle, who saw it as a boy at Stagira, left a
rather more scientifically worded description of it. It flared up from the
sunset sky with a narrow definite tail running "like a road through the
constellations." In recent times the great comet of 1843 may be mentioned
as having exactly such an appearance.
So we cannot expect to find in the Scriptures definite and precise
descriptions that we can recognize as those of comets. At the most we may
find some expressions, some descriptions, that to us may seem appropriate
to the forms and appearances of these objects, and we may therefore infer
that the appearance of a comet may have suggested these descriptions or
expressions.
The head of a great comet is brilliant, sometimes starlike. But its tail often
takes on the most impressive appearance. Donati's comet, in 1858, assumed
the most varied shapes—sometimes its tail was broad, with one bright and
curving edge, the other fainter and finer, the whole making up a stupendous
semi-circular blade-like object. Later, the tail was shaped like a scimitar,
and later again, it assumed a duplex form.
Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily little
substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it is probably in

the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in vaporous material.
There is some reason to suppose that comets are apt to shed some of these
stones as they travel along their paths, for the orbits of the meteors that
cause some of our greatest "star showers" are coincident with the paths of
comets that have been observed.
But it is not only by shedding its loose stones that a comet diminishes its
bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the comet gets close to the sun its head
becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much of which
consists of matter in an extremely fine state of division. Now it has been
shown that the radiations of the sun have the power of repelling matter,
whilst the sun itself attracts by its gravitational force. But there is a
difference in the action of the two forces. The light-pressure varies with the
surface of the particle upon which it is exercised; the gravitational attraction
varies with the mass or volume. If we consider the behaviour of very small
particles, it follows that the attraction due to gravitation (depending on the
volume of the particle) will diminish more rapidly than the repulsion due to
light-pressure (depending on the surface of the particle), as we decrease
continually the size of the particle, since its volume diminishes more
rapidly than its surface. A limit therefore will be reached below which the
repulsion will become greater than the attraction. Thus for particles less
than the 1/25000 part of an inch in diameter the repulsion of the sun is
greater than its attraction. Particles in the outer envelope of the comet below
this size will be driven away in a continuous stream, and will form that thin,
luminous fog which we see as the comet's tail.
We cannot tell whether such objects as these were present to the mind of
Joel when he spoke of "blood and fire and pillars of smoke"; possibly these
metaphors are better explained by a sand- or thunder-storm, especially
when we consider that the Hebrew expression for the "pillars of smoke"
indicates a resemblance to a palm-tree, as in the spreading out of the head
of a sand- or thunder-cloud in the sky. The suggestion has been made,—
following the closing lines of Paradise Lost (for Milton is responsible for
many of our interpretations of Scripture)

"High in front advanced,
The brandished sword of God before them blazed,
Fierce as a comet,"

—that a comet was indeed the "flaming sword which turned every way, to
keep the way of the tree of life." There is less improbability in the
suggestion made by several writers that, when the pestilence wasted
Jerusalem, and David offered up the sacrifice of intercession in the
threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, the king may have seen, in the
scimitar-like tail of a comet such as Donati's, God's "minister,"—"a flame
of fire,"—"the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven,
having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem."
The late R. A. Proctor describes the wanderings of a comet thus:—
"A comet is seen in the far distant depths of space as a faint and
scarcely discernible speck. It draws nearer and nearer with
continually increasing velocity, growing continually larger and
brighter. Faster and faster it rushes on until it makes its nearest
approach to our sun, and then, sweeping round him, it begins its
long return voyage into infinite space. As it recedes it grows
fainter and fainter, until at length it passes beyond the range of
the most powerful telescopes made by man, and is seen no
more. It has been seen for the first and last time by the
generation of men to whom it has displayed its glories. It has
been seen for the first and last time by the race of man itself."
[108:1]

"These are . . . wandering stars, to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever."

FOOTNOTES:
[108:1] R. A. Proctor, The Expanse of Heaven, p. 134.

FALL OF AN AEROLITE.
"There fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp." (see p.
116).ToList

CHAPTER X
METEORS

Great meteorites—"aerolites" as they are called—are like great comets,
chance visitors to our world. Now and then they come, but we cannot
foretell their coming. Such an aerolite exploded some fifteen miles above
Madrid at about 9h 29m, on the morning of February 10, 1896:—
"A vivid glare of blinding light was followed in 1-1/2 minutes
by a loud report, the concussion being such as not merely to
create a panic, but to break many windows, and in some cases to
shake down partitions. The sky was clear, and the sun shining
brightly, when a white cloud, bordered with red, was seen
rushing from south-west to north-east, leaving behind it a train
of fine white dust. A red-tinted cloud was long visible in the
east."
Many fragments were picked up, and analyzed, and, like other aerolites,
were found to consist of materials already known on the earth. The outer
crust showed the signs of fire,—the meteoric stone had been fused and
ignited by its very rapid rush through the air—but the interior was entirely
unaffected by the heat. The manner in which the elements were combined is
somewhat peculiar to aerolites; the nearest terrestrial affinity of the minerals
aggregated in them, is to be found in the volcanic products from great
depths. Thus aerolites seem to be broken-up fragments from the interior
parts of globes like our own. They do not come from our own volcanoes,
for the velocities with which they entered our atmosphere prove their
cosmical origin. Had our atmosphere not entangled them, many, circuiting
the sun in a parabolic or hyperbolic curve, would have escaped for ever
from our system. The swift motions, which they had on entering our
atmosphere, are considerably greater on the average than those of comets,
and probably their true home is not in our solar system, but in interstellar
space.

The aerolites that reach the surface are not always exploded into very small
fragments, but every now and then quite large masses remain intact. Most
of these are stony; some have bits of iron scattered through them; others are
almost pure iron, or with a little nickel alloy, or have pockets in them laden
with stone. There are hundreds of accounts of the falls of aerolites during
the past 2,500 years. The Greeks and Romans considered them as celestial
omens, and kept some of them in temples. One at Mecca is revered by the
faithful Mohammedans, and Jehangir, the great Mogul, is said to have had a
sword forged from an iron aerolite which fell in 1620 in the Panjab. Diana
of Ephesus stood on a shapeless block which, tradition says, was a meteoric
stone, and reference may perhaps be found to this in the speech of the town-
clerk of the city to appease the riot stirred up against St. Paul by Demetrius
the silversmith and his companions:—
"Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there who knoweth not how
that the city of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of the great
Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?"
Aerolites come singly and unexpectedly, falling actually to earth on land or
sea. "Shooting stars" come usually in battalions. They travel together in
swarms, and the earth may meet the same swarm again and again. They are
smaller than aerolites, probably mere particles of dust, and for the most part
are entirely consumed in our upper atmosphere, so that they do not actually
reach the earth. The swarms travel along paths that resemble cometary
orbits; they are very elongated ellipses, inclined at all angles to the plane of
the ecliptic. Indeed, several of the orbits are actually those of known
comets, and it is generally held that these meteorites or "shooting stars" are
the débris that a comet sheds on its journey.
We can never see the same "shooting star" twice; its visibility implies its
dissolution, for it is only as it is entrapped and burnt up in our atmosphere
that we see it, or can see it. Its companions in a great meteoric swarm, are,
however, as the sand on the sea-shore, and we recognize them as members
of the same swarm by their agreement in direction and date. The swarms
move in a closed orbit, and it is where this orbit intersects that of the earth
that we get a great "star shower," if both earth and swarm are present
together at the intersection. If the swarm is drawn out, so that many
meteorites are scattered throughout the whole circuit of its orbit, then we

get a "shower" every year. If the meteor swarm is more condensed, so as to
form a cluster, then the "shower" only comes when the "gem of the ring," as
it is termed, is at the intersection of the orbits, and the earth is there too.
Such a conjunction may present the most impressive spectacle that the
heavens can afford. The Leonid meteor shower is, perhaps, the most
famous. It has been seen at intervals of about thirty-three years, since early
in the tenth century. When Ibrahim ben Ahmed lay dying, in the year 902
a.d., it was recorded that "an infinite number of stars were seen during the
night, scattering themselves like rain to the right and left, and that year was
known as the year of stars." When the earth encountered the same system in
1202 a.d. the Mohammedan record runs that "on the night of Saturday, on
the last day of Muharram, stars shot hither and thither in the heavens,
eastward and westward, and flew against one another, like a scattering
swarm of locusts, to the right and left." There are not records of all the
returns of this meteoric swarm between the thirteenth century and the
eighteenth, but when the earth encountered it in 1799, Humboldt reported
that "from the beginning of the phenomenon there was not a space in the
firmament equal in extent to three diameters of the moon that was not filled
every instant with bolides and falling stars;" and Mr. Andrew Ellicott, an
agent of the United States, cruising off the coast of Florida, watched this
same meteoric display, and made the drawing reproduced on the opposite
page. In 1833 a planter in South Carolina wrote of a return of this same
system, "Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell towards the
earth; east, west, north, south, it was the same." In 1866 the shower was
again heavy and brilliant, but at the end of the nineteenth century, when the
swarm should have returned, the display was meagre and ineffective.

METEORIC SHOWER OF 1799, NOVEMBER 12.
Seen off Cape Florida, by Mr. Andrew Ellicott.ToList

The Leonid system of meteorites did not always move in a closed orbit
round our sun. Tracing back their records and history, we find that in a.d.
126 the swarm passed close to Uranus, and probably at that time the planet
captured them for the sun. But we cannot doubt that some such similar sight
as they have afforded us suggested the imagery employed by the Apostle St.
John when he wrote, "The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-
tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And
the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together."
And the prophet Isaiah used a very similar figure—
"All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall
be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down,
as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the
fig-tree."

Whilst the simile of a great aerolite is that employed by St. John in his
description of the star "Wormwood"—
"The third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from
heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part
of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters."
St. Jude's simile of the "wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness
of darkness for ever," may have been drawn from meteors rather than from
comets. But, as has been seen, the two classes of objects are closely
connected.
The word "meteor" is sometimes used for any unusual light seen in the sky.
The Zodiacal Light, the pale conical beam seen after sunset in the west in
the spring, and before sunrise in the east in the autumn, and known to the
Arabs as the "False Dawn," does not appear to be mentioned in Scripture.
Some commentators wrongly consider that the expression, "the eyelids of
the morning," occurring twice in the Book of Job, is intended to describe it,
but the metaphor does not in the least apply.
The Aurora Borealis, on the other hand, seldom though it is seen on an
impressive scale in Palestine, seems clearly indicated in one passage. "Out
of the north cometh golden splendour" would well fit the gleaming of the
"Northern Lights," seen, as they often are, "as sheaves of golden rays."

CHAPTER XI
ECLIPSES OF THE SUN AND MOON

We do not know what great comets, or aerolites, or "star-showers" were
seen in Palestine during the centuries in which the books of the Bible were
composed. But we do know that eclipses, both of the sun and moon, must
have been seen, for these are not the results of chance conjunctions. We
know more, that not only partial eclipses of the sun, but total eclipses, fell
within the period so covered.
There is no phenomenon of nature which is so truly impressive as a total
eclipse of the sun. The beautiful pageants of the evening and the morning
are too often witnessed to produce the same effect upon us, whilst the storm
and the earthquake and the volcano in eruption, by the confusion and fear
for personal safety they produce, render men unfit to watch their
developments. But the eclipse awes and subdues by what might almost be
called moral means alone: no noise, no danger accompanies it; the body is
not tortured, nor the mind confused by the rush of the blast, the crash of the
thunder-peal, the rocking of the earthquake, or the fires of the volcano. The
only sense appealed to is that of sight; the movements of the orbs of heaven
go on without noise or confusion, and with a majestic smoothness in which
there is neither hurry nor delay.
This impression is felt by every one, no matter how perfectly acquainted,
not only with the cause of the phenomenon, but also with the appearances
to be expected, and scientific men have found themselves awestruck and
even overwhelmed.
But if such are the feelings called forth by an eclipse now-a-days, in those
who are expecting it, who are prepared for it, knowing perfectly what will
happen and what brings it about, how can we gauge aright the unspeakable
terror such an event must have caused in ages long ago, when it came
utterly unforeseen, and it was impossible to understand what was really
taking place?

And so, in olden time, an eclipse of the sun came as an omen of terrible
disaster, nay as being itself one of the worst of disasters. It came so to all
nations but one. But to that nation the word of the prophet had come—
"Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the
signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them."
God did not reveal the physical explanation of the eclipse to the Hebrews:
that, in process of time, they could learn by the exercise of their own mental
powers. But He set them free from the slavish fear of the heathen; they
could look at all these terror-striking signs without fear; they could look
with calmness, with confidence, because they looked in faith.
It is not easy to exaggerate the advantage which this must have given the
Hebrews over the neighbouring nations, from a scientific point of view. The
word of God gave them intellectual freedom, and so far as they were
faithful to it, there was no hindrance to their fully working out the scientific
problems which came before them. They neither worshipped the heavenly
bodies nor were dismayed at their signs. We have no record as to how far
the Hebrews made use of this freedom, for, as already pointed out, the Holy
Scriptures were not written to chronicle their scientific achievements. But
there can be no doubt that, given the leisure of peace, it is a priori more
likely that they should have taught astronomy to their neighbours, than have
learnt it even from the most advanced.
There must have been numberless eclipses of the moon seen in the ages
during which the Canon of Holy Scripture was written. Of eclipses of the
sun, total or very nearly total over the regions of Palestine or Mesopotamia,
in the times of the Old Testament, we know of four that were actually seen,
whose record is preserved in contemporaneous history, and a fifth that was
nearly total in Judæa about midday.
The first of the four is recorded on a tablet from Babylon, lately deciphered,
in which it states that on "the 26th day of Sivan, day was turned into night,
and fire appeared in the midst of heaven." This has been identified with the
eclipse of July 31, 1063 b.c., and we do not find any reference to it in
Scripture.

The second is that of Aug. 15, 831 b.c. No specific record of this eclipse has
been found as yet, but it took place during the lifetime of the prophets Joel
and Amos, and may have been seen by them, and their recollection of it
may have influenced the wording of their prophecies.
The third eclipse is recorded on a tablet from Nineveh, stating the
coincidence of an eclipse in Sivan with a revolt in the city of Assur. This
has been identified with the eclipse of June 15, 763 b.c.
The fourth is that known as the eclipse of Larissa on May 18, 603 b.c.,
which was coincident with the final overthrow of the Assyrian Empire, and
the fifth is that of Thales on May 28, 585 b.c.
The earth goes round the sun once in a year, the moon goes round the earth
once in a month, and sometimes the three bodies are in one straight line. In
this case the intermediate body—earth or moon—deprives the other, wholly
or partially of the light from the sun, thus causing an eclipse. If the orbits of
the earth and moon were in the same plane, an eclipse would happen every
time the moon was new or full; that is to say, at every conjunction and
every opposition, or about twenty-five times a year. But the plane of the
moon's orbit is inclined to the plane of the earth's orbit at an angle of about
5°, and so an eclipse only occurs when the moon is in conjunction or
opposition and is at the same time at or very near one of the nodes—that is,
one of the two points where the plane of the earth's orbit intersects the
moon's orbit. If the moon is in opposition, or "full," then, under these
conditions, an eclipse of the moon takes place, and this is visible at all
places where the moon is above the horizon at the time. If, however, the
moon is in conjunction, or "new," it is the sun that is eclipsed, and as the
shadow cast by the moon is but small, only a portion of the earth's surface
will experience the solar eclipse. The nodes of the moon's orbit are not
stationary, but have a daily retrograde motion of 3´ 10·64´´. It takes the
moon therefore 27d 5h 5m 36s (27·21222d) to perform a journey in its orbit
from one node back to that node again; this is called a Draconic period. But
it takes the moon 29d 12h 44m 2·87s (29·53059d) to pass from new to new,
or from full to full, i. e. to complete a lunation. Now 242 Draconic periods
very nearly equal 223 lunations, being about 18 years 10-1/3 days, and both
are very nearly equal to 19 returns of the sun to the moon's node; so that if
the moon is new or full when at a node, in 18 years and 10 or 11 days it will

be at that node again, and again new or full, and the sun will be also present
in very nearly its former position. If, therefore, an eclipse occurred on the
former occasion, it will probably occur on the latter. This recurrence of
eclipses after intervals of 18·03 years is called the Saros, and was known to
the Chaldeans. We do not know whether it was known to the Hebrews prior
to their captivity in Babylon, but possibly the statement of the wise king,
already quoted from the Apocryphal "Wisdom of Solomon," may refer to
some such knowledge.
Our calendar to-day is a purely solar one; our months are twelve in number,
but of purely arbitrary length, divorced from all connection with the moon;
and to us, the Saros cycle does not readily leap to the eye, for eclipses of
sun or moon seem to fall haphazard on any day of the month or year.
But with the Hebrews, Assyrians, and Babylonians it was not so. Their
calendar was a luni-solar one—their year was on the average a solar year,
their months were true lunations; the first day of their new month began on
the evening when the first thin crescent of the moon appeared after its
conjunction with the sun. This observation is what is meant in the Bible by
the "new moon." Astronomers now by "new moon" mean the time when it
is actually in conjunction with the sun, and is therefore not visible. Nations
whose calendar was of this description were certain to discover the Saros
much sooner than those whose months were not true lunations, like the
Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
There are no direct references to eclipses in Scripture. They might have
been used in the historical portions for the purpose of dating events, as was
the great earthquake in the days of King Uzziah, but they were not so used.
But we find not a few allusions to their characteristic appearances and
phenomena in the books of the prophets. God in the beginning set the two
great lights in the firmament for signs as well as for seasons; and the
prophets throughout use the relations of the sun and moon as types of
spiritual relations. The Messiah was the Sun of Righteousness; the chosen
people, the Church, was as the moon, which derives her light from Him.
The "signs of heaven" were symbols of great spiritual events, not omens of
mundane disasters.

The prophets Joel and Amos are clear and vivid in their descriptions;
probably because the eclipse of 831 b.c. was within their recollection. Joel
says first, "The sun and the moon shall be dark;" and again, more plainly,—
"I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and
fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of
the Lord come."
This prophecy was quoted by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost. And in the
Apocalypse, St. John says that when the sixth seal was opened, "the sun
became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood."
In these references, the two kinds of eclipses are referred to—the sun
becomes black when the moon is "new" and hides it; the moon becomes as
blood when it is "full" and the earth's shadow falls upon it; its deep copper
colour, like that of dried blood, being due to the fact that the light, falling
upon it, has passed through a great depth of the earth's atmosphere. These
two eclipses cannot therefore be coincident, but they may occur only a
fortnight apart—a total eclipse of the sun may be accompanied by a partial
eclipse of the moon, a fortnight earlier or a fortnight later; a total eclipse of
the moon may be accompanied by partial eclipses of the sun, both at the
preceding and following "new moons."
Writing at about the same period, the prophet Amos says—
"Saith the Lord God, I will cause the sun to go down at noon,
and I will darken the earth in the clear day,"
and seems to refer to the fact that the eclipse of 831 b.c. occurred about
midday in Judæa.
Later Micah writes—
"The sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be
dark over them."
Isaiah says that the "sun shall be darkened in his going forth," and Jeremiah
that "her sun is gone down while it was yet day." Whilst Ezekiel says—

"I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give
her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over
thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God."
But a total eclipse is not all darkness and terror; it has a beauty and a glory
all its own. Scarcely has the dark moon hidden the last thread of sunlight
from view, than spurs of rosy light are seen around the black disc that now
fills the place so lately occupied by the glorious king of day. And these rosy
spurs of light shine on a background of pearly glory, as impressive in its
beauty as the swift march of the awful shadow, and the seeming descent of
the darkened heavens, were in terror. There it shines, pure, lovely, serene,
radiant with a light like molten silver, wreathing the darkened sun with a
halo like that round a saintly head in some noble altar-piece; so that while in
some cases the dreadful shadow has awed a laughing and frivolous crowd
into silence, in others the radiance of that halo has brought spectators to
their knees with an involuntary exclamation, "The Glory!" as if God
Himself had made known His presence in the moment of the sun's eclipse.
And this, indeed, seems to have been the thought of both the Babylonians
and Egyptians of old. Both nations had a specially sacred symbol to set
forth the Divine Presence—the Egyptians, a disc with long outstretched
wings; the Babylonians, a ring with wings. The latter symbol on Assyrian
monuments is always shown as floating over the head of the king, and is
designed to indicate the presence and protection of the Deity.

THE ASSYRIAN "RING WITH WINGS."ToList

We may take it for granted that the Egyptians and Chaldeans of old, as
modern astronomers to-day, had at one time or another presented to them
every type of coronal form. But there would, no doubt, be a difficulty in
grasping or remembering the irregular details of the corona as seen in most
eclipses. Sometimes, however, the corona shows itself in a striking and
simple form—when sun-spots are few in number, it spreads itself out in two
great equatorial streamers. At the eclipse of Algiers in 1900, already
referred to, one observer who watched the eclipse from the sea, said—

"The sky was blue all round the sun, and the effect of the silvery
corona projected on it was beyond any one to describe. I can
only say it seemed to me what angels' wings will be like."[129:1]

CORONA OF MINIMUM TYPE.
Drawing made by W. H. Wesley, from photographs of the 1900
Eclipse.ToList

It seems exceedingly probable that the symbol of the ring with wings owed
its origin not to any supposed analogy between the ring and the wings and
the divine attributes of eternity and power, but to the revelations of a total
eclipse with a corona of minimum type. Moreover the Assyrians, when they
insert a figure of their deity within the ring, give him a kilt-like dress, and
this kilted or feathered characteristic is often retained where the figure is
omitted. This gives the symbol a yet closer likeness to the corona, whose
"polar rays" are remarkably like the tail feathers of a bird.
Perhaps the prophet Malachi makes a reference to this characteristic of the
eclipsed sun, with its corona like "angels' wings," when he predicts—
"But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness
arise with healing in His wings."
But, if this be so, it must be borne in mind that the prophet uses the corona
as a simile only. No more than the sun itself, is it the Deity, or the
manifestation of the Deity.
In the New Testament we may find perhaps a reference to what causes an
eclipse—to the shadow cast by a heavenly body in its revolution—its
"turning."
"Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming
down from the Father of Lights, with Whom can be no variation,
neither shadow that is cast by turning."

FOOTNOTES:
[129:1] The Total Solar Eclipse of May, 1900, p. 22.

CHAPTER XII
SATURN AND ASTROLOGY

The planets, as such, are nowhere mentioned in the Bible. In the one
instance in which the word appears in our versions, it is given as a
translation of Mazzaloth, better rendered in the margin as the "twelve signs
or constellations." The evidence is not fully conclusive that allusion is made
to any planet, even in its capacity of a god worshipped by the surrounding
nations.
Of planets, besides the earth, modern astronomy knows Mercury, Venus,
Mars, many planetoids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. And of
satellites revolving round planets there are at present known, the moon
which owns our earth as primary, two satellites to Mars, seven satellites to
Jupiter, ten to Saturn, four to Uranus, and one to Neptune.
The ancients counted the planets as seven, numbering the moon and the sun
amongst them. The rest were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
They recognized no satellites to any planet. We have no evidence that the
ancient Semitic nations considered that the moon was more intimately
connected with the earth than any of the other six.
But though the planets were sometimes regarded as "seven" in number, the
ancients perfectly recognized that the sun and moon stood in a different
category altogether from the other five. And though the heathen recognized
them as deities, confusion resulted as to the identity of the deity of which
each was a manifestation. Samas was the sun-god and Baal was the sun-
god, but Samas and Baal, or Bel, were not identical, and both were
something more than merely the sun personified. Again, Merodach, or
Marduk, is sometimes expressly identified with Bel as sun-god, sometimes
with the divinity of the planet Jupiter. Similarly Ashtoreth, or Ištar, is
sometimes identified with the goddess of the moon, sometimes with the
planet Venus. It would not be safe, therefore, to assume that reference is
intended to any particular heavenly body, because a deity is mentioned that

has been on occasions identified with that heavenly body. Still less safe
would it be to assume astronomical allusions in the description of the
qualities or characteristics of that deity. Though Ashtoreth, or Ištar, may
have been often identified with the planet Venus, it is ridiculous to argue, as
some have done, from the expression "Ashteroth-Karnaim," Ashteroth of
"the horns," that the ancients had sight or instruments sufficiently powerful
to enable them to observe that Venus, like the moon, had her phases, her
"horns." Though Nebo has been identified with the planet Mercury, we must
not see any astronomical allusion to its being the nearest planet to the sun in
Isaiah's coupling the two together, where he says, "Bel boweth down, Nebo
stoopeth."
Isaiah speaks of the King of Babylon—

"How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning!"

The word here translated Lucifer, "light-bearer," is the word hēlel from the
root halal, and means spreading brightness. In the Assyrio-Babylonian, the
planet Venus is sometimes termed Mustēlel, from the root ēlil, and she is the
most lustrous of all the "morning stars," of the stars that herald the dawn.
But except that her greater brilliancy marks her as especially appropriate to
the expression, Sirius or any other in its capacity of morning star would be
suitable as an explanation of the term.
St. Peter uses the equivalent Greek expression Phōsphorus in his second
epistle: "A light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-
star" (light-bringer) "arise in your hearts."
Isaiah again says—
"Ye are they that forsake the Lord, that forget My holy
mountain, that prepare a table for that Troop, and that furnish
the drink offering unto that Number."
"Gad" and "Meni," here literally translated as "Troop" and "Number," are in
the Revised Version rendered as "Fortune" and "Destiny." A reference to
this god "Meni" has been suggested in the mysterious inscription which the
King of Babylon saw written by a hand upon the wall, which Daniel

interpreted as "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end."
By some commentators Meni is understood to be the planet Venus, and Gad
to be Jupiter, for these are associated in Arabian astrology with Fortune or
Fate in the sense of good luck. Or, from the similarity of Meni with the
Greek mēnē, moon, "that Number" might be identified with the moon, and
"that Troop," by analogy, with the sun.
It is more probable, if any astrological deities are intended, that the two
little star clusters—the Pleiades and the Hyades—situated on the back and
head of the Bull, may have been accounted the manifestations of the
divinities which are by their names so intimately associated with the idea of
multitude. The number seven has been held a sacred number, and has been
traditionally associated with both the little star groups.
In one instance alone does there seem to be any strong evidence that
reference is intended to one of the five planets known to the ancients, when
worshipped as a god; and even that is not conclusive. The prophet Amos,
charging the Israelites with idolatry even in the wilderness, asks—
"Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the
tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of
your god, which ye made to yourselves."
But the Septuagint Version makes the accusation run thus:—
"Ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god
Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them."
This was the version which St. Stephen quoted in his defence before the
High Priest. It is quite clear that it was star worship to which he was
referring, for he prefaces his quotation by saying, "God turned and gave
them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the
prophets."
The difference between the names "Chiun" and "Remphan" is explained by
a probable misreading on the part of the Septuagint translators into the
Greek, who seemed to have transcribed the initial of the word as "resh,"
where it should have been "caph"—"R" instead of "K,"—thus the real word
should be transliterated "Kaivan," which was the name of the planet Saturn

both amongst the ancient Arabs and Syrians, and also amongst the
Assyrians, whilst "Kevan" is the name of that planet in the sacred books of
the Parsees. On the other hand, there seems to be some difficulty in
supposing that a deity is intended of which there is no other mention in
Scripture, seeing that the reference, both by Amos and St. Stephen, would
imply that the particular object of idolatry denounced was one exceedingly
familiar to them. Gesenius, therefore, after having previously accepted the
view that we have here a reference to the worship of Saturn, finally adopted
the rendering of the Latin Vulgate, that the word "Chiun" should be
translated "statue" or "image." The passage would then become—
"Ye have borne the booth of your Moloch and the image of your
idols, the star of your god which ye made for yourselves."
If we accept the view that the worship of the planet Saturn is indeed
referred to, it does not necessarily follow that the prophet Amos was stating
that the Israelites in the wilderness actually observed and worshipped him
as such. The prophet may mean no more than that the Israelites, whilst
outwardly conforming to the worship of Jehovah, were in their secret
desires hankering after Sabæism—the worship of the heavenly host. And it
may well be that he chooses Moloch and Saturn as representing the
cruellest and most debased forms of heathenism.
The planet Saturn gives its name to the seventh day of our week, "Saturn's
day," the sabbath of the week of the Jews, and the coincidence of the two
has called forth not a few ingenious theories. Why do the days of our week
bear their present names, and what is the explanation of their order?
The late well-known astronomer, R. A. Proctor, gives the explanation as
follows:—
"The twenty-four hours of each day were devoted to those
planets in the order of their supposed distance from the earth,—
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon.
The outermost planet, Saturn, which also travels in the longest
period, was regarded in this arrangement as of chief dignity, as
encompassing in his movement all the rest, Jupiter was of higher
dignity than Mars, and so forth. Moreover to the outermost
planet, partly because of Saturn's gloomy aspect, partly because

among half-savage races the powers of evil are always more
respected than the powers that work for good, a maleficent
influence was attributed. Now, if we assign to the successive
hours of a day the planets as above-named, beginning with
Saturn on the day assigned to that powerful deity, it will be
found that the last hour of that day will be assigned to Mars
—'the lesser infortune,' as Saturn was 'the greater infortune,' of
the old system of astrology—and the first hour of the next day to
the next planet, the Sun; the day following Saturday would thus
be Sunday. The last hour of Sunday would fall to Mercury, and
the first of the next to the Moon; so Monday, the Moon's day,
follows Sunday. The next day would be the day of Mars, who, in
the Scandinavian theology, is represented by Tuisco; so Tuisco's
day, or Tuesday (Mardi), follows Monday. Then, by following
the same system, we come to Mercury's day (Mercredi),
Woden's day, or Wednesday; next to Jupiter's day, Jove's day
(Jeudi), Thor's day, or Thursday; to Venus's day, Vendredi
(Veneris dies), Freya's day, or Friday, and so to Saturday again.
That the day devoted to the most evil and most powerful of all
the deities of the Sabdans (sic) should be set apart—first as one
on which it was unlucky to work, and afterwards as one on
which it was held to be sinful to work—was but the natural
outcome of the superstitious belief that the planets were gods
ruling the fates of men and nations."[136:1]
This theory appears at first sight so simple, so plausible, that many are
tempted to say, "It must be true," and it has accordingly gained a wide
acceptance. Yet a moment's thought shows that it makes many assumptions,
some of which rest without any proof, and others are known to be false.
When were the planets discovered? Not certainly at the dawn of astronomy.
The fixed stars must have become familiar, and have been recognized in
their various groupings before it could have been known that there were
others that were not fixed,—were "planets," i. e. wanderers. Thus, amongst
the Greeks, no planet is alluded to by Hesiod, and Homer mentions no
planet other than Venus, and apparently regarded her as two distinct objects,
according as she was seen as a morning and as an evening star. Pythagoras
is reputed to have been the first of the Greek philosophers to realize the

identity of Phosphorus and Hesperus, that is Venus at her two elongations,
so that the Greeks did not know this until the sixth century before our era.
We are yet without certain knowledge as to when the Babylonians began to
notice the different planets, but the order of discovery can hardly have been
different from what it seems to have been amongst the Greeks—that is to
say, first Venus as two separate objects, then Jupiter and Mars, and,
probably much later, Saturn and Mercury. This last, again, would originally
be considered a pair of planets, just as Venus had been. Later these planets
as morning stars would be identified with their appearances as evening
stars. After this obscurity had been cleared up, there was a still further
advance to be made before the astrologers could have adopted their strange
grouping of the sun and moon as planets equally with the other five. This
certainly is no primitive conception; for the sun and moon have such
appreciable dimensions and are of such great brightness that they seem to
be marked off (as in the first chapter of Genesis) as of an entirely different
order from all the other heavenly bodies. The point in common with the
other five planets, namely their apparent periodical movements, could only
have been brought out by very careful and prolonged observation. The
recognition, therefore, of the planets as being "seven," two of the seven
being the sun and moon, must have been quite late in the history of the
world. The connection of the "seven planets" with the seven days of the
week was something much later still. It implies, as we have seen, the
adoption of a particular order for the planets, and this order further implies
that a knowledge had been obtained of their relative distances, and involves
a particular theory of the solar system, that which we now know as the
Ptolemaic. It is not the order of the Babylonians, for they arranged them,
Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
There are further considerations which show that the Babylonians could not
have given these planetary names to the days of the week. The order of the
names implies that a twenty-four hour day was used, but the Babylonian
hours were twice the length of those which we use; hence there were only
twelve of them. Further, the Babylonian week was not a true week running
on continuously; it was tied to the month, and hence did not lend itself to
such a notation.
But the order adopted for the planets is that current amongst the Greek
astronomers of Alexandria, who did use a twenty-four hour day. Hence it

was certainly later than 300 b.c. But the Greeks and Egyptians alike used a
week of ten days, not of seven. How then did the planetary names come to
be assigned to the seven-day week?
It was a consequence of the power which the Jews possessed of impressing
their religious ideas, and particularly their observance of the sabbath day,
upon their conquerors. They did so with the Romans. We find such writers
as Cicero, Horace, Juvenal and others remarking upon the sabbath, and,
indeed, in the early days of the Empire there was a considerable observance
of it. Much more, then, must the Alexandrian Greeks have been aware of
the Jewish sabbath,—which involved the Jewish week,—at a time when the
Jews of that city were both numerous and powerful, having equal rights
with the Greek inhabitants, and when the Ptolemies were sanctioning the
erection of a Jewish temple in their dominions, and the translation of the
Jewish Scriptures into Greek. It was after the Alexandrian Greeks had thus
learned of the Jewish week that they assigned the planets to the seven days
of that week, since it suited their astrological purposes better than the
Egyptian week of ten days. That allotment could not possibly have brought
either week or sabbath into existence. Both had been recognized many
centuries earlier. It was foisted upon that which had already a venerable
antiquity. As Professor Schiaparelli well remarks, "we are indebted for these
names to mathematical astrology, the false science which came to be
formed after the time of Alexander the Great from the strange intermarriage
between Chaldean and Egyptian superstitions and the mathematical
astronomy of the Greeks."[139:1]
There is a widespread notion that early astronomy, whether amongst the
Hebrews or elsewhere, took the form of astrology; that the fortune-telling
came first, and the legitimate science grew out of it. Indeed, a claim is not
infrequently made that no small honour is due to the early astrologers, since
from their efforts, the most majestic of all the sciences is said to have
arisen.
These ideas are the exact contrary of the truth. Mathematical, or perhaps as
we might better call it, planetary astrology, as we have it to-day, concerns
itself with the apparent movements of the planets in the sense that it uses
them as its material; just as a child playing in a library might use the books
as building blocks, piling, it may be, a book of sermons on a history, and a

novel on a mathematical treatise. Astrology does not contribute, has not
contributed a single observation, a single demonstration to astronomy. It
owes to astronomy all that it knows of mathematical processes and
planetary positions. In astronomical language, the calculation of a
horoscope is simply the calculation of the "azimuths" of the different
planets, and of certain imaginary points on the ecliptic for a given time.
This is an astronomical process, carried out according to certain simple
formulæ. The calculation of a horoscope is therefore a straightforward
business, but, as astrologers all admit, its interpretation is where the skill is
required, and no real rules can be given for that.
Here is the explanation why the sun and moon are classed together with
such relatively insignificant bodies as the other five planets, and are not
even ranked as their chief. The ancient astrologer, like the modern, cared
nothing for the actual luminary in the heavens; all he cared for was its
written symbol on his tablets, and there Sun and Saturn could be looked
upon as equal, or Saturn as the greater. It is a rare thing for a modern
astrologer to introduce the place of an actual star into a horoscope; the
calculations all refer to the positions of the Signs of the Zodiac, which are
purely imaginary divisions of the heavens; not to the Constellations of the
Zodiac, which are the actual star-groups.
Until astronomers had determined the apparent orbits of the planets, and
drawn up tables by which their apparent places could be predicted for some
time in advance, it was impossible for astrologers to cast horoscopes of the
present kind. All they could do was to divide up time amongst the deities
supposed to preside over the various planets. To have simply given a planet
to each day would have allowed the astrologer a very small scope in which
to work for his prophecies; the ingenious idea of giving a planet to each
hour as well, gave a wider range of possible combinations. There seems to
have been deliberate spitefulness in the assignment of the most evil of the
planetary divinities to the sacred day of the Jews—their sabbath. It should
be noticed at the same time that, whilst the Jewish sabbath coincides with
the astrological "Saturn's Day," that particular day is the seventh day of the
Jewish week, but the first of the astrological. For the very nature of the
reckoning by which the astrologers allotted the planets to the days of the
week, implies, as shown in the extract quoted from Proctor, that they began
with Saturn and worked downwards from the "highest planet"—as they

called it—to the "lowest." This detail of itself should have sufficed to have
demonstrated to Proctor, or any other astronomer, that the astrological week
had been foisted upon the already existing week of the Jews.
Before astrology took its present mathematical form, astrologers used as
their material for prediction the stars or constellations which happened to be
rising or setting at the time selected, or were upon the same meridian, or
had the same longitude, as such constellations. One of the earliest of these
astrological writers was Zeuchros of Babylon, who lived about the time of
the Christian era, some of whose writings have been preserved to us. From
these it is clear that the astrologers found twelve signs of the zodiac did not
give them enough play. They therefore introduced the "decans," that is to
say the idea of thirty-six divinities—three to each month—borrowed from
the Egyptian division of the year into thirty-six weeks (of ten days), each
under the rule of a separate god. Of course this Egyptian year bore no fixed
relation to the actual lunar months or solar year, nor therefore to the Jewish
year, which was related to both. But even with this increase of material, the
astrologers found the astronomical data insufficient for their fortune-telling
purposes. Additional figures quite unrepresented in the heavens, were
devised, and were drawn upon, as needed, to supplement the genuine
constellations, and as it was impossible to recognize these additions in the
sky, the predictions were made, not from observation of the heavens, but
from observations on globes, often very inaccurate.
Earlier still we have astrological tablets from Assyria and Babylon, many of
which show that they had nothing to do with any actual observation, and
were simply invented to give completeness to the tables of omens. Thus an
Assyrian tablet has been found upon which are given the significations of
eclipses falling upon each day of the month Tammuz, right up to the middle
of the month. It is amusing to read the naïve comment of a distinguished
Assyriologist, that tablets such as these prove how careful, and how long
continued had been the observations upon which they were based. It was
not recognized that no eclipses either of sun or moon could possibly occur
on most of the dates given, and that they could never occur "in the north,"
which is one of the quarters indicated. They were no more founded on
actual observation than the portent mentioned on another tablet, of a woman
giving birth to a lion, which, after all, is not more impossible than that an
eclipse should occur in the north on the second day of Tammuz. In all ages

it has been the same; the astrologer has had nothing to do with science as
such, even in its most primitive form; he has cared nothing for the actual
appearance of the heavens upon which he pretended to base his predictions;
an imaginary planet, an imaginary eclipse, an imaginary constellation were
just as good for his fortune-telling as real ones. Such fortune-telling was
forbidden to the Hebrews; necessarily forbidden, for astrology had no
excuse unless the stars and planets were gods, or the vehicles and engines
of gods. Further, all attempts to extort from spirits or from inanimate things
a glimpse into the future was likewise forbidden them. They were to look to
God, and to His revealed will alone for all such light.

"When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter:
should not a people seek unto their God?"
The Hebrews were few in number, their kingdoms very small compared
with the great empires of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon, but here, in this
question of divination or fortune-telling, they stand on a plane far above any
of the surrounding nations. There is just contempt in the picture drawn by
Ezekiel of the king of Babylon, great though his military power might be—
"The king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head
of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and
fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver."
And Isaiah calls upon the city of Babylon—
"Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of
thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so
thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou
art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the
astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand up,
and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee."
Isaiah knew the Lord to be He that "frustrateth the tokens of the liars and
maketh diviners mad." And the word of the Lord to Israel through Jeremiah
was—
"Thus saith the Lord. Learn not the way of the heathen, and be
not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are
dismayed at them."
It is to our shame that even to-day, in spite of all our enlightenment and
scientific advances, astrology still has a hold upon multitudes. Astrological
almanacs and treatises are sold by the tens of thousands, and astrological
superstitions are still current. "The star of the god Chiun" is not indeed
openly worshipped; but Saturn is still looked upon as the planet bringing
such diseases as "toothache, agues, and all that proceeds from cold,
consumption, the spleen particularly, and the bones, rheumatic gouts,
jaundice, dropsy, and all complaints arising from fear, apoplexies, etc."; and

charms made of Saturn's metal, lead, are still worn upon Saturn's finger, in
the belief that these will ward off the threatened evil; a tradition of the time
when by so doing the wearers would have proclaimed themselves votaries
of the god, and therefore under his protection.
Astrology is inevitably linked with heathenism, and both shut up spirit and
mind against the knowledge of God Himself, which is religion; and against
the knowledge of His works, which is science. And though a man may be
religious without being scientific, or scientific without being religious,
religion and science alike both rest on one and the same basis—the belief in
"One God, Maker of heaven and earth."
That belief was the reason why Israel of old, so far as it was faithful to it,
was free from the superstitions of astrology.
"It is no small honour for this nation to have been wise enough
to see the inanity of this and all other forms of divination. . . . Of
what other ancient civilized nation could as much be said?"
[145:1]

FOOTNOTES:
[136:1] R. A. Proctor, The Great Pyramid, pp. 274-276.
[139:1] G. V. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 137.
[145:1] G. V. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 52.

By permission of the Autotype Co. 74, New Oxford Street, London, W.C.

ST. PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS (by Raphael).
"As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
offspring."ToList

BOOK II
THE CONSTELLATIONS

CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS

The age of Classical astronomy began with the labours of Eudoxus and
others, about four centuries before the Christian Era, but there was an
Earlier astronomy whose chief feature was the arrangement of the stars into
constellations.
The best known of all such arrangements is that sometimes called the
"Greek Sphere," because those constellations have been preserved to us by
Greek astronomers and poets. The earliest complete catalogue of the stars,
as thus arranged, that has come down to us was compiled by Claudius
Ptolemy, the astronomer of Alexandria, and completed 137 a.d. In this
catalogue, each star is described by its place in the supposed figure of the
constellation, whilst its celestial latitude and longitude are added, so that we
can see with considerable exactness how the astronomers of that time
imagined the star figures. The earliest complete description of the
constellations, apart from the places of the individual stars, is given in the
poem of Aratus of Soli—The Phenomena, published about 270 b.c.
Were these constellations known to the Hebrews of old? We can answer this
question without hesitation in the case of St. Paul. For in his sermon to the
Athenians on Mars' Hill, he quotes from the opening verses of this
constellation poem of Aratus:—
"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He
is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with
hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He
needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all
things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times
before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they
should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and
find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him

we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your
own poets have said, For we are also His offspring."
The poem of Aratus begins thus:—

"To God above we dedicate our song;
To leave Him unadored, we never dare;
For He is present in each busy throng,
In every solemn gathering He is there.
The sea is His; and His each crowded port;
In every place our need of Him we feel;
For we His offspring are."

Aratus, like St. Paul himself, was a native of Cilicia, and had been educated
at Athens. His poem on the constellations came, in the opinion of the
Greeks, next in honour to the poems of Homer, so that St. Paul's quotation
from it appealed to his hearers with special force.
The constellations of Ptolemy's catalogue are forty-eight in number. Those
of Aratus correspond to them in almost every particular, but one or two
minor differences may be marked. According to Ptolemy, the constellations
are divided into three sets:—twenty-one northern, twelve in the zodiac, and
fifteen southern.
The northern constellations are—to use the names by which they are now
familiar to us—1, Ursa Minor, the Little Bear; 2, Ursa Major, the Great
Bear; 3, Draco, the Dragon; 4, Cepheus, the King; 5, Boötes, the Herdsman;
6, Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown; 7, Hercules, the Kneeler; 8, Lyra,
the Lyre or Swooping Eagle; 9, Cygnus, the Bird; 10, Cassiopeia, the
Throned Queen, or the Lady in the Chair; 11, Perseus; 12, Auriga, the
Holder of the Reins; 13, Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder; 14, Serpens, the
Serpent; 15, Sagitta, the Arrow; 16, Aquila, the Soaring Eagle; 17,
Delphinus, the Dolphin; 18, Equuleus, the Horse's Head; 19, Pegasus, the
Winged Horse; 20, Andromeda, the Chained Woman; 21, Triangulum, the
Triangle.
The zodiacal constellations are: 1, Aries, the Ram; 2, Taurus, the Bull; 3,
Gemini, the Twins; 4, Cancer, the Crab; 5, Leo, the Lion; 6, Virgo, the
Virgin; 7, Libra, the Scales,—also called the Claws, that is of the Scorpion;

8, Scorpio, the Scorpion; 9, Sagittarius, the Archer; 10, Capricornus, the
Sea-goat, i. e. Goat-fish; 11, Aquarius, the Water-pourer; 12, Pisces, the
Fishes.
The southern constellations are: 1, Cetus, the Sea-Monster; 2, Orion, the
Giant; 3, Eridanus, the River; 4, Lepus, the Hare; 5, Canis Major, the Great
Dog; 6, Canis Minor, the Little Dog; 7, Argo, the Ship and Rock; 8, Hydra,
the Water-snake; 9, Crater, the Cup; 10, Corvus, the Raven; 11, Centaurus,
the Centaur; 12, Lupus, the Beast; 13, Ara, the Altar; 14, Corona Australis,
the Southern Crown; 15, Piscis Australis, the Southern Fish.
Aratus, living four hundred years earlier than Ptolemy, differs only from
him in that he reckons the cluster of the Pleiades—counted by Ptolemy in
Taurus—as a separate constellation, but he has no constellation of
Equuleus. The total number of constellations was thus still forty-eight.
Aratus further describes the Southern Crown, but gives it no name; and in
the constellation of the Little Dog he only mentions one star, Procyon, the
Dog's Forerunner. He also mentions that the two Bears were also known as
two Wagons or Chariots.
Were these constellations, so familiar to us to-day, known before the time of
Aratus, and if so, by whom were they devised, and when and where?
They were certainly known before the time of Aratus, for his poem was
confessedly a versification of an account of them written by Eudoxus more
than a hundred years previous. At a yet earlier date, Panyasis, uncle to the
great historian Herodotus, incidentally discusses the name of one of the
constellations, which must therefore have been known to him. Earlier still,
Hesiod, in the second book of his Works and Days, refers to several:—

"Orion and the Dog, each other nigh,
Together mounted to the midnight sky,
When in the rosy morn Arcturus shines,
Then pluck the clusters from the parent vines.

Next in the round do not to plough forget
When the Seven Virgins and Orion set."

Much the same constellations are referred to by Homer. Thus, in the fifth
book of the Odyssey,—

"And now, rejoicing in the prosperous gales,
With beating heart Ulysses spreads his sails:
Placed at the helm he sate, and marked the skies,
Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes.
There view'd the Pleiads and the Northern Team,
And great Orion's more refulgent beam,
To which around the axle of the sky
The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye."

Thus it is clear that several of the constellations were perfectly familiar to
the Greeks a thousand years before the Christian era; that is to say, about
the time of Solomon.
We have other evidence that the constellations were known in early times.
We often find on Greek coins, a bull, a ram, or a lion represented; these may
well be references to some of the signs of the zodiac, but offer no
conclusive evidence. But several of the constellation figures are very
unusual in form; thus the Sea-goat has the head and fore-legs of a goat, but
the hinder part of a fish; and the Archer has the head and shoulders of a
man, but the body and legs of a horse. Pegasus, the horse with wings, not
only shows this unnatural combination, but the constellation figure only
gives part of the animal—the head, neck, wings, breast, and fore-legs. Now
some of these characteristic figures are found on quite early Greek coins,
and yet earlier on what are known as "boundary stones" from Babylonia.
These are little square pillars, covered with inscriptions and sculptures, and
record for the most part the gift, transfer, or sale of land. They are dated
according to the year of the reigning king, so that a clear idea can be formed
as to their age. A great many symbols, which appear to be astronomical,
occur upon them; amongst these such very distinguishing shapes as the
Archer, Sea-goat, and Scorpion (see p. 318). So that, just as we know from
Homer and Hesiod that the principal constellations were known of old by
the same names as those by which we know them to-day, we learn from
Babylonian boundary stones that they were then known as having the same
forms as we now ascribe to them. The date of the earliest boundary stones
of the kind in our possession would show that the Babylonians knew of our

constellations as far back as the twelfth century b.c., that is to say, whilst
Israel was under the Judges.
We have direct evidence thus far back as to the existence of the
constellations. But they are older than this, so much older that tradition as
well as direct historical evidence fails us. The only earlier evidence open to
us is that of the constellations themselves.
A modern celestial globe is covered over with figures from pole to pole, but
the majority of these are of quite recent origin and belong to the Modern
period of astronomy. They have been framed since the invention of the
telescope, and since the progress of geographical discovery brought men to
know the southern skies. If these modern constellations are cleared off, and
only those of Aratus and Ptolemy suffered to remain, it becomes at once
evident that the ancient astronomers were not acquainted with the entire
heavens. For there is a large space in the south, left free from all the old
constellations, and no explanation, why it should have been so left free, is
so simple and satisfactory as the obvious one, that the ancient astronomers
did not map out the stars in that region because they never saw them; those
stars never rose above their horizon.

THE ANCIENT CONSTELLATIONS SOUTH OF THE
ECLIPTIC.ToList

Thus at the present time the heavens for an observer in England are
naturally divided into three parts, as shown in the accompanying diagram.
In the north, round the pole-star are a number of constellations that never
set; they wheel unceasingly around the pole. On every fine night we can see
the Great Bear, the Little Bear, the Dragon, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. But
the stars in the larger portion of the sky have their risings and settings, and
the seasons in which they are visible or are withdrawn from sight. Thus we
see Orion and the Pleiades and Sirius in the winter, not in the summer, but
the Scorpion and Sagittarius in the summer. Similarly there is a third
portion of the heavens which never comes within our range. We never see
the Southern Cross, and hardly any star in the great constellation of the
Ship, though these are very familiar to New Zealanders.

THE CELESTIAL SPHERE.ToList

The outline of this unmapped region must therefore correspond roughly to
the horizon of the place where the constellations were originally designed,
or at least be roughly parallel to it, since we may well suppose that stars
which only rose two or three degrees above that horizon might have been
neglected.
From this we learn that the constellations were designed by people living
not very far from the 40th parallel of north latitude, not further south than
the 37th or 36th. This is important, as it shows that they did not originate in
ancient Egypt or India, nor even in the city of Babylon, which is in latitude
32-1/2°.[157:1]
But this vacant space reveals another fact of even more importance. It gives
us a hint as to the date when the constellations were designed.
An observer in north latitude 40° at the present time would be very far from
seeing all the stars included in the forty-eight constellations. He would see
nothing at all of the constellation of the Altar, and a good deal of that of the
Centaur would be hidden from him.
On the other hand, there are some bright constellations, such as the Phoenix
and the Crane, unknown to the ancients, which would come within his
range of vision. This is due to what is known as "precession;" a slow
movement of the axis upon which the earth rotates. In consequence of this,
the pole of the heavens seems to trace out a circle amongst the stars which it
takes 25,800 years to complete. It is therefore a matter of very simple
calculation to find the position of the south pole of the heavens at any given
date, past or future, and we find that the centre of the unmapped space was
the south pole of the heavens something like 4,600 years ago, that is to say
about 2,700 b.c.
It is, of course, not possible to fix either time or latitude very closely, since
the limits of the unmapped space are a a little vague. But it is significant
that if we take a celestial globe, arranged so as to represent the heavens for
the time 2,700 b.c., and for north latitude 40°, we find several striking
relations. First of all, the Great Dragon then linked together the north pole
of the celestial equator, and the north pole of the ecliptic; it was as nearly as
possible symmetrical with regard to the two; it occupied the very crown of
the heavens. With the single exception of the Little Bear, which it nearly

surrounds, the Dragon was the only constellation that never set. Next, the
Water-snake (see diagram, p. 200) lay at this time right along the equator,
extending over 105° of Right Ascension; or, to put it less technically, it took
seven hours out of the twenty-four to cross the meridian. It covered nearly
one-third of the equatorial belt. Thirdly, the intersection of the equator with
one of the principal meridians of the sky was marked by the Serpent, which
is carried by the Serpent-holder in a very peculiar manner. The meridian at
midnight at the time of the spring equinox is called a "colure,"—the
"autumnal colure," because the sun crosses it in autumn. Now the Serpent
was so arranged as to be shown writhing itself for some distance along the
equator, and then struggling upwards, along the autumnal colure, marking
the zenith with its head. The lower part of the autumnal colure was marked
by the Scorpion, and the foot of the Serpent-holder pressed down the
creature's head, just where the colure, the equator, and the ecliptic
intersected (see diagram, p. 164).
It is scarcely conceivable that this fourfold arrangement, not suggested by
any natural grouping of the stars, should have come about by accident; it
must have been intentional. For some reason, the equator, the colure, the
zenith and the poles were all marked out by these serpentine or draconic
forms. The unmapped space gives us a clue only to the date and latitude of
the designing of the most southerly constellations. We now see that a
number of the northern hold positions which were specially significant
under the same conditions, indicating that they were designed at about the
same date. There is therefore little room for doubt that some time in the
earlier half of the third millennium before our era, and somewhere between
the 36th and 40th parallels of north latitude, the constellations were
designed, substantially as we have them now, the serpent forms being
intentionally placed in these positions of great astronomical importance.
It will have been noticed that Ptolemy makes the Ram the first constellation
of the zodiac. It was so in his days, but it was the Bull that was the original
leader, as we know from a variety of traditions; the sun at the spring
equinox being in the centre of that constellation about 3000 b.c. At the time
when the constellations were designed, the sun at the spring equinox was
near Aldebaran, the brightest star of the Bull; at the summer solstice it was
near Regulus, the brightest star of the Lion; at the autumnal equinox it was
near Antares, the brightest star of the Scorpion; at the winter solstice it was

near Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the neighbourhood of the Waterpourer.
These four stars have come down to us with the name of the "Royal Stars,"
probably because they were so near to the four most important points in the
apparent path of the sun amongst the stars. There is also a celebrated
passage in the first of Virgil's Georgics which speaks of the white bull with
golden horns that opens the year. So when the Mithraic religion adopted
several of the constellation figures amongst its symbols, the Bull as
standing for the spring equinox, the Lion for the summer solstice, were the
two to which most prominence was given, and they are found thus used in
Mithraic monuments as late as the second or third century a.d., long after
the Ram had been recognized as the leading sign.
It is not possible to push back the origin of the constellations to an
indefinite antiquity. They cannot at the very outside be more than 5000
years old; they must be considerably more than 4000. But during the whole
of this millennium the sun at the spring equinox was in the constellation of
the Bull. There is therefore no possible doubt that the Bull—and not the
Twins nor the Ram—was the original leader of the zodiac.
The constellations, therefore, were designed long before the nation of Israel
had its origin, indeed before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees. The most
probable date—2700 b.c.—would take us to a point a little before the
Flood, if we accept the Hebrew chronology, a few centuries after the Flood,
if we accept the Septuagint chronology. Just as the next great age of
astronomical activity, which I have termed the Classical, began after the
close of the canon of the Old Testament scriptures, so the constellation age
began before the first books of those scriptures were compiled. Broadly
speaking, it may be said that the knowledge of the constellation figures was
the chief asset of astronomy in the centuries when the Old Testament was
being written.
Seeing that the knowledge of these figures was preserved in Mesopotamia,
the country from which Abraham came out, and that they were in existence
long before his day, it is not unreasonable to suppose that both he and his
descendants were acquainted with them, and that when he and they looked
upward to the glories of the silent stars, and recalled the promise, "So shall
thy seed be," they pictured round those glittering points of light much the
same forms that we connect with them to-day.

FOOTNOTES:
[157:1] Delitzsch is, therefore, in error when he asserts that "when we divide the
zodiac into twelve signs and style them the Ram, Bull, Twins, etc. . . . the
Sumerian-Babylonian culture is still living and operating even at the present
day" (Babel and Bible, p. 67). The constellations may have been originally
designed by the Akkadians, but if so it was before they came down from their
native highlands into the Mesopotamian valley.

CHAPTER II
GENESIS AND THE CONSTELLATIONS

As we have just shown, the constellations evidently were designed long
before the earliest books of the Old Testament received their present form.
But the first nine chapters of Genesis give the history of the world before
any date that we can assign to the constellations, and are clearly derived
from very early documents or traditions.
When the constellations are compared with those nine chapters, several
correspondences appear between the two; remarkable, when it is borne in
mind how few are the events that can be plainly set forth in a group of
forty-eight figures on the one hand, and how condensed are the narratives of
those nine chapters on the other.
Look at the six southern constellations (see pp. 164, 165) which were seen
during the nights of spring in that distant time. The largest of these six is a
great Ship resting on the southern horizon. Just above, a Raven is perched
on the stretched-out body of a reptile. A figure of a Centaur appears to have
just left the Ship, and is represented as offering up an animal on an Altar.
The animal is now shown as a Wolf, but Aratus, our earliest authority, states
that he did not know what kind of animal it was that was being thus offered
up. The cloud of smoke from the Altar is represented by the bright coiling
wreaths of the Milky Way, and here in the midst of that cloud is set the Bow
—the bow of Sagittarius, the Archer. Is it possible that this can be mere
coincidence, or was it indeed intended as a memorial of the covenant which
God made with Noah, and with his children for ever?—"I do set My bow in
the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the
earth."
Close by this group was another, made up of five constellations. Towards
the south, near midnight in spring, the observer in those ancient times saw
the Scorpion. The figure of a man was standing upon that venomous beast,
with his left foot pressed firmly down upon its head; but the scorpion's tail

was curled up to sting him in the right heel. Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder,
the man treading on the Scorpion, derives his name from the Serpent which
he holds in his hands and strangles; the Serpent that, as we have seen in the
preceding chapter, marked the autumnal colure. The head of Ophiuchus
reached nearly to the zenith, and there close to it was the head of another
hero, so close that to complete the form of the two heads the same stars
must be used to some extent twice over. Facing north, this second hero, now
known to us as Hercules, but to Aratus simply as the "Kneeler," was seen
kneeling with his foot on the head of the great northern Dragon. This great
conflict between the man and the serpent, therefore, was presented in a
twofold form. Looking south there was the picture of Ophiuchus trampling
on the scorpion and strangling the snake, yet wounded in the heel by the
scorpion's sting; looking north, the corresponding picture of the kneeling
figure of Hercules treading down the dragon's head. Here there seems an
evident reference to the word spoken by God to the serpent in the garden in
Eden: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed and her Seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel."

THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF SPRING, B.C.
2700.ToList

These two groups of star-figures seem therefore to point to the two great
promises made to mankind and recorded in the early chapters of Genesis;
the Promise of the Deliverer, Who, "Seed of the woman," should bruise the
serpent's head, and the promise of the "Bow set in the cloud," the pledge
that the world should not again be destroyed by a flood.

THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF WINTER, B.C.
2700.ToList

One or two other constellations appear, less distinctly, to refer to the first of
these two promises. The Virgin, the woman of the zodiac, carries in her
hand a bright star, the ear of corn, the seed; whilst, immediately under her,
the great Water-snake, Hydra, is drawn out at enormous length, "going on

its belly;" not writhing upwards like the Serpent, nor twined round the
crown of the sky like the Dragon.
Yet again, the narrative in Genesis tells us that God "drove out the man" (i.
e. Adam), "and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim,
and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the
tree of life." No description is given of the form of the cherubim in that
passage, but they are fully described by Ezekiel, who saw them in vision
when he was by the river Chebar, as "the likeness of four living creatures."
The same beings were also seen in vision by St. John, and are described by
him in the Apocalypse as "four living creatures" (Zōa). "The first creature
was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature
had a face as of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle."
Ezekiel gives a fuller and more complex description, but agreeing in its
essential elements with that given by the Apostle, and, at the close of one of
these descriptions, he adds, "This is the living creature that I saw under the
God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were
cherubim"—no doubt because as a priest he had been familiar with the
cherubic forms as they were embroidered upon the curtains of the Temple,
and carved upon its walls and doors.
The same four forms were seen amongst the constellation figures; not
placed at random amongst them, but as far as possible in the four most
important positions in the sky. For the constellations were originally so
designed that the sun at the time of the summer solstice was in the middle
of the constellation Leo, the Lion; at the time of the spring equinox in the
middle of Taurus, the Bull; and at the time of the winter solstice, in the
middle of Aquarius, the Man bearing the waterpot. The fourth point, that
held by the sun at the autumnal equinox, would appear to have been already
assigned to the foot of the Serpent-holder as he crushes down the Scorpion's
head; but a flying eagle, Aquila, is placed as near the equinoctial point as
seems to have been consistent with the ample space that it was desired to
give to the emblems of the great conflict between the Deliverer and the
Serpent. Thus, as in the vision of Ezekiel, so in the constellation figures, the
Lion, the Ox, the Man, and the Eagle, stood as the upholders of the
firmament, as "the pillars of heaven." They looked down like watchers upon
all creation; they seemed to guard the four quarters of the sky.

If we accept an old Jewish tradition, the constellations may likewise give us
some hint of an event recorded in the tenth chapter of Genesis. For it has
been supposed that the great stellar giant Orion is none other than "Nimrod,
the mighty hunter before the Lord," and the founder of the Babylonian
kingdom; identified by some Assyriologists with Merodach, the tutelary
deity of Babylon: and by others with Gilgamesh, the tyrant of Erech, whose
exploits have been preserved to us in the great epic now known by his
name. Possibly both identifications may prove to be correct.
More than one third of the constellation figures thus appear to have a close
connection with some of the chief incidents recorded in the first ten
chapters of Genesis as having taken place in the earliest ages of the world's
history. If we include the Hare and the two Dogs as adjuncts of Orion, and
the Cup as well as the Raven with Hydra, then no fewer than twenty-two
out of the forty-eight are directly or indirectly so connected. But the
constellation figures only deal with a very few isolated incidents, and these
are necessarily such as lend themselves to graphic representation. The
points in common with the Genesis narrative are indeed striking, but the
points of independence are no less striking. The majority of the
constellation figures do not appear to refer to any incidents in Genesis; the
majority of the incidents in the Genesis narrative find no record in the sky.
Even in the treatment of incidents common to both there are differences,
which make it impossible to suppose that either was directly derived from
the other.
But it is clear that when the constellations were devised,—that is to say,
roughly speaking, about 2,700 b.c.,—the promise of the Deliverer, the
"Seed of the woman" who should bruise the serpent's head, was well known
and highly valued; so highly valued that a large part of the sky was devoted
to its commemoration and to that of the curse on the serpent. The story of
the Flood was also known, and especially the covenant made with those
who were saved in the ark, that the world should not again be destroyed by
water, the token of which covenant was the "Bow set in the cloud." The
fourfold cherubic forms were known, the keepers of the way of the tree of
life, the symbols of the presence of God; and they were set in the four parts
of the heaven, marking it out as the tabernacle which He spreadeth abroad,
for He dwelleth between the cherubim.

CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF THE DELUGE

Beside the narrative of the Flood given to us in Genesis, and the pictorial
representation of it preserved in the star figures, we have Deluge stories
from many parts of the world. But in particular we have a very striking one
from Babylonia. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, already alluded to, the eleventh
tablet is devoted to an interview between the hero and Pir-napistim, the
Babylonian Noah, who recounts to him how he and his family were saved
at the time of the great flood.
This Babylonian story of the Deluge stands in quite a different relation from
the Babylonian story of Creation in its bearing on the account given in
Genesis. As we have already seen, the stories of Creation have practically
nothing in common; the stories of the Deluge have many most striking
points of resemblance, and may reasonably be supposed to have had a
common origin.
Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch, in his celebrated lectures Babel and Bible, refers
to this Babylonian Deluge story in the following terms:—
"The Babylonians divided their history into two great periods:
the one before, the other after the Flood. Babylon was in quite a
peculiar sense the land of deluges. The alluvial lowlands along
the course of all great rivers discharging into the sea are, of
course, exposed to terrible floods of a special kind—cyclones
and tornadoes accompanied by earthquakes and tremendous
downpours of rain."
After referring to the great cyclone and tidal wave which wrecked the
Sunderbunds at the mouths of the Ganges in 1876, when 215,000 persons
met their death by drowning, Prof. Delitzsch goes on—
"It is the merit of the celebrated Viennese geologist, Eduard
Suess, to have shown that there is an accurate description of

such a cyclone, line for line, in the Babylonian Deluge story. . . .
The whole story, precisely as it was written down, travelled to
Canaan. But, owing to the new and entirely different local
conditions, it was forgotten that the sea was the chief factor, and
so we find in the Bible two accounts of the Deluge, which are
not only scientifically impossible, but, furthermore, mutually
contradictory—the one assigning to it a duration of 365 days,
the other of [40 + (3 x 7)] = 61 days. Science is indebted to Jean
Astruc, that strictly orthodox Catholic physician of Louis XIV.,
for recognizing that two fundamentally different accounts of a
deluge have been worked up into a single story in the Bible."
[171:1]

The importance of the Babylonian Deluge story does not rest in anything
intrinsic to itself, for there are many deluge stories preserved by other
nations quite as interesting and as well told. It derives its importance from
its points of resemblance to the Genesis story, and from the deduction that
some have drawn from these that it was the original of that story—or rather
of the two stories—that we find imperfectly recombined in Genesis.
The suggestion of Jean Astruc that "two fundamentally different accounts of
a deluge have been worked up into a single story in the Bible" has been
generally accepted by those who have followed him in the minute analysis
of the literary structure of Holy Scripture; and the names of the "Priestly
Narrative" and of the "Jehovistic Narrative" have, for the sake of
distinctness, been applied to them. The former is so called because the
chapters in Exodus and the two following books, which treat with particular
minuteness of the various ceremonial institutions of Israel, are considered to
be by the same writer. The latter has received its name from the preference
shown by the writer for the use, as the Divine name, of the word Jehovah,
—so spelt when given in our English versions, but generally translated "the
Lord."
There is a very close accord between different authorities as to the way in
which Genesis, chapters vi.-ix., should be allotted to these two sources. The
following is Dr. Driver's arrangement:—

Priestly Narrative. Jehovistic Narrative.

Chap. Verse. Chap. Verse.
Genesis vi. 9-22. Genesis vii. 1-5.
vii. 6. 7-10.
11. 12.
13-16a. 16b.
17a. 17b.
18-21. 22-23.
24. viii. 2b-3a.
viii. 1-2a. 6-12.
3b-5. 13b.
13a. 20-22.
14-19.
ix. 1-17.
The Priestly narrative therefore tells us the cause of the Flood—that is to
say, the corruption of mankind; describes the dimensions of the ark, and
instructs Noah to bring "of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort
shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be
male and female." It further supplies the dates of the chief occurrences
during the Flood, states that the waters prevailed above the tops of the
mountains, that when the Flood diminished the ark rested upon the
mountains of Ararat; and gives the account of Noah and his family going
forth from the ark, and of the covenant which God made with them, of
which the token was to be the bow seen in the cloud.
The most striking notes of the Jehovistic narrative are,—the incident of the
sending out of the raven and the dove; the account of Noah's sacrifice; and
the distinction made between clean beasts and beasts that are not clean—the
command to Noah being, "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by
sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the
male and his female." The significant points of distinction between the two
accounts are that the Priestly writer gives the description of the ark, the
Flood prevailing above the mountains, the grounding on Mount Ararat, and
the bow in the cloud; the Jehovistic gives the sending out of the raven and
the dove, and the account of Noah's sacrifice, which involves the
recognition of the distinction between the clean and unclean beasts and the

more abundant provision of the former. He also lays emphasis on the Lord's
"smelling a sweet savour" and promising never again to smite everything
living, "for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."
The chief features of the Babylonian story of the Deluge are as follows:—
The God Ae spoke to Pir-napistim, the Babylonian Noah—

"'Destroy the house, build a ship,
Leave what thou hast, see to thy life.
Destroy the hostile and save life.
Take up the seed of life, all of it, into the midst of the ship.
The ship which thou shalt make, even thou.
Let its size be measured;
Let it agree as to its height and its length.'"

The description of the building of the ship seems to have been very minute,
but the record is mutilated, and what remains is difficult to translate. As in
the Priestly narrative, it is expressly mentioned that it was "pitched within
and without."
The narrative proceeds in the words of Pir-napistim:—

"All I possessed, I collected it,
All I possessed I collected it, of silver;
All I possessed I collected it, of gold;
All I possessed I collected it, the seed of life, the whole.
I caused to go up into the midst of the ship,
All my family and relatives,
The beasts of the field, the animals of the field, the sons of
the artificers—all of them I sent up.
The God Šamaš appointed the time—
Muir Kukki—'In the night I will cause the heavens to rain
destruction,
Enter into the midst of the ship, and shut thy door.'
That time approached—
Muir Kukki—In the night the heavens rained destruction
I saw the appearance of the day:
I was afraid to look upon the day—

I entered into the midst of the ship, and shut my door

At the appearance of dawn in the morning,
There arose from the foundation of heaven a dark cloud:

The first day, the storm? . . . .
Swiftly it swept, and . . . .
Like a battle against the people it sought.
Brother saw not brother.
The people were not to be recognized. In heaven
The gods feared the flood, and
They fled, they ascended to the heaven of Anu.
The gods kenneled like dogs, crouched down in the
enclosures.

The gods had crouched down, seated in lamentation,
Covered were their lips in the assemblies,
Six days and nights
The wind blew, the deluge and flood overwhelmed the land.
The seventh day, when it came, the storm ceased, the raging
flood,
Which had contended like a whirlwind,
Quieted, the sea shrank back, and the evil wind and deluge
ended.
I noticed the sea making a noise,
And all mankind had turned to corruption.

I noted the regions, the shore of the sea,
For twelve measures the region arose.
The ship had stopped at the land of Nisir.
The mountain of Nisir seized the ship, and would not let it
pass.
The first day and the second day the mountains of Nisir
seized the ship, and would not let it pass.

The seventh day, when it came
I sent forth a dove, and it left;
The dove went, it turned about,
But there was no resting-place, and it returned.
I sent forth a swallow, and it left,
The swallow went, it turned about,
But there was no resting-place, and it returned.
I sent forth a raven, and it left,
The raven went, the rushing of the waters it saw,
It ate, it waded, it croaked, it did not return.
I sent forth (the animals) to the four winds, I poured out a
libation,
I made an offering on the peak of the mountain,
Seven and seven I set incense-vases there,
In their depths I poured cane, cedar, and rosewood (?).
The gods smelled a savour;
The gods smelled a sweet savour.
The gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer.
Then the goddess Sîrtu, when she came,
Raised the great signets that Anu had made at her wish:
'These gods—by the lapis-stone of my neck—let me not
forget;
These days let me remember, nor forget them for ever!
Let the gods come to the sacrifice,
But let not Bêl come to the sacrifice,
For he did not take counsel, and made a flood,
And consigned my people to destruction.'
Then Bêl, when he came,
Saw the ship. And Bêl stood still,
Filled with anger on account of the gods and the spirits of
heaven.
'What, has a soul escaped?
Let not a man be saved from the destruction.'
Ninip opened his mouth and spake.
He said to the warrior Bêl:
'Who but Ae has done the thing?

And Ae knows every event.'
Ae opened his mouth and spake,
He said to the warrior Bêl:
'Thou sage of the gods, warrior,
Verily thou hast not taken counsel, and hast made a flood.
The sinner has committed his sin,
The evil-doer has committed his misdeed,
Be merciful—let him not be cut off—yield, let not perish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let the lion come, and let men diminish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let the hyena come, and let men diminish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let a famine happen, and let the land be (?)
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let Ura (pestilence) come, and let the land be (?)'"[176:1]
Of the four records before us, we can only date one approximately. The
constellations, as we have already seen, were mapped out some time in the
third millennium before our era, probably not very far from 2700 b.c.
When was the Babylonian story written? Does it, itself, afford any evidence
of date? It occurs in the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the
theory has been started that as Aquarius, a watery constellation, is now the
eleventh sign of the zodiac, therefore we have in this epic of twelve tablets
a series of solar myths founded upon the twelve signs of the zodiac, the
eleventh giving us a legend of a flood to correspond to the stream of water
which the man in Aquarius pours from his pitcher.
If this theory be accepted we can date the Epic of Gilgamesh with much
certainty: it must be later, probably much later, than 700 b.c. For it cannot
have been till about that time that the present arrangement of the zodiacal
signs—that is to say with Aries as the first and Aquarius as the eleventh—
can have been adopted. We have then to allow for the growth of a
mythology with the twelve signs as its motif. Had this supposed series of
zodiacal myths originated before 700 b.c., before Aries was adopted as the
leading sign, then the Bull, Taurus, would have given rise to the myth of the

first tablet and Aquarius to the tenth, not to the eleventh where we find the
story of the flood.
Assyriologists do not assign so late a date to this poem, and it must be noted
that the theory supposes, not merely that the tablet itself, but that the poem
and the series of myths upon which it was based, were all later in
conception than 700 b.c. One conclusive indication of its early date is given
by the position in the pantheon of Ae and Bêl. Ae has not receded into
comparative insignificance, nor has Bêl attained to that full supremacy
which, as Merodach, he possesses in the Babylonian Creation story. We
may therefore put on one side as an unsupported and unfortunate guess the
suggestion that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the setting forth of a series of
zodiacal myths.
Any legends, any mythology, any pantheon based upon the zodiac must
necessarily be more recent than the zodiac; any system involving Aries as
the first sign of the zodiac must be later than the adoption of Aries as the
first sign, that is to say, later than 700 b.c. Systems arising before that date
would inevitably be based upon Taurus as first constellation.
We cannot then, from astronomical relationships, fix the date of the
Babylonian story of the Flood. Is it possible, however, to form any estimate
of the comparative ages of the Babylonian legend and of the two narratives
given in Genesis, or of either of these two? Does the Babylonian story
connect itself with one of the Genesis narratives rather than the other?
The significant points in the Babylonian story are these:—the command to
Pir-napistim to build a ship, with detailed directions; the great rise of the
flood so that even the gods in the heaven of Anu feared it; the detailed
dating of the duration of the flood; the stranding of the ship on the mountain
of Nisir; the sending forth of the dove, the swallow, and their return; the
sending forth of the raven, and its non-return; the sacrifice; the gods
smelling its sweet savour; the vow of remembrance of the goddess by the
lapis-stone necklace; the determination of the gods not to send a flood again
upon the earth, since sin is inevitable from the sinner. To all these points we
find parallels in the account as given in Genesis.
But it is in the Priestly narrative that we find the directions for the building
of the ship; the great prevalence of the flood even to the height of the

mountains; the stranding of the ship on a mountain; and the bow in the
clouds as a covenant of remembrance—this last being perhaps paralleled in
the Babylonian story by the mottled (blue-and-white) lapis necklace of the
goddess which she swore by as a remembrancer. There is therefore manifest
connection with the narrative told by the Priestly writer.
But it is in the Jehovistic narrative, on the other hand, that we find the
sending forth of the raven, and its non-return; the sending forth of the dove,
and its return; the sacrifice, and the sweet savour that was smelled of the
Lord; and the determination of the Lord not to curse the earth any more for
man's sake, nor smite any more every living thing, "for the imagination of
man's heart is evil from his youth." There is, therefore, no less manifest
connection with the narrative told by the Jehovistic writer.
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 ZODIAC

The 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 known by the
name of the principal tribe in each. The camp of Judah was on the east, and
the division of Judah led on the march. The camp of Reuben was on the
south. The camp of Ephraim was on the west. The camp of Dan was on the
north, and the division of Dan brought up the rear. And the traditional
devices shown on the four standards were these:—For Judah, a lion; for
Reuben, a man and a river; for Ephraim, a bull; for Dan, an eagle and a
serpent.
In these four standards we cannot fail to see again the four cherubic forms
of lion, man, ox and eagle; but in two cases an addition was made to the
cherubic form, an addition recalling the constellation figure. For just as the
crest of Reuben was not a man only, but a man and a river, so Aquarius is
not a man only, but a man pouring out a stream of water. And as the crest of
Dan was not an eagle only, but an eagle and a serpent, so the great group of
constellations, clustering round the autumnal equinox, included not only the
Eagle, but also the Scorpion and the Serpent (see diagram, p. 189).
There appears to be an obvious connection between these devices and the
blessings pronounced by Jacob upon his sons, and by Moses upon the
tribes; indeed, it would seem probable that it was the former that largely

determined the choice of the devices adopted by the four great divisions of
the host in the wilderness.
The blessing pronounced by Jacob on Judah runs, "Judah is a lion's whelp:
from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a
lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?" "The Lion of the tribe of
Judah" is the title given to our Lord Himself in the Apocalypse of St. John.

OPHIUCHUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING
CONSTELLATIONS.ToList

The blessing pronounced upon Joseph by Moses bears as emphatic a
reference to the bull. "The firstling of his bullock, majesty is his; and his
horns are the horns of the wild-ox."
Jacob's blessing upon Joseph does not show any reference to the ox or bull
in our Authorized Version. But in our Revised Version Jacob says of
Simeon and Levi—

"In their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they houghed an ox."

The first line appears to refer to the massacre of the Shechemites; the
second is interpreted by the Jerusalem Targum, "In their wilfulness they
sold Joseph their brother, who is likened to an ox." And in the blessing of
Joseph it is said that his "branches (margin, daughters), run over the wall."
Some translators have rendered this, "The daughters walk upon the bull,"
"wall" and "bull" being only distinguishable in the original by a slight
difference in the pointing.
Of Reuben, his father said, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;" and of
Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the
horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
These two last prophecies supply the "water" and the "serpent," which,
added to the "man" and "eagle" of the cherubic forms, are needed to
complete the traditional standards, and are needed also to make them
conform more closely to the constellation figures.
No such correspondence can be traced between the eight remaining tribes
and the eight remaining constellations. Different writers combine them in
different ways, and the allusions to constellation figures in the blessings of
those tribes are in most cases very doubtful and obscure, even if it can be
supposed that any such allusions are present at all. The connection cannot
be pushed safely beyond the four chief tribes, and the four cherubic forms
as represented in the constellations of the four quarters of the sky.
These four standards, or rather, three of them, meet us again in a very
interesting connection. When Israel reached the borders of Moab, Balak, the
king of Moab, sent for a seer of great reputation, Balaam, the son of Beor,
to "Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel." Balaam came, but
instead of cursing Jacob, blessed the people in four prophecies, wherein he
made, what would appear to be, distinct references to the standards of
Judah, Joseph and Reuben.

"Behold the people riseth up as a lioness,
And as a lion doth he lift himself up."

Then again—

"He couched, he lay down as a lion,

And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?"
And in two passages—

"God bringeth him forth out of Egypt;
He hath as it were the strength of the wild ox."

The wild ox and lion are obvious similes to use concerning a powerful and
warlike people. These two similes are, therefore, not sufficient by
themselves to prove that the tribal standards are being referred to. But the
otherwise enigmatical verse—

"Water shall flow from his buckets,"

appears more expressly as an allusion to the standard of Reuben, the "man
with the river," Aquarius pouring water from his pitcher; and if one be a
reference to a standard, the others may also well be.

AQUARIUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING
CONSTELLATIONS.ToList

It is surely something more than coincidence that Joseph, who by his
father's favour and his own merit was made the leader of the twelve
brethren, should be associated with the bull or wild ox, seeing that Taurus
was the leader of the zodiac in those ages. It may also well be more than
coincidence, that when Moses was in the mount and "the people gathered
themselves unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall
go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him," Aaron fashioned the
golden earrings given him into the form of a molten calf; into the
similitude, that is to say, of Taurus, then Prince of the Zodiac. If we turn to
St. Stephen's reference to this occurrence, we find that he says—
"And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto
the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God
turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven."
In other words, their worship of the golden calf was star worship.
It has been often pointed out that this sin of the Israelites, deep as it was,
was not in itself a breach of the first commandment—
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
It was a breach of the second—
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt
not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."
The Israelites did not conceive that they were abandoning the worship of
Jehovah; they still considered themselves as worshipping the one true God.
They were monotheists still, not polytheists. But they had taken the first
false step that inevitably leads to polytheism; they had forgotten that they
had seen "no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto"

them "in Horeb out of the midst of the fire," and they had worshipped this
golden calf as the similitude of God; they had "changed their glory into the
similitude of an ox that eateth grass." And that was treason against Him;
therefore St. Stephen said, "God turned, and gave them up to worship the
host of heaven;" the one sin inevitably led to the other, indeed, involved it.
In a later day, when Jeroboam, who had been appointed by Solomon ruler
over all the charge of the house of Joseph, led the rebellion of the ten tribes
against Rehoboam, king of Judah, he set up golden calves at Dan and
Bethel, and said unto his people, "It is too much for you to go up to
Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land
of Egypt." There can be little doubt that, in this case, Jeroboam was not so
much recalling the transgression in the wilderness—it was not an
encouraging precedent—as he was adopting the well-known cognizance of
the tribe of Joseph, that is to say, of the two tribes of Ephraim and
Manasseh, which together made up the more important part of his kingdom,
as the symbol of the presence of Jehovah.
The southern kingdom would naturally adopt the device of its predominant
tribe, Judah, and it was as the undoubted cognizance of the kingdom of
Judah that our Richard I., the Crusader, placed the Lion on his shield.
More definitely still, we find this one of the cherubic forms applied to set
forth Christ Himself, as "The Root of David," Prince of the house of Judah
—
"Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath
prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."

FOOTNOTES:
[187:1] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, III. vii. 5-7.

CHAPTER V
LEVIATHAN

There are amongst the constellations four great draconic or serpent-like
forms. Chief of these is the great dragon coiled round the pole of the
ecliptic and the pole of the equator as the latter was observed some 4600
years ago. This is the dragon with which the Kneeler, Hercules, is fighting,
and whose head he presses down with his foot. The second is the great
watersnake, Hydra, which 4600 years ago stretched for 105° along the
celestial equator of that day. Its head was directed towards the ascending
node, that is to say the point where the ecliptic, the sun's apparent path,
crosses the equator at the spring equinox; and its tail stretched nearly to the
descending node, the point where the ecliptic again meets the equator at the
autumn equinox. The third was the Serpent, the one held in the grip of the
Serpent-holder. Its head erected itself just above the autumn equinox, and
reached up as far as the zenith; its tail lay along the equator. The fourth of
these draconic forms was the great Sea-monster, stretched out along the
horizon, with a double river—Eridanus—proceeding from it, just below the
spring equinox.

HERCULES AND DRACO.ToList

None of these four figures was suggested by the natural grouping of the
stars. Very few of the constellation-figures were so suggested, and these
four in particular, as so high an authority as Prof. Schiaparelli expressly
points out, were not amongst that few. Their positions show that they were
designed some 4600 years ago, and that they have not been materially
altered down to the present time. Though no forms or semblances of forms
are there in the heavens, yet we still seem to see, as we look upwards, not
merely the stars themselves, but the same snakes and dragons, first
imagined so many ages ago as coiling amongst them.
The tradition of these serpentine forms and of their peculiar placing in the
heavens was current among the Babylonians quite 1500 years after the
constellations were devised. For the little "boundary stones" often display,
amongst many other astronomical symbols, the coiled dragon round the top
of the stone, the extended snake at its base (see p. 318), and at one or other
corner the serpent bent into a right angle like that borne by the Serpent-

holder—that is to say, the three out of the four serpentine forms that hold
astronomically important positions in the sky.
The positions held by these three serpents or dragons have given rise to a
significant set of astronomical terms. The Dragon marked the poles of both
ecliptic and equator; the Watersnake marked the equator almost from node
to node; the Serpent marked the equator at one of the nodes. The "Dragon's
Head" and the "Dragon's Tail" therefore have been taken as astronomical
symbols of the ascending and descending nodes of the sun's apparent path
—the points where he seems to ascend above the equator in the spring, and
to descend below it again in the autumn.
The moon's orbit likewise intersects the apparent path of the sun in two
points, its two nodes; and the interval of time between its passage through
one of these nodes and its return to that same node again is called a
Draconic month, a month of the Dragon. The same symbols are applied by
analogy to the moon's nodes.
Indeed the "Dragon's Head," ☊, is the general sign for the ascending node
of any orbit, whether of moon, planet or comet, and the "Dragon's Tail," ☋,
for the descending node. We not only use these signs in astronomical works
to-day, but the latter sign frequently occurs, figured exactly as we figure it
now, on Babylonian boundary stones 3000 years old.
But an eclipse either of the sun or of the moon can only take place when the
latter is near one of its two nodes—is in the "Dragon's Head" or in the
"Dragon's Tail." This relation might be briefly expressed by saying that the
Dragon—that is of the nodes—causes the eclipse. Hence the numerous
myths, found in so many nations, which relate how "a dragon devours the
sun (or moon)" at the time of an eclipse.

HYDRA AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.ToList

The dragon of eclipse finds its way into Hindoo mythology in a form which
shows clearly that the myth arose from a misunderstanding of the
constellations. The equatorial Water-snake, stretching from one node nearly
to the other, has resting upon it, Crater, the Cup. Combining this with the
expression for the two nodes, the Hindu myth has taken the following form.
The gods churned the surface of the sea to make the Amrita Cup, the cup of
the water of life. "And while the gods were drinking that nectar after which
they had so much hankered, a Danava, named Rahu, was drinking it in the
guise of a god. And when the nectar had only reached Rahu's throat, the sun
and the moon discovered him, and communicated the fact to the gods."
Rahu's head was at once cut off, but, as the nectar had reached thus far, it
was immortal, and rose to the sky. "From that time hath arisen a long-
standing quarrel between Rahu's head and the sun and moon," and the head
swallows them from time to time, causing eclipses. Rahu's head marks the
ascending, Ketu, the tail, the descending node.
This myth is very instructive. Before it could have arisen, not only must the
constellations have been mapped out, and the equator and ecliptic both
recognized, but the inclination of the moon's orbit to that of the sun must
also have been recognized, together with the fact that it was only when the

moon was near its node that the eclipses, either of the sun or moon, could
take place. In other words, the cause of eclipses must have been at one time
understood, but that knowledge must have been afterwards lost. We have
seen already, in the chapter on "The Deep," that the Hebrew idea of tehōm
could not possibly have been derived from the Babylonian myth of Tiamat,
since the knowledge of the natural object must precede the myth founded
upon it. If, therefore, Gen. i. and the Babylonian story of Creation be
connected, the one as original, the other as derived from that original, it is
the Babylonian story that has been borrowed from the Hebrew, and it has
been degraded in the borrowing.
So in this case, the myth of the Dragon, whose head and tail cause eclipses,
must have been derived from a corruption and misunderstanding of a very
early astronomical achievement. The myth is evidence of knowledge lost, of
science on the down-grade.
Some may object that the myth may have brought about the conception of
the draconic constellations. A very little reflection will show that such a
thing was impossible. If the superstition that an eclipse is caused by an
invisible dragon swallowing the sun or moon had really been the origin of
the constellational dragons, they would certainly have all been put in the
zodiac, the only region of the sky where sun or moon can be found; not
outside it, where neither can ever come, and in consequence where no
eclipse can take place. Nor could such a superstition have led on to the
discoveries above-mentioned: that the moon caused eclipses of the sun, the
earth those of the moon; that the moon's orbit was inclined to the ecliptic,
and that eclipses took place only near the nodes. The idea of an unseen
spiritual agent being at work would prevent any search for a physical
explanation, since polytheism is necessarily opposed to science.
There is a word used in Scripture to denote a reptilian monster, which
appears in one instance at least to refer to this dragon of eclipse, and so to
be used in an astronomical sense. Job, in his first outburst of grief cursed
the day in which he was born, and cried—

"Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready (margin, skilful) to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark

Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning."
"Leviathan" denotes an animal wreathed, gathering itself in coils: hence a
serpent, or some great reptile. The description in Job xli. is evidently that of
a mighty crocodile, though in Psalm civ. leviathan is said to play in "the
great and wide sea," which has raised a difficulty as to its identification in
the minds of some commentators. In the present passage it is supposed to
mean one of the stellar dragons, and hence the mythical dragon of eclipse.
Job desired that the day of his birth should have been cursed by the
magicians, so that it had been a day of complete and entire eclipse, not even
the stars that preceded its dawn being allowed to shine.
The astronomical use of the word leviathan here renders it possible that
there may be in Isa. xxvii. an allusion—quite secondary and indirect
however—to the chief stellar dragons.
"In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword
shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that
crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."
The marginal reading gives us instead of "piercing," "crossing like a bar"; a
most descriptive epithet for the long-drawn-out constellation of Hydra, the
Water-snake, which stretched itself for one hundred and five degrees along
the primitive equator, and "crossed" the meridian "like a bar" for seven
hours out of every twenty-four. "The crooked serpent" would denote the
dragon coiled around the poles, whilst "the dragon which is in the sea"
would naturally refer to Cetus, the Sea-monster. The prophecy would mean
then, that "in that day" the Lord will destroy all the powers of evil which
have, as it were, laid hold of the chief places, even in the heavens.
In one passage "the crooked serpent," here used as a synonym of leviathan,
distinctly points to the dragon of the constellations. In Job's last answer to
Bildad the Shuhite, he says—

"He divideth the sea with His power,
And by His understanding He smiteth through the proud.
(R.V. Rahab.)
By His spirit He hath garnished the heavens;

His hand hath formed the crooked serpent."
The passage gives a good example of the parallelism of Hebrew poetry; the
repetition of the several terms of a statement, term by term, in a slightly
modified sense; a rhyme, if the expression may be used, not of sound, but of
signification.
Thus in the four verses just quoted, we have three terms in each—agent,
action, object;—each appears in the first statement, each appears likewise in
the second. The third statement, in like manner, has its three terms repeated
in a varied form in the fourth.
Thus—

His power = His understanding.
Divideth = Smiteth through.
The sea = Rahab (the proud).

And—

His spirit = His hand.
Hath garnished = Hath formed.
The heavens = The crooked serpent.

There can be no doubt as to the significance of the two parallels. In the first,
dividing the sea, i. e. the Red Sea, is the correlative of smiting through
Rahab, "the proud one," the name often applied to Egypt, as in Isa. xxx. 7:
"For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I called her
Rahab that sitteth still." In the second, "adorning the heavens" is the
correlative of "forming the crooked serpent." The great constellation of the
writhing dragon, emphatically a "crooked serpent," placed at the very crown
of the heavens, is set for all the constellations of the sky.
There are several references to Rahab, as "the dragon which is in the sea,"
all clearly referring to the kingdom of Egypt, personified as one of her own
crocodiles lying-in-wait in her own river, the Nile, or transferred, by a
figure of speech, to the Red Sea, which formed her eastern border. Thus in
chapter li. Isaiah apostrophizes "the arm of the Lord."

"Art Thou not It that cut Rahab in pieces,
That pierced the dragon?
Art Thou not It that dried up the sea,
The waters of the great deep;
That made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to
pass over?"

And in Psalm lxxxix. we have—

"Thou rulest the raging of the sea;
When the waves thereof arise Thou stillest them.
Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain,
Thou hast scattered Thine enemies with Thy strong arm."

So the prophet Ezekiel is directed—
"Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and say unto him, thou wast likened unto a young lion of the
nations: yet art thou as a dragon in the seas."
In all these passages it is only in an indirect and secondary sense that we
can see any constellational references in the various descriptions of "the
dragon that is in the sea." It is the crocodile of Egypt that is intended; Egypt
the great oppressor of Israel, and one of the great powers of evil, standing
as a representative of them all. The serpent or dragon forms in the
constellations also represented the powers of evil; especially the great
enemy of God and man, "the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil,
and Satan." So there is some amount of appropriateness to the watery
dragons of the sky—Hydra and Cetus—in these descriptions of Rahab, the
dragon of Egypt, without there being any direct reference. Thus it is said of
the Egyptian "dragon in the seas," "I have given thee for meat to the beasts
of the earth, and to the fowls of the heaven;" and again, "I will cause all the
fowls of the heaven to settle upon thee," just as Corvus, the Raven, is
shown as having settled upon Hydra, the Water-snake, and is devouring its
flesh. Again, Pharaoh, the Egyptian dragon, says, "My river is mine own,
and I have made it for myself;" just as Cetus, the Sea-monster, is
represented as pouring forth Eridanus, the river, from its mouth.

ANDROMEDA AND CETUS.ToList

But a clear and direct allusion to this last grouping of the constellations
occurs in the Apocalypse. In the twelfth chapter, the proud oppressor dragon
from the sea is shown us again with much fulness of detail. There the
Apostle describes his vision of a woman, who evidently represents the
people of God, being persecuted by a dragon. There is still a reminiscence
of the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt, for "the woman fled
into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they
may nourish her a thousand two hundred and threescore days." And the
vision goes on:—
"And the serpent cast out of his mouth, after the woman water as
a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the stream.
And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her
mouth, and swallowed up the river which the dragon cast out of
his mouth."

This appears to be precisely the action which is presented to us in the three
constellations of Andromeda, Cetus, and Eridanus. Andromeda is always
shown as a woman in distress, and the Sea-monster, though placed far from
her in the sky, has always been understood to be her persecutor. Thus Aratus
writes—

"Andromeda, though far away she flies,
Dreads the Sea-monster, low in southern skies."

The latter, baffled in his pursuit of his victim, has cast the river, Eridanus,
out of his mouth, which, flowing down below the southern horizon, is
apparently swallowed up by the earth.
It need occasion no surprise that we should find imagery used by St. John in
his prophecy already set forth in the constellations nearly 3,000 years
before he wrote. Just as, in this same book, St. John repeated Daniel's vision
of the fourth beast, and Ezekiel's vision of the living creatures, as he used
the well-known details of the Jewish Temple, the candlesticks, the laver, the
altar of incense, so he used a group of stellar figures perfectly well known
at the time when he wrote. In so doing the beloved disciple only followed
the example which his Master had already set him. For the imagery in the
parables of our Lord is always drawn from scenes and objects known and
familiar to all men.
In two instances in which leviathan is mentioned, a further expression is
used which has a distinct astronomical bearing. In the passage already
quoted, where Job curses the day of his birth, he desires that it may not
"behold the eyelids of the morning." And in the grand description of
leviathan, the crocodile, in chapter xli., we have—

"His neesings flash forth light,
And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning."

Canon Driver considers this as an "allusion, probably to the reddish eyes of
the crocodile, which are said to appear gleaming through the water before
the head comes to the surface." This is because of the position of the eyes
on the animal's head, not because they have any peculiar brilliancy.

"It is an idea exclusively Egyptian, and is another link in the
chain of evidence which connects the author of the poem with
Egypt. The crocodile's head is so formed that its highest points
are the eyes; and when it rises obliquely to the surface the eyes
are the first part of the whole animal to emerge. The Egyptians
observing this, compared it to the sun rising out of the sea, and
made it the hieroglyphic representative of the idea of sunrise.
Thus Horus Apollo says: When the Egyptians represent the
sunrise, they paint the eye of the crocodile, because it is first
seen as that animal emerges from the water."[209:1]
In this likening of the eyes of the crocodile to the eyelids of the morning,
we have the comparison of one natural object with another. Such
comparison, when used in one way and for one purpose, is the essence of
poetry; when used in another way and for another purpose, is the essence of
science. Both poetry and science are opposed to myth, which is the
confusion of natural with imaginary objects, the mistaking the one for the
other.
Thus it is poetry when the Psalmist speaks of the sun "as a bridegroom
coming out of his chamber"; for there is no confusion in his thought
between the two natural objects. The sun is like the bridegroom in the glory
of his appearance. The Psalmist does not ascribe to him a bride and
children.
It is science when the astronomer compares the spectrum of the sun with the
spectra of various metals in the laboratory. He is comparing natural object
with natural object, and is enabled to draw conclusions as to the elements
composing the sun, and the condition in which they there exist.
But it is myth when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the solar
deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is confusion in
the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar, sometimes
human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no actuality in
much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly imaginary being
associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the priests of Baal were
justified by the intellectual confusion of their ideas, as well as by the
spiritual degradation of their idolatry.

"Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is
pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and
must be awakened."
Such nature-myths are not indications of the healthy mental development of
a primitive people; they are the clear signs of a pathological condition, the
symptoms of intellectual disease.
It is well to bear in mind this distinction, this opposition between poetry and
myth, for ignoring it has led to not a little misconception as to the
occurrence of myth in Scripture, especially in connection with the names
associated with the crocodile. Thus it has been broadly asserted that "the
original mythical signification of the monsters tehôm, livyāthān, tannim,
rahâb, is unmistakably evident."
Of these names the first signifies the world of waters; the second and third
real aquatic animals; and the last, "the proud one," is simply an epithet of
Egypt, applied to the crocodile as the representation of the kingdom. There
is no more myth in setting forth Egypt by the crocodile or leviathan than in
setting forth Great Britain by the lion, or Russia by the bear.
The Hebrews in setting forth their enemies by crocodile and other ferocious
reptiles were not describing any imaginary monsters of the primæval chaos,
but real oppressors. The Egyptian, with his "house of bondage," the
Assyrian, "which smote with a rod," the Chaldean who made havoc of
Israel altogether, were not dreams. And in beseeching God to deliver them
from their latest oppressor the Hebrews naturally recalled, not some idle
tale of the fabulous achievements of Babylonian deities, but the actual
deliverance God had wrought for them at the Red Sea. There the Egyptian
crocodile had been made "meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness"
when the corpses of Pharaoh's bodyguard, cast up on the shore, supplied the
children of Israel with the weapons and armour of which they stood in need.
So in the day of their utter distress they could still cry in faith and hope—

"Yet God is my King of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength:
Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,

And gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the
wilderness.
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood:
Thou driedst up mighty rivers.
The day is Thine, the night also is Thine:
Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth:
Thou hast made summer and winter."

FOOTNOTES:
[209:1] P. H. Gosse, in the Imperial Bible-Dictionary.

CHAPTER VI
THE PLEIADES

The translators of the Bible, from time to time, find themselves in a
difficulty as to the correct rendering of certain words in the original. This is
especially the case with the names of plants and animals. Some sort of clue
may be given by the context, as, for instance, if the region is mentioned in
which a certain plant is found, or the use that is made of it; or, in the case of
an animal, whether it is "clean" or "unclean," what are its habits, and with
what other animals it is associated. But in the case of the few Scripture
references to special groups of stars, we have no such help. We are in the
position in which Macaulay's New Zealander might be, if, long after the
English nation had been dispersed, and its language had ceased to be
spoken amongst men, he were to find a book in which the rivers "Thames,"
"Trent," "Tyne," and "Tweed" were mentioned by name, but without the
slightest indication of their locality. His attempt to fit these names to
particular rivers would be little more than a guess—a guess the accuracy of
which he would have no means for testing.
This is somewhat our position with regard to the four Hebrew names,
Kīmah, Kĕsīl, ‘Ayish, and Mazzaroth; yet in each case there are some slight
indications which have given a clue to the compilers of our Revised
Version, and have, in all probability, guided them correctly.
The constellations are not all equally attractive. A few have drawn the
attention of all men, however otherwise inattentive. North-American
Indians and Australian savages have equally noted the flashing brilliancy of
Orion, and the compact little swarm of the Pleiades. All northern nations
recognize the seven bright stars of the Great Bear, and they are known by a
score of familiar names. They are the "Plough," or "Charles's Wain" of
Northern Europe; the "Seven Plough Oxen" of ancient Rome; the "Bier and
Mourners" of the Arabs; the "Chariot," or "Waggon," of the old Chaldeans;
the "Big Dipper" of the prosaic New England farmer. These three groups

are just the three which we find mentioned in the earliest poetry of Greece.
So Homer writes, in the Fifth Book of the Odyssey, that Ulysses—

"There view'd the Pleiads, and the Northern Team,
And Great Orion's more refulgent beam,
To which, around the axle of the sky,
The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye."

It seems natural to conclude that these constellations, the most striking, or
at all events the most universally recognized, would be those mentioned in
the Bible.
The passages in which the Hebrew word Kīmah, is used are the following—
(God) "maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (Kīmah), and the
chambers of the south" (Job ix. 9).
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades (Kīmah), or
loose the bands of Orion?" (Job xxxviii. 31).
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars (Kīmah) and Orion"
(Amos v. 8).
In our Revised Version, Kīmah is rendered "Pleiades" in all three instances,
and of course the translators of the Authorized Version meant the same
group by the "seven stars" in their free rendering of the passage from Amos.
The word kīmah signifies "a heap," or "a cluster," and would seem to be
related to the Assyrian word kimtu, "family," from a root meaning to "tie,"
or "bind"; a family being a number of persons bound together by the very
closest tie of relationship. If this be so we can have no doubt that our
translators have rightly rendered the word. There is one cluster in the sky,
and one alone, which appeals to the unaided sight as being distinctly and
unmistakably a family of stars—the Pleiades.
The names ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish, Kĕsīl, and Kīmah are peculiar to the Hebrews,
and are not, so far as we have any evidence at present, allied to names in
use for any constellation amongst the Babylonians and Assyrians; they
have, as yet, not been found on any cuneiform inscription. Amos, the
herdsman of Tekoa, living in the eighth century b.c., two centuries before

the Jews were carried into exile to Babylon, evidently knew well what the
terms signified, and the writer of the Book of Job was no less aware of their
signification. But the "Seventy," who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into
Greek, were not at all clear as to the identification of these names of
constellations; though they made their translation only two or three
centuries after the Jews returned to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah,
when oral tradition should have still supplied the meaning of such
astronomical terms. Had these names been then known in Babylon, they
could not have been unknown to the learned men of Alexandria in the
second century before our era, since at that time there was a very direct
scientific influence of the one city upon the other. This Hebrew astronomy
was so far from being due to Babylonian influence and teaching, that,
though known centuries before the exile, after the exile we find the
knowledge of its technical terms was lost. On the other hand, kīma was the
term used in all Syriac literature to denominate the Pleiades, and we
accordingly find in the Peschitta, the ancient Syriac version of the Bible,
made about the second century a.d., the term kīma retained throughout, but
kesil and ‘ayish were reduced to their supposed Syriac equivalents.
Whatever uncertainty was felt as to the meaning of kīmah by the early
translators, it is not now seriously disputed that the Pleiades is the group of
stars in question.
The word kīmah means, as we have seen, "cluster" or "heap," so also the
word Pleiades, which we use to-day, is probably derived from the Greek
Pleiones, "many." Several Greek poets—Athenæus, Hesiod, Pindar, and
Simonides—wrote the word Peleiades, i. e. "rock pigeons," considered as
flying from the Hunter Orion; others made them the seven doves who
carried ambrosia to the infant Zeus. D'Arcy Thompson says, "The Pleiad is
in many languages associated with bird-names, . . . and I am inclined to
take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria, Dicæa, and Thurii for the
associated constellation of the Pleiad"[217:1]—the Pleiades being situated on
the shoulder of Taurus the Bull.
The Hyades were situated on the head of the Bull, and in the Euphrates
region these two little groups of stars were termed together, Mas-tab-ba-
gal-gal-la, the Great Twins of the ecliptic, as Castor and Pollux were the
Twins of the zodiac. In one tablet ’Îmina bi, "the sevenfold one," and Gut-

dûa, "the Bull-in-front," are mentioned side by side, thus agreeing well with
their interpretation of "Pleiades and Hyades." The Semitic name for the
Pleiades was also Têmennu; and these groups of stars, worshipped as gods
by the Babylonians, may possibly have been the Gad and Meni, "that
troop," and "that number," referred to by the prophet Isaiah (lxv. 11).
On many Babylonian cylinder seals there are engraved seven small discs, in
addition to other astronomical symbols. These seven small stellar discs are
almost invariably arranged in the form :::' or :::· much as we should now-a-
days plot the cluster of the Pleiades when mapping on a small scale the
constellations round the Bull. It is evident that these seven little stellar discs
do not mean the "seven planets," for in many cases the astronomical
symbols which accompany them include both those of the sun and moon. It
is most probable that they signify the Pleiades, or perhaps alternatively the
Hyades.
Possibly, reference is made to the worship of the Pleiades when the king of
Assyria, in the seventh century b.c., brought men from Babylon and other
regions to inhabit the depopulated cities of Samaria, "and the men of
Babylon made Succoth-benoth." The Rabbis are said to have rendered this
by the "booths of the Maidens," or the "tents of the Daughters,"—the
Pleiades being the maidens in question.
Generally they are the Seven Sisters. Hesiod calls them the Seven Virgins,
and the Virgin Stars. The names given to the individual stars are those of the
seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione; thus Milton terms them the Seven
Atlantic Sisters.
As we have seen (p. 189), the device associated expressly with Joseph is the
Bull, and Jacob's blessing to his son has been sometimes rendered—
"Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; the
daughters walk upon the bull."
That is, "the Seven Sisters," the Pleiades, are on the shoulder of Taurus.
Aratus wrote of the number of the Pleiades—

"Seven paths aloft men say they take,
Yet six alone are viewed by mortal eyes.

From Zeus' abode no star unknown is lost,
Since first from birth we heard, but thus the tale is told."

STARS OF THE PLEIADES.ToList

Euripides speaks of these "seven paths," and Eratosthenes calls them "the
seven-starred Pleiad," although he describes one as "All-Invisible." There is
a surprisingly universal tradition that they "were seven who now are six."
We find it not only in ancient Greece and Italy, but also among the black
fellows of Australia, the Malays of Borneo, and the negroes of the Gold
Coast. There must be some reason to account for this widespread tradition.
Some of the stars are known to be slightly variable, and one of the fainter
stars in the cluster may have shone more brightly in olden time;—the
gaseous spectrum of Pleione renders it credible that this star may once have
had great brilliancy. Alcyone, now the brightest star in the cluster, was not
mentioned by Ptolemy among the four brightest Pleiads of his day. The six
now visible to ordinary sight are Alcyone, Electra, Atlas, Maia, Merope and
Taygeta. Celoeno is the next in brightness, and the present candidate for the
seventh place. By good sight, several more may be made out: thus Maestlin,
the tutor of Kepler, mapped eleven before the invention of the telescope,
and in our own day Carrington and Denning have counted fourteen with the
naked eye.

In clear mountain atmosphere more than seven would be seen by any keen-
sighted observer. Usually six stars may be made out with the naked eye in
both the Pleiades and the Hyades, or, if more than six, then several more;
though with both groups the number of "seven" has always been associated.
In the New Testament we find the "Seven Stars" also mentioned. In the first
chapter of the Revelation, the Apostle St. John says that he "saw seven
golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto
the Son of Man, . . . and He had in His right hand seven stars." Later in the
same chapter it is explained that "the seven stars are the angels of the seven
churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven
churches." The seven stars in a single compact cluster thus stand for the
Church in its many diversities and its essential unity.
This beautiful little constellation has become associated with a foolish
fable. When it was first found that not only did the planets move round the
sun in orbits, but that the sun itself also was travelling rapidly through
space, a German astronomer, Mädler, hazarded the suggestion that the
centre of the sun's motion lay in the Pleiades. It was soon evident that there
was no sufficient ground for this suggestion, and that many clearly
established facts were inconsistent with it. Nevertheless the idea caught
hold of the popular mind, and it has acquired an amazing vogue. Non-
astronomical writers have asserted that Alcyone, the brightest Pleiad, is the
centre of the entire universe; some have even been sufficiently irreverent to
declare that it is the seat of heaven, the throne of God. A popular London
divine, having noticed a bright ring round Alcyone on a photograph of the
group, took that halo, which every photographer would at once recognize as
a mere photographic defect, as a confirmation of this baseless fancy.
Foolishness of this kind has nothing to support it in science or religion; it is
an offence against both. We have no reason to regard the Pleiades as the
centre of the universe, or as containing the attracting mass which draws our
sun forward in its vast mysterious orbit.
R. H. Allen, in his survey of the literature of the Pleiades, mentions that
"Drach surmised that their midnight culmination in the time of Moses, ten
days after the autumnal equinox, may have fixed the Day of Atonement on
the 10th of Tishri."[221:1] This is worth quoting as a sample of the unhappy
astronomical guesses of commentators. Drach overlooked that his

suggestion necessitated the assumption that in the time of Moses
astronomers had already learned, first, to determine the actual equinox;
next, to observe the culmination of stars on the meridian rather than their
risings and settings; and, third and more important, to determine midnight
by some artificial measurement of time. None of these can have been
primitive operations; we have no knowledge that any of the three were in
use in the time of Moses; certainly they were not suitable for a people on
the march, like the Israelites in the wilderness. Above all, Drach ignored in
this suggestion the fact that the Jewish calendar was a lunar-solar one, and
hence that the tenth day of the seventh month could not bear any fixed
relation either to the autumnal equinox, or to the midnight culmination of
the Pleiades; any more than our Easter Sunday is fixed to the spring
equinox on March 22.
The Pleiades were often associated with the late autumn, as Aratus writes—

"Men mark them rising with Sol's setting light,
Forerunners of the winter's gloomy night."

This is what is technically known as the "acronical rising" of the Pleiades,
their rising at sunset; in contrast to their "heliacal rising," their rising just
before daybreak, which ushered in the spring time. This acronical rising has
led to the association of the group with the rainy season, and with floods.
Thus Statius called the cluster "Pliadum nivosum sidus," and Valerius
Flaccus distinctly used the word "Pliada" for the showers. Josephus says
that during the siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes in 170 b.c., the
besieged wanted for water until relieved "by a large shower of rain which
fell at the setting of the Pleiades." R. H. Allen, in his Star-Names and their
Meanings, states that the Pleiades "are intimately connected with traditions
of the flood found among so many and widely separated nations, and
especially in the Deluge-myth of Chaldæa," but he does not cite authorities
or instances.
The Talmud gives a curious legend connecting the Pleiades with the Flood:
—
"When the Holy One, blessed be He! wished to bring the Deluge
upon the world, He took two stars out of Pleiades, and thus let
the Deluge loose. And when He wished to arrest it, He took two
stars out of Arcturus and stopped it."[223:1]
It would seem from this that the Rabbis connected the number of visible
stars with the number of the family in the Ark—with the "few, that is, eight
souls . . . saved by water," of whom St. Peter speaks. Six Pleiades only are
usually seen by the naked eye; traditionally seven were seen; but the Rabbis
assumed that two, not one, were lost.
Perhaps we may trace a reference to this supposed association of Kīmah
with the Flood in the passage from Amos already quoted:—
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, . . . that
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the
face of the earth: the Lord is His name."

Many ancient nations have set apart days in the late autumn in honour of
the dead, no doubt because the year was then considered as dead. This
season being marked by the acronical rising of the Pleiades, that group has
become associated with such observances. There is, however, no reference
to any custom of this kind in Scripture.
What is the meaning of the inquiry addressed to Job by the Almighty?

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?"

What was the meaning which it possessed in the thought of the writer of the
book? What was the meaning which we should now put on such an inquiry,
looking at the constellations from the standpoint which the researches of
modern astronomy have given us?
The first meaning of the text would appear to be connected with the
apparent movement of the sun amongst the stars in the course of the year.
We cannot see the stars by daylight, or see directly where the sun is situated
with respect to them; but, in very early times, men learnt to associate the
seasons of the year with the stars which were last seen in the morning,
above the place where the sun was about to rise; in the technical term once
in use, with the heliacal risings of stars. When the constellations were first
designed, the Pleiades rose heliacally at the beginning of April, and were
the sign of the return of spring. Thus Aratus, in his constellation poem
writes—

"Men mark them (i. e. the Pleiades) rising with the solar ray,
The harbinger of summer's brighter day."

They heralded, therefore, the revival of nature from her winter sleep, the
time of which the kingly poet sang so alluringly—

"For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs,

And the vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance."
The constellation which thus heralded the return of this genial season was
poetically taken as representing the power and influence of spring. Their
"sweet influences" were those that had rolled away the gravestone of snow
and ice which had lain upon the winter tomb of nature. Theirs was the
power that brought the flowers up from under the turf; earth's constellations
of a million varied stars to shine upwards in answer to the constellations of
heaven above. Their influences filled copse and wood with the songs of
happy birds. Theirs stirred anew the sap in the veins of the trees, and drew
forth their reawakened strength in bud and blossom. Theirs was the bleating
of the new-born lambs; theirs the murmur of the reviving bees.
Upon this view, then, the question to Job was, in effect, "What control hast
thou over the powers of nature? Canst thou hold back the sun from shining
in spring-time—from quickening flower, and herb, and tree with its
gracious warmth? This is God's work, year by year over a thousand lands,
on a million hills, in a million valleys. What canst thou do to hinder it?"
The question was a striking one; one which must have appealed to the
patriarch, evidently a keen observer and lover of nature; and it was entirely
in line with the other inquiries addressed to him in the same chapter.
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
The Revised Version renders the question—
"Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades?"
reading the Hebrew word Ma‘anaddoth, instead of Ma’adannoth, following
in this all the most ancient versions. On this view, Job is, in effect, asked,
"Canst thou gather together the stars in the family of the Pleiades and keep
them in their places?"
The expression of a chain or band is one suggested by the appearance of the
group to the eye, but it is no less appropriate in the knowledge which
photography and great telescopes have given us. To quote from Miss
Clerke's description of the nebula discovered round the brighter stars of the

Pleiades—Alcyone, Asterope, Celœno, Electra, Maia, Merope and Taygeta:
—
"Besides the Maia vortex, the Paris photographs depicted a
series of nebulous bars on either side of Merope, and a curious
streak extending like a finger-post from Electra towards Alcyone
. . . Streamers and fleecy masses of cosmical fog seem almost to
fill the spaces between the stars, as clouds choke a mountain
valley. The chief points of its concentration are the four stars
Alcyone, Merope, Maia, and Electra; but it includes as well
Celœno and Taygeta, and is traceable southward from Asterope
over an arc of 1° 10´. . . . The greater part of the constellation is
shown as veiled in nebulous matter of most unequal densities. In
some places it lies in heavy folds and wreaths, in others it barely
qualifies the darkness of the sky-ground. The details of its
distribution come out with remarkable clearness, and are
evidently to a large extent prescribed by the relative situations of
the stars. Their lines of junction are frequently marked by
nebulous rays, establishing between them, no doubt, relations of
great physical importance; and masses of nebula, in numerous
instances, seem as if pulled out of shape and drawn into festoons
by the attractions of neighbouring stars. But the strangest
exemplification of this filamentous tendency is in a fine, thread-
like process, 3´´ or 4´´ wide, but 35´ to 40´ long, issuing in an
easterly direction from the edge of the nebula about Maia, and
stringing together seven stars, met in its advance, like beads on a
rosary. The largest of these is apparently the occasion of a slight
deviation from its otherwise rectilinear course. A second similar
but shorter streak runs, likewise east and west, through the midst
of the formation."[229:1]

NEBULOSITIES OF THE PLEIADES.
Photographed by Dr. Max Wolf, Heidelberg.ToList

Later photographs have shown that not only are the several stars of the
Pleiades linked together by nebulous filaments, but the whole cluster is
embedded in a nebulous net that spreads its meshes far out into space. Not
only is the group thus tied or bound together by nebulous clouds, it has
other tokens of forming but a single family. The movements of the several
stars have been carefully measured, and for the most part the entire cluster
is drifting in the same direction; a few stars do not share in the common
motion, and are probably apparent members, seen in perspective projected
on the group, but in reality much nearer to us. The members of the group
also show a family likeness in constitution. When the spectroscope is turned
upon it, the chief stars are seen to closely resemble each other; the principal
lines in their spectra being those of hydrogen, and these are seen as broad
and diffused bands, so that the spectrum we see resembles that of the
brightest star of the heavens, Sirius.
There can be little doubt but that the leaders of the group are actually
greater, brighter suns than Sirius itself. We do not know the exact distance
of the Pleiades, they are so far off that we can scarcely do more than make a

guess at it; but it is probable that they are so far distant that our sun at like
distance would prove much too faint to be seen at all by the naked eye. The
Pleiades then would seem to be a most glorious star-system, not yet come to
its full growth. From the standpoint of modern science we may interpret the
"chain" or "the sweet influences" of the Pleiades as consisting in the
enfolding wisps of nebulosity which still, as it were, knit together those vast
young suns; or, and in all probability more truly, as that mysterious force of
gravitation which holds the mighty system together, and in obedience to
which the group has taken its present shape. The question, if asked us to-
day, would be, in effect, "Canst thou bind together by nebulous chains
scores of suns, far more glorious than thine own, and scattered over many
millions of millions of miles of space; or canst thou loosen the attraction
which those suns exercise upon each other, and move them hither and
thither at thy will?"

FOOTNOTES:
[217:1] Glossary of Greek Birds, pp. 28, 29.
[221:1] R. H. Allen, Star Names and their Meanings, p. 401.
[223:1] Berachoth, fol. 59, col. 1.
[229:1] The System of the Stars, 1st edit., pp. 230-232.

CHAPTER VII
ORION

Kĕsīl, the word rendered by our translators "Orion," occurs in an
astronomical sense four times in the Scriptures; twice in the Book of Job,
once in the prophecy of Amos, and once, in the plural, in the prophecy of
Isaiah. In the three first cases the word is used in conjunction with Kīmah,
"the Pleiades," as shown in the preceding chapter. The fourth instance is
rendered in the Authorized Version—
"For the stars of heaven and the constellations (Kĕsīlim) thereof
shall not give their light."
The Hebrew word Kĕsīl signifies "a fool," and that in the general sense of
the term as used in Scripture; not merely a silly, untaught, feckless person,
but a godless and an impious one. Thus, in the Book of Proverbs, Divine
Wisdom is represented as appealing—
"How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? the scorners
delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?"

THE STARS OF ORION.ToList

What constellation was known to the ancient Hebrews as "the fool"? The
Seventy who rendered the Old Testament into Greek confess themselves at
fault. Once, in Amos, both Kīmah and Kĕsīl are left untranslated. Instead of
"Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion," we have the paraphrase, "That
maketh and transformeth all things." Once, in Job, it is rendered
"Hesperus," the evening star; and in the other two instances it is given as
"Orion." The tradition of the real meaning of the word as an astronomical
term had been lost, or at least much confused before the Septuagint Version
was undertaken. The Jews had not, so far as there is any present evidence,
learned the term in Babylon, for the word has not yet been found as a star-
name on any cuneiform inscription. It was well known before the Exile, for
Amos and Isaiah both use it, and the fact that the author of Job also uses it,
indicates that he did not gain his knowledge of the constellation during the
Babylonian captivity.

The majority of translators and commentators have, however, agreed in
believing that the brightest and most splendid constellation in the sky is
intended—the one which we know as Orion. This constellation is one of the
very few in which the natural grouping of the stars seems to suggest the
figure that has been connected with it. Four bright stars, in a great
trapezium, are taken to mark the two shoulders and the two legs of a
gigantic warrior; a row of three bright stars, midway between the four first
named, suggest his gemmed belt; another row of stars straight down from
the centre star of the belt, presents his sword; a compact cluster of three
stars marks his head. A gigantic warrior, armed for the battle, seems thus to
be outlined in the heavens. As Longfellow describes him—

"Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant, Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side,
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair."

In accord with the form naturally suggested by the grouping of the stars, the
Syrians have called the constellation Gabbārā; and the Arabs, Al Jabbār;
and the Jews, Gibbōr. The brightest star of the constellation, the one in the
left knee, now generally known as Rigel, is still occasionally called
Algebar, a corruption of Al Jabbār, though one of the fainter stars near it
now bears that name. The meaning in each case is "the giant," "the mighty
one," "the great warrior," and no doubt from the first formation of the
constellations, this, the most brilliant of all, was understood to set forth a
warrior armed for the battle. There were gibbōrim before the Flood; we are
told that after "the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they
bare children to them, the same became mighty men (gibbōrim) which were
of old, men of renown."
But according to Jewish tradition, this constellation was appropriated to
himself by a particular mighty man. We are told in Gen. x. that—
"Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one (gibbōr) in
the earth."

and it is alleged that he, or his courtiers, in order to flatter him, gave his
name to this constellation, just as thousands of years later the University of
Leipzic proposed to call the belt stars of Orion, Stellæ Napoleonis, "the
Constellation of Napoleon."[234:1]
There was at one time surprise felt, that, deeply as the name of Nimrod had
impressed itself upon Eastern tradition, his name, as such, was "nowhere
found in the extensive literature which has come down to us" from
Babylon. It is now considered that the word, Nimrod, is simply a Hebrew
variant of Merodach, "the well-known head of the Babylonian pantheon."
He was probably "the first king of Babylonia or the first really great ruler of
the country." It is significant, as Mr. T. G. Pinches points out, in his Old
Testament in the Light of the Records from Assyria and Babylonia, that just
as in Genesis it is stated that "the beginning of his (Nimrod's) kingdom was
Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh," so Merodach is stated, in the
cuneiform records, to have built Babel and Erech and Niffer, which last is
probably Calneh. The Hebrew scribes would seem to have altered the name
of Merodach in two particulars: they dropped the last syllable, thus
suggesting that the name was derived from Marad, "the rebellious one"; and
they prefixed the syllable "Ni," just as "Nisroch" was written for "Assur."
"From a linguistic point of view, therefore, the identification of Nimrod as a
changed form of Merodach is fully justified."

ORION AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.ToList

The attitude of Orion in the sky is a striking one. The warrior is represented
as holding a club in the right hand, and a skin or shield in the left. His left
foot is raised high as if he were climbing a steep ascent, he seems to be
endeavouring to force his way up into the zodiac, and—as Longfellow
expresses it—to be beating the forehead of the Bull. His right leg is not
shown below the knee, for immediately beneath him is the little
constellation of the Hare, by the early Arabs sometimes called, Al Kursiyy
al Jabbār, "the Chair of the Giant," from its position. Behind Orion are the
two Dogs, each constellation distinguished by a very brilliant star; the
Greater Dog, by Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens; the Lesser Dog, by
Procyon, i.e. the "Dog's Forerunner." Not far above Orion, on the shoulder
of the Bull, is the little cluster of the Pleiades.
There are—as we have seen—only three passages where Kīmah, literally
"the cluster" or "company,"—the group we know as the Pleiades,—is
mentioned in Scripture; and in each case it is associated with Kĕsīl, "the
fool,"—Orion. Several Greek poets give us the same association, likening

the stars to "rock-pigeons, flying from the Hunter Orion." And Hesiod in his
Works and Days writes—

"Do not to plough forget,
When the Seven Virgins, and Orion, set:
Thus an advantage always shall appear,
In ev'ry labour of the various year.
If o'er your mind prevails the love of gain,
And tempts you to the dangers of the main,
Yet in her harbour safe the vessel keep,
When strong Orion chases to the deep
The Virgin stars."

There is a suggestion of intense irony in this position of Orion amongst the
other constellations. He is trampling on the Hare—most timid of creatures;
he is climbing up into the zodiac to chase the little company of the Pleiades
—be they seven doves or seven maidens—and he is thwarted even in this
unheroic attempt by the determined attitude of the guardian Bull.
A similar irony is seen in the Hebrew name for the constellation. The
"mighty Hunter," the great hero whom the Babylonians had deified and
made their supreme god, the Hebrews regarded as the "fool," the "impious
rebel." Since Orion is Nimrod, that is Merodach, there is small wonder that
Kĕsīl was not recognized as his name in Babylonia.[238:1]
The attitude of Orion—attempting to force his way upward into the zodiac
—and the identification of Merodach with him, gives emphasis to Isaiah's
reproach, many centuries later, against the king of Babylon, the successor of
Merodach—
"Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will
exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the
mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most
High."
In the sight of the Hebrew prophets and poets, Merodach, in taking to
himself this group of stars, published his shame and folly. He had ascended

into heaven, but his glittering belt was only his fetter; he was bound and
gibbeted in the sky like a captive, a rebel, and who could loose his bands?
In the thirteenth chapter of Isaiah we have the plural of kĕsīl—kĕsīlim. It is
usually understood that we have here Orion, as the most splendid
constellation in the sky, put for the constellations in general. But if we
remember that kĕsīl stands for "Nimrod" or "Merodach," the first proud
tyrant mentioned by name in Scripture, the particular significance of the
allusion becomes evident—
"Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and
fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the
sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heavens and the
constellations"—(that is the kĕsīlim, the Nimrods or Merodachs
of the sky)—"thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be
darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her
light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the
wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the
proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible."
The strictly astronomical relations of Orion and the Pleiades seem to be
hinted at in Amos and in Job—
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth
the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark
with night."
In this passage the parallelism seems to be between the seven stars, the
Pleiades, with sunrise, and Orion with sunset. Now at the time and place
when the constellations were mapped out, the Pleiades were the immediate
heralds of sunrise, shortly after the spring equinox, at the season which
would correspond to the early part of April in our present calendar. The
rising of Orion at sunset—his acronical rising—was early in December,
about the time when the coldest season of the year begins. The astronomical
meaning of the "bands of Orion" would therefore be the rigour in which the
earth is held during the cold of winter.
It is possible that the two great stars which follow Orion, Sirius and
Procyon, known to the ancients generally and to us to-day as "the Dogs,"

were by the Babylonians known as "the Bow-star" and "the Lance-star"; the
weapons, that is to say, of Orion or Merodach. Jensen identifies Sirius with
the Bow-star, but considers that the Lance-star was Antares; Hommel,
however, identifies the Lance-star with Procyon. In the fifth tablet of the
Babylonian Creation epic as translated by Dr. L. W. King, there is an
interesting account of the placing of the Bow-star in the heavens. After
Merodach had killed Tiamat—

75. "The gods (his fathers) beheld the net which he had
made,
76. They beheld the bow and how (its work) was
accomplished.
77. They praised the work which he had done [ . . . ]
78. Then Anu raised [the . . . ] in the assembly of the gods.
79. He kissed the bow, (saying), 'It is [ . . . ]'!
80. And thus he named the names of the bow, (saying),
81. 'Long-wood shall be one name, and the second name
[shall be . . . ],
82. And its third name shall be the Bow-star, in heaven
[shall it . . . ]!'
83. Then he fixed a station for it."

Dr. Cheyne even considers that he has found a reference to these two stars
in Job xxxviii. 36—

"Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts (Lance-star),
Or who hath given understanding to the heart (Bow-star)."

But this interpretation does not appear to have been generally accepted. The
same high authority suggests that the astronomical allusions in Amos may
have been inserted by a post-exilic editor, thus accounting for the
occurrence of the same astronomical terms as are found in Job, which he
assigns to the exilic or post-exilic period. This seems a dangerous
expedient, as it might with equal reason be used in many other directions.
Further, it entirely fails to explain the real difficulty that kīmah and kĕsīl
have not been found as Babylonian constellation names, and that their
astronomical signification had been lost by the time that the "Seventy"
undertook their labours.

Quite apart from the fact that the Babylonians could not give the name of
"Fool" to the representation in the sky of their supreme deity, the Hebrews
and the Babylonians regarded the constellation in different ways. Several
Assyriologists consider that the constellations, Orion and Cetus, represent
the struggle between Merodach and Tiamat, and this conjecture is probably
correct, so far as Babylonian ideas of the constellations are concerned, for
Tiamat is expressly identified on a Babylonian tablet with a constellation
near the ecliptic.[241:1] But this means that the myth originated in the star
figures, and was the Babylonian interpretation of them. In this case, Cetus
—that is Tiamat—must have been considered as a goddess, and as directly
and immediately the ancestress of all the gods. Orion—Merodach—must
have been likewise a god, the great-great-grandson of Tiamat, whom he
destroys.
The Hebrew conception was altogether different. Neither Merodach, nor
Tiamat, nor the constellations of Orion and Cetus, nor the actual stars of
which they are composed, are anything but creatures. Jehovah has made
Orion, as well as the "Seven Stars," as "His hand hath formed the crooked
serpent." By the mouth of Isaiah He says, "I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord, do all these things." The
Babylonian view was of two divinities pitted against each other, and the
evil divinity was the original and the originator of the good. In the Hebrew
view, even the powers of evil are created things; they are not self-existent.
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 Cetus—that 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 Pleiades—the little company of Seven Virgins, or Seven
Doves—and 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 sky—a 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.—that is to say some 4,000 years after the constellations were devised,—Dr.
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. K’sīl, 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
MAZZAROTH

We have no assistance from any cuneiform inscriptions as to the
astronomical significance of ‘Ayish, Kīmah, and Kĕsīl, but the case is
different when we come to Mazzaroth. In the fifth tablet of the Babylonian
Creation epic we read—

"1. He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods;
2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac, he
fixed.
3. He ordained the year, and into sections (mizrāta) 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 Bēl and Ea along with him."

In the third line mizrāta, cognate with the Hebrew Mazzārōth, 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 10° (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,—the 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 protection—systems 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.
This necessity explains the early Babylonian tablets with catalogues of
eclipses on all days of the month, and in all quarters of the sky. The great
majority of the eclipses could never happen, but they could be, none-the-
less, made use of by a court magician. If an eclipse of the sun took place on
the 29th day and in the south, he could always point out how exceedingly
unpleasant things might have been for the king and the country if he, the
magician, had not by his diligence, prevented its happening, say, on the
20th, and in the north. A Zulu witch-doctor is quite equal to analogous
subterfuges to-day, and no doubt his Babylonian congeners were not less
ingenious 3,000 years ago. Such subterfuges were not always successful
when a Chaka or a Nebuchadnezzar had to be dealt with, but with kings of a
more ordinary type either in Zululand or Mesopotamia they would answer
well enough.
Coming down to times when astronomy had so far advanced that a
catalogue of the stars had been drawn up, with their positions determined by
actual measurement, it became possible for astrologers to draw up
something like a definite system of prediction, based upon the
constellations or parts of a constellation that happened to be rising at any
given moment, and this was the system employed when Zeuchros of
Babylon wrote in the first century of our era. His system must have been
started later than 700 b.c., for in it Aries is considered as the leader of the
zodiac; the constellations are already disestablished in favour of the Signs;
and the Signs are each divided into three. A practical drawback to this
particular astrological system was that the aspect presented by the heavens

on one evening was precisely the same as that presented on the next
evening four minutes earlier. The field for prediction therefore was very
limited and repeated itself too much for the purpose of fortune-tellers.
The introduction of the planets into astrology gave a greater diversity to the
material used by the fortune-tellers. An early phase of planetary astrology
consisted in the allotment of a planet to each hour of the day and also to
each day of the week. It has been already shown in the chapter on "Saturn
and Astrology," that this system arose from the Ptolemaic idea of the solar
system grafted on the Egyptian division of the day into twenty-four hours,
and applied to the week of seven days. It probably originated in Alexandria,
and arose not earlier than the third century before our era. Mathematical
astrology—the complex system now in vogue—involves a considerable
knowledge of the apparent movements of the planets and a development of
mathematics such as did not exist until the days of Hipparchus. It also
employs the purely imaginary signs of the zodiac, not the constellations;
and reckons the first point of Aries as at the spring equinox. So far as we
can ascertain, the spring equinox marked the first point of the constellation
Aries about b.c. 110.
All these varied forms of astrology are therefore comparatively recent.
Before that it was of course reckoned ominous if an eclipse took place, or a
comet was seen, or a bright planet came near the moon, just as spilling salt
or crossing knives may be reckoned ominous to-day. The omens had as
little to do with observation, or with anything that could be called scientific,
in the one case as in the other.
It is important to realize that astrology, as anything more than the crude
observance of omens, is younger than astronomy by at least 2,000 years.
Mazzārōth occurs only once in the Bible, viz. in Job xxxviii. 32, already so
often quoted, but a similar word Mazzālōth occurs in 2 Kings xxiii. 5,
where it is said that Josiah put down the idolatrous priests, "them also that
burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets
(Mazzālōth), and to all the host of heaven." The context itself, as well as the
parallel passage in Deuteronomy—"When thou seest the sun, and the moon,
and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship
them,"—shows clearly that celestial luminaries of some kind are intended,

probably certain groups of stars, distinguished from the general "host of
heaven."
Comparing Job ix. 9, with Job xxxviii. 31, 32, we find ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish,
Kīmah and Kĕsil common to the two passages; if we take ‘Ash and ‘Ayish as
identical, this leaves the "chambers of the south" as the equivalent of
Mazzaroth. The same expression occurs in the singular in Job xxxvii. 9
—"Out of the south (marg. chamber) cometh the whirlwind." There need be
but little question as to the significance of these various passages. The
correspondence of the word Mazzārōth with the Babylonian mizrātā, the
"divisions" of the year, answering to the twelve signs of the zodiac, points
in exactly the same direction as the correspondence in idea which is evident
between the "chambers of the south" and the Arabic Al manāzil, "the
mansions" or "resting-places" of the moon in the lunar zodiac.
Mazzaroth are therefore the "divisions" of the zodiac, the "chambers"
through which the sun successively passes in the course of the year, his
"resting-place" for a month. They are "the chambers of the south," since
that is their distinctive position. In Palestine, the sun, even at rising or
setting at midsummer, passes but little to the north of east or west. Roughly
speaking, the "south" is the sun's quarter, and therefore it is necessarily the
quarter of the constellation in which the sun is placed.
It has been made an objection to this identification that the Israelites are
said to have worshipped Mazzālōth, and we have no direct evidence that the
signs or constellations of the zodiac were worshipped as such. But this is to
make a distinction that is hardly warranted. The Creation tablets, as we have
seen, distinctly record the allocation of the great gods to the various signs,
Merodach himself being one of the three deities associated with the month
Adar, just as in Egypt a god presided over each one of the thirty-six decades
of the year.
Again, it is probable that the "golden calf," worshipped by the Israelites in
the wilderness, and, after the disruption, at Bethel and at Dan, was none
other than an attempt to worship Jehovah under the symbol of Taurus, the
leader of the zodiac and cognizance of the tribe of Joseph; regarded as a
type of Him Who had been the Leader of the people out of Egypt, and the
Giver of the blessings associated with the return of the sun to Taurus, the

revival of nature in spring-time. It was intended as a worship of Jehovah; it
was in reality dire rebellion against Him, and a beginning of the worship of
"Mazzālōth and the heavenly host;" an idolatry that was bound to bring
other idolatries in its train.
A three-fold symbol found continually on Babylonian monuments, "the
triad of stars," undoubtedly at one time set forth Sin, the moon-god, Samas,
the sun-god, and Ištar, in this connection possibly the planet Venus. It has
therefore been suggested by Prof. Schiaparelli that Mazzālōth is the planet
Venus; and, since the word is plural in form, Venus in her double capacity;
—sometimes an evening, sometimes a morning star. The sun and the moon
and Mazzālōth would then set forth the three brightest luminaries, whilst the
general congress of stars would be represented by the "host of heaven." But
though Venus is sometimes the brightest of the planets, she is essentially of
the same order as Jupiter or Mars, and is not of the same order as the sun
and moon, with whom, on this supposition, she is singled out to be ranked.
Moreover, if Ištar or Ashtoreth were intended in this passage, it does not
appear why she should not be expressly named as such; especially as Baal,
so often coupled with her, is named. The "triad of stars," too, had originally
quite a different meaning, as will be seen later.
Moreover, the parallelism between Job ix. and Job xxxviii. is destroyed by
this rendering, since the planet Venus could not be described as "the
chambers of the south." These are therefore referred by Professor
Schiaparelli to the glorious mass of stars in the far south, shining in the
constellations that set forth the Deluge story,—the Ship, and the Centaur,
much the most brilliant region of the whole sky.
Another interpretation of Mazzaroth is given by Dr. Cheyne, on grounds
that refute Professor Schiaparelli's suggestion, but it is itself open to
objection from an astronomical point of view. He writes—
"Mazzaroth is probably not to be identified with Mazzaloth (2
Kings xxiii. 5) in spite of the authority of the Sept. and the
Targum. . . . Mazzaroth = Ass. Mazarati; Mazzaloth (i.e. the
zodiacal signs) seems to be the plural of Mazzāla = Ass.
Manzaltu, station."[254:1]
Dr. Cheyne therefore renders the passage thus—

"Dost thou bring forth the moon's watches at their season,
And the Bear and her offspring—dost thou guide them?
Knowest thou the laws of heaven?
Dost thou determine its influence upon the earth?"

Mazzaloth are therefore "the zodiacal signs," but Mazzaroth "the watches or
stations of the moon, which marked the progress of the month;"[254:2] or, in
other words, the lunar zodiac.
But the lunar and the solar zodiac are only different ways of dividing the
same belt of stars. Consequently when, as in the passage before us,
reference is made to the actual belt of stars as a whole, there is no difference
between the two. So that we are obliged, as before, to consider Mazzaroth
and Mazzaloth as identical, and both as setting forth the stars of the zodiac.
So far as the two zodiacs differ, it is the solar and not the lunar zodiac that
is intended. This is evident when we consider the different natures of the
apparent motions of the sun and the moon. The sun passes through a twelfth
part of the zodiac each month, and month by month the successive
constellations of the zodiac are brought out, each in its own season; each
having a period during which it rises at sunset, is visible the whole night,
and sets at sunrise. The solar Mazzaroth are therefore emphatically brought
out, each "in its season." Not so the lunar Mazzaroth.
The expression, "the watches or stations of the moon which marked the
progress of the month," is unsuitable when astronomically considered.
"Watches" refer strictly to divisions of the day and night; the "stations" of
the moon refer to the twenty-seven or twenty-eight divisions of the lunar
zodiac; the "progress of the month" refers to the complete sequence of the
lunar phases. These are three entirely different matters, and Dr. Cheyne has
confused them. The progress of the moon through its complete series of
stations is accomplished in a siderial month—that is, twenty-seven days
eight hours, but from the nature of the case it cannot be said that these
"stations" are brought out each in his season, in that time, as a month makes
but a small change in the aspect of the sky. The moon passes through the
complete succession of its phases in the course of a synodical month, which
is in the mean twenty-nine days, thirteen hours—that is to say from new to
new, or full to full—but no particular star, or constellation, or "station" has

any fixed relation to any one given phase of the moon. In the course of
some four or five years the moon will have been both new and full in every
one of the "lunar stations."

"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

He, who has lived out under the stars, in contact with the actual workings of
nature, knows what it is to watch "Mazzaroth" brought "out in his season;"
the silent return to the skies of the constellations, month by month,
simultaneous with the changes on the face of the earth. Overhead, the
glorious procession, so regular and unfaltering, of the silent,
unapproachable stars: below, in unfailing answer, the succession of spring
and summer, autumn and winter, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, rain
and drought. If there be but eyes to see, this majestic Order, so smooth in
working, so magnificent in scale, will impress the most stolid as the
immediate acting of God; and the beholder will feel at the same a reverent
awe, and an uplifting of the spirit as he sees the action of "the ordinances of
heaven," and the evidence of "the dominion thereof in the earth."
Dr. Cheyne, however, only sees in these beautiful and appropriate lines the
influence upon the sacred writer of "the physical theology of Babylonia";
[256:1]
in other words, its idolatrous astrology, "the influence of the sky upon
the earth."
But what would Job understand by the question, "Canst thou bring forth
Mazzārōth in his season?" Just this: "Canst thou so move the great celestial
sphere that the varied constellations of the zodiac shall come into view,
each in their turn, and with them the earth pass through its proper
successive seasons?" The question therefore embraced and was an
extension of the two that preceded it. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences
of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all the forces of nature in
the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion; canst thou free
the ground from the numbing frosts of winter?"
The question to us would not greatly differ in its meaning, except that we
should better understand the mechanism underlying the phenomena. The
question would mean, "Canst thou move this vast globe of the earth,

weighing six thousand million times a million million tons, continually in
its orbit, more than 580 millions of miles in circuit, with a speed of nearly
nineteen miles in every second of time, thus bringing into view different
constellations at different times of the year, and presenting the various
zones of the earth in different aspects to the sun's light and heat?" To us, as
to Job, the question would come as:

"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

It is going beyond astronomy, yet it may be permitted to an astronomer, to
refer for comparison to a parallel thought, not couched in the form of a
question, but in the form of a prayer:

"Thy will be done,
As in heaven, so in earth."

FOOTNOTES:
[254:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 290.
[254:2] Ibid., p. 52.
[256:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 52.

CHAPTER IX
ARCTURUS

In two passages of the Book of Job a word, ‘Ash or ‘Ayish, is used, by
context evidently one of the constellations of the sky, but the identification
of which is doubtful. In our Authorized Version the first passage is rendered
thus:—
(God) "Which maketh Arcturus (‘Ash), Orion, and Pleiades, and
the chambers of the south";
and the second:—

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
Or canst thou guide Arcturus (‘Ayish) with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

The words (or word, for possibly ‘Ayish is no more than a variant of ‘Ash)
here translated "Arcturus" were rendered by the "Seventy" as "Arktouros"
in the first passage; as "Hesperos" in the second passage; and their
rendering was followed by the Vulgate. The rendering Hesper or Vesper is
absurd, as "the sons" of Hesper has no meaning. "Arktouros" is not
improbably a misrendering of "Arktos," "the north," which would give a
free but not a literal translation of the meaning of the passage. In another
passage from Job (xxxvii. 9) where the south wind is contrasted with the
cold from another quarter of the sky, the "Seventy"—again followed by the
Vulgate—rendered it as "cold from Arcturus." Now cold came to the Jews,
as it does to us, from the north, and the star which we know as Arcturus
could not be described as typifying that direction either now or when the
Septuagint or Vulgate versions were made. The Peschitta, the Syriac version
of the Bible, made about the second century after Christ, gives as the Syriac

equivalent for ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish, the word ‘iyūthā, but it also renders Kĕsīl by
the same word in Amos v. 8, so that the translators were evidently quite at
sea as to the identity of these constellations. We are also in doubt as to what
star or constellation the Syrians meant by ‘Iyūthā, and apparently they were
in some doubt themselves, for in the Talmud we are told that there was a
disputation, held in the presence of the great teacher Rabbi Jehuda, about
150 years after Christ, whether ‘Iyūthā was situated in the head of the Bull,
or in the tail of the Ram. Oriental scholars now assign it either to Aldebaran
in the head of the Bull, the "sons" being in this case the other members of
the Hyades group of which Aldebaran is the brightest star; or else
identifying it with the Arabic el-‘aiyūq, the name of the star which the
Greeks call Aix, and we call Capella, the "sons" on this inference being the
three small stars near, called by the Greeks and by ourselves the "Kids."
The word ‘Ash is used several times in Scripture, but without any
astronomical signification, and is there rendered "moth," as in Isaiah, where
it says—
"Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth (‘Ash) shall
eat them up."
This literal significance of the word does not help, as we know of no
constellation figured as a "moth" or bearing any resemblance to one.
But the word ‘ash, or ‘ayish does not differ importantly from the word
na‘sh, in Hebrew "assembly," in Arabic "bier," which has been the word
used by the Arabs from remote antiquity to denote the four bright stars in
the hind-quarters of the Great Bear; those which form the body of the
Plough. Moreover, the three stars which form the "tail" of the Great Bear, or
the "handle" of the Plough have been called by the Arabs benāt na‘sh, "the
daughters of na‘sh." The Bear is the great northern constellation, which
swings constantly round the pole, always visible throughout the changing
seasons of the year. There should be no hesitation then in accepting the
opinion of the Rabbi, Aben Ezra, who saw in ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish the
quadrilateral of the great Bear, whose four points are marked by the bright
stars, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, and in the "sons" of ‘Ayish, the three
stars, Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta. Our Revised Version therefore renders the
word as "Bear."

In both passages of Job, then, we get the four quarters of the sky marked out
as being under the dominion of the Lord. In the ninth chapter they are given
in the order—
The Bear, which is in the North;
Orion, in its acronical rising, with the sun setting in the West;
The Pleiades, in their heliacal rising, with the sun rising in the
East;
And the Chambers of the South.
In the later passage they are given with fuller illustration, and in the order—
The Pleiades, whose "sweet influences" are given by their
heliacal rising in spring time, with the sun rising in the East;
Orion, whose "bands" are those of winter, heralded by his
acronical rising with the sun setting in the West;
Mazzaroth, the constellations of the zodiac corresponding to the
Chambers of the South, which the sun occupies each in its
"season."
The Bear with its "sons," who, always visible, are unceasingly
guided round the pole in the North.
The parallelism in the two passages in Job gives us the right to argue that
‘Ash and ‘Ayish refer to the same constellation, and are variants of the same
name; possibly their vocalization was the same, and they are but two
divergent ways of writing the word. We must therefore reject Prof.
Schiaparelli's suggestion made on the authority of the Peschitta version of
the Scriptures and of Rabbi Jehuda, who lived in the second century a.d.,
that ‘Ash is ‘Iyūthā which is Aldebaran, but that ‘Ayish and his "sons" may
be Capella and her "Kids."
Equally we must reject Prof. Stern's argument that Kīmah is Sirius, Kĕsīl is
Orion, Mazzārōth is the Hyades and ‘Ayish is the Pleiades. He bases his
argument on the order in which these names are given in the second passage
of Job, and on the contention of Otfried Müller that there are only four out

of the remarkable groups of stars placed in the middle and southern regions
of the sky which have given rise to important legends in the primitive
mythology of the Greeks. These groups follow one after the other in a belt
in the sky in the order just given, and their risings and settings were
important factors in the old Greek meteorological and agricultural
calendars. Prof. Stern assumes that kĕsīl means Orion, and from this
identification deduces the others, neglecting all etymological or traditional
evidences to the contrary. He takes no notice of the employment of the
same names in passages of Scripture other than that in the thirty-eighth
chapter of Job. Here he would interpret the "chain," or "sweet influences" of
Kīmah = "Sirius the dog," by assuming that the Jews considered that the
dog was mad, and hence was kept chained up. More important still, he fails
to recognize that the Jews had a continental climate in a different latitude
from the insular climate of Greece, and that both their agricultural and their
weather conditions were different, and would be associated with different
astronomical indications.
In the 9th verse of the 37th chapter of Job we get an antithesis which has
already been referred to—
"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the
north."
The Hebrew word here translated "north" is mezarīm, a plural word which
is taken literally to mean "the scatterings." For its interpretation Prof.
Schiaparelli makes a very plausible suggestion. He says, "We may first
observe that the five Hebrew letters with which this name was written in the
original unpointed text could equally well be read, with a somewhat
different pointing, as mizrim, or also as mizrayim, of which the one is the
plural, the other the dual, of mizreh. Now mizreh means a winnowing-fan,
the instrument with which grain is scattered in the air to sift it; and it has its
root, like mezarim, in the word zarah, . . . which, besides the sense
dispersit, bears also the sense expandit, ventilavit."[263:1]

STARS OF THE PLOUGH, AS THE WINNOWING FAN.ToList

If Prof. Schiaparelli is correct in his supposition, then the word translated
"north" in our versions is literally the "two winnowing fans," names which
from the form suggested by the stars we may suppose that the Jews gave to
the two Bears in the sky, just as the Chinese called them the "Ladles," and
the Americans call them the "Big Dipper" and the "Little Dipper." The sense
is still that of the north, but we may recognize in the word employed
another Jewish name of the constellation, alternative with ‘Ash or ‘Ayish, or
perhaps used in order to include in the region the Lesser as well as the
Greater Bear. We should not be surprised at finding an alternative name for
this great northern constellation, for we ourselves call it by several different
appellations, using them indiscriminately, perhaps even in the course of a
single paragraph.
What to Job did the question mean which the Lord addressed to him: "Canst
thou guide the Bear and his sons?" To Job it meant, "Canst thou guide this
great constellation of stars in the north, in their unceasing round, as a
charioteer guides his horses in a wide circle, each keeping to his proper
ring, none entangling himself with another, nor falling out of his place?"
What would the same question mean to us, if addressed to us to-day? In the
first place we might put it shortly as "Canst thou turn the earth on its axis
regularly and continuously, so as to produce this motion of the stars round
the pole, and to make day and night?" But modern astronomy can ask the
question in a deeper and a wider sense.

It was an ancient idea that the stars were fixed in a crystal sphere, and that
they could not alter their relative positions; and indeed until the last century
or two, instruments were not delicate enough to measure the small relative
shift that stars make. It is within the last seventy years that we have been
able to measure the "annual parallax" of certain stars,—that is, the
difference in the position of a star when viewed by the earth from the
opposite ends of a diameter of the earth's orbit round the sun. Besides their
yearly shift due to "annual parallax," most stars have a "proper" or "peculiar
motion" of their own, which is in most cases a very small amount indeed,
but can be determined more easily than "annual parallax" because its effect
accumulates year after year. If, therefore, we are able to observe a star over
a period of fifty, or a hundred or more years, it may seem to have moved
quite an appreciable amount when examined by the powerful and delicate
instruments that we have now at our disposal. Observations of the exact
positions of stars have been made ever since the founding of Greenwich
Observatory, so that now we have catalogues giving the "proper motions" of
several hundreds of stars. When these are examined it is seen that some
groups of stars move in fellowship together through space, having the same
direction, and moving at the same rate, and of these companies the most
striking are the stars of the Plough, that is ‘Ayish and his sons. Not all the
stars move together; out of the seven, the first and the last have a different
direction, but the other five show a striking similarity in their paths. And not
only are their directions of movement, and the amounts of it, the same for
the five stars, but spectroscopic observations of their motion in the line of
sight show that they are all approaching us with a speed of about eighteen
miles a second, that is to say with much the same speed as the earth moves
in her orbit round the sun. Another indication of their "family likeness" is
that all their spectra are similar. A German astronomer, Dr. Höffler, has
found for this system a distance from us so great that it would take light 192
years to travel from them to us. Yet so vast is this company of five stars that
it would take light seventy years, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles in
every second of time to go from the leading star, Merak—Beta of the Bear
—to Mizar—Zeta of the Bear—the final brilliant of the five. So bright and
great are these suns that they shine to us as gems of the second magnitude,
and yet if our sun were placed amongst them at their distance from us he
would be invisible to the keenest sight.

Dr. Höffler's estimate may be an exaggerated one, but it still remains true
that whilst the cluster of the Pleiades forms a great and wonderful family
group, it is dwarfed into insignificance by the vast distances between these
five stars of the Great Bear. Yet these also form one family, though they are
united by no nebulous bands, and are at distances so great from each other
that the bonds of gravitation must cease to show their influence; yet all are
alike, all are marshalled together in their march under some mysterious law.
We cannot answer the question, "By what means are ‘Ayish and his sons
guided?" much more are we speechless when we are asked, "Canst thou
guide them?"

FOOTNOTES:
[263:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 69.

"BLOW UP THE TRUMPET IN THE NEW MOON."ToList

BOOK III
TIMES AND SEASONS

CHAPTER I
THE DAY AND ITS DIVISIONS

There is a difference of opinion at the present day amongst astronomers as
to the time in which the planet Venus rotates upon her axis. This difference
arises through the difficulty of perceiving or identifying any markings on
her brilliantly lighted surface. She is probably continually cloud-covered,
and the movements of the very faint shadings that are sometimes seen upon
her have been differently interpreted. The older observers concurred in
giving her a rotation period of 23h 21m, which is not very different from that
of the earth. Many astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, assign a
rotation period of 225 days, that is to say the same period as that in which
she goes round the sun in her orbit. The axis on which she rotates is almost
certainly at right angles to the plane in which she moves round the sun, and
she has no moon.
We do not know if the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, but
assuming the existence of such, it will be instructive to inquire as to the
conditions under which they must live if this view be correct, and the
rotation period of Venus, and her revolution period be the same.
Venus would then always turn the same face to the sun, just as our moon
always turns the same face to us and so never appears to turn round. Venus
would therefore have no "days," for on her one hemisphere there would be
eternal light, and on the other eternal darkness. Since she has no moon, she
has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle, and the axis
through her north and south poles lies at right angles to her ecliptic, she has
no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her daylight side, the sun remains
fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as the observer does not leave his
locality; it hangs overhead, or near some horizon, north, south, east, or
west, continually. There are no "hours," therefore no divisions of time, it
might be almost said no "time" itself. There are no points of the compass
even, no north, south, east or west, no directions except towards the place
where the sun is overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the

sense we know it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time"
must there be artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.
On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for cloud, they
would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for Venus turns
continually to the heavens—though not to the sun. Mazzaroth would still be
brought out in his season, but there would be no answering change on
Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of heaven, but they could
not know the dominion thereof set upon their earth.
This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate the
fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:—
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."
The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it is
the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most
natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:—
"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of
heaven, . . . the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under
the whole heaven."
This is the legitimate use of the heavenly bodies, just as the worship of
them is their abuse, for the division of time—in other words, the formation
of a calendar—is a necessity. But as there are many heavenly bodies and
several natural divisions of time, the calendars in use by different peoples
differ considerably. One division, however, is common to all calendars—the
day.
The "day" is the first and shortest natural division of time. At present we
recognize three kinds of "days"—the sidereal day, which is the interval of
time between successive passages of a fixed star over a given meridian; the
apparent solar day, which is the interval between two passages of the sun's
centre over a given meridian, or the interval between two successive noons
on a sundial; and the mean solar day, which is the interval between the
successive passages of a fictitious sun moving uniformly eastward in the
celestial equator, and completing its annual course in exactly the same time

as that in which the actual sun makes the circuit of the ecliptic. The mean
solar days are all exactly the same length; they are equal to the length of the
average apparent solar day; and they are each four minutes longer than a
sidereal day. We divide our days into 24 hours; each hour into 60 minutes;
each minute into 60 seconds. This subdivision of the day requires some
mechanical means of continually registering time, and for this purpose we
use clocks and watches.
The sidereal day and the mean solar day necessitate some means of
registering time, such as clocks; therefore the original day in use must have
been the apparent solar day. It must then have been reckoned either from
sunset to sunset, or from sunrise to sunrise. Later it might have been
possible to reckon it from noon to noon, when some method of fixing the
moment of noon had been invented; some method, that is to say, of fixing
the true north and south, and of noting that the sun was due south, or the
shadow due north. Our own reckoning from midnight to midnight is a late
method. Midnight is not marked by the peculiar position of any visible
heavenly body; it has, in general, to be registered by some mechanical time-
measurer.
In the Old Testament Scriptures the ecclesiastical reckoning was always
from one setting of the sun to the next. In the first chapter of Genesis the
expressions for the days run, "The evening and the morning," as if the
evening took precedence of the morning. When the Passover was instituted
as a memorial feast, the command ran—
"In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even,
ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of
the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven."
And again, for the sabbath of rest in the seventh month—
"In the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even,
shall ye celebrate your sabbath."
The ecclesiastical "day" of the Jews, therefore, began in the evening, with
sunset. It does not by any means follow that their civil day began at this
time. It would be more natural for such business contracts as the hiring of
servants or labourers to date from morning to morning rather than from

evening to evening. Naturally any allusion in the Scriptures to the civil
calendar as apart from the ecclesiastical would be indirect, but that common
custom was not entirely in agreement with the ecclesiastical formula we
may perhaps gather from the fact that in the Old Testament there are
twenty-six cases in which the phrases "day and night," "day or night" are
employed, and only three where "night" comes before "day." We have a
similar divergence of usage in the case of our civil and astronomical days;
the first beginning at midnight, and the second at the following noon, since
the daylight is the time for work in ordinary business life, but the night for
the astronomers. The Babylonians, at least at a late date in their history, had
also a twofold way of determining when the day began. Epping and
Strassmaier have translated and elucidated a series of Babylonian lunar
calendars of dates between the first and second centuries before our era. In
one column of these was given the interval of time which elapsed between
the true new moon and the first visible crescent.
"Curious to relate, at first all Father Epping's calculations to
establish this result were out by a mean interval of six hours.
The solution was found in the fact that the Babylonian
astronomers were not content with such a variable instant of
time as sunset for their calculations, as indeed they ought not to
have been, but used as the origin of the astronomical day at
Babylon the midnight which followed the setting of the sun,
marking the beginning of the civil day."
It may be mentioned that the days as reckoned from sunset to sunset,
sunrise to sunrise, and noon to noon, would give intervals of slightly
different lengths. This would, however, be imperceptible so long as their
lengths were not measured by some accurate mechanical time-measurer
such as a clepsydra, sandglass, pendulum, or spring clock.
The first obvious and natural division of the whole day-interval is into the
light part and the dark part. As we have seen in Genesis, the evening and the
morning are the day. Since Palestine is a sub-tropical country, these would
never differ very greatly in length, even at midsummer or midwinter.
The next subdivision, of the light part of the day, is into morning, noon and
evening. As David says in the fifty-fifth Psalm—

"Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray."

None of these three subdivisions were marked out definitely in their
beginning or their ending, but each contained a definite epoch. Morning
contained the moment at which the sun rose; noon the moment at which he
was at his greatest height, and was at the same time due south; evening
contained the moment at which the sun set.
In the early Scriptures of the Old Testament, the further divisions of the
morning and the evening are still natural ones.
For the progress of the morning we have, first, the twilight, as in Job—

"Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;
Let it look for light but have none;
Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning."

Then, daybreak, as in the Song of Solomon—

"Until the day break (literally, breathe) and the shadows flee
away,"

where the reference is to the cool breezes of twilight. So too in Genesis, in
Joshua, in the Judges and in Samuel, we find references to the "break of
day" (literally, the rising of the morning, or when it became light to them)
and "the dawning of the day" or "about the spring of the day."
The progress of the morning is marked by the increasing heat; thus as "the
sun waxed hot," the manna melted; whilst Saul promised to let the men of
Jabesh-Gilead have help "by that time the sun be hot," or, as we should put
it, about the middle of the morning.
Noon is often mentioned. Ish-bosheth was murdered as he "lay on a bed at
noon," and Jezebel's prophets "called on the name of Baal from morning
even unto noon."
We find the "afternoon" (lit. "till the day declined") mentioned in the
nineteenth chapter of the Judges, and in the same chapter this period is
further described in "The day draweth toward evening (lit. is weak)," and

"The day groweth to an end" (lit. "It is the pitching time of the day," that is
to say, the time for pitching tents, in preparation for the nightly halt).
As there was no dividing line between the morning and noontide, neither
was there any between the afternoon and evening. The shadows of the night
were spoken of as chased away by the cool breezes of the morning, so the
lengthening shadows cast by the declining sun marked the progress of the
evening. Job speaks of the servant who "earnestly desireth the shadow;" that
is to say, the intimation, from the length of his own shadow, that his day's
work was done; and Jeremiah says, "The shadows of the evening are
stretched out." Then came sundown, and the remaining part of the evening
is described in Proverbs: "In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and
dark night."
In a country like Palestine, near the tropics, with the days not differing
extravagantly in length from one part of the year to another, and the sun
generally bright and shining, and throwing intense shadows, it was easy,
even for the uneducated, to learn to tell the time of day from the length of
the shadow. Here, in our northern latitude, the problem is a more complex
one, yet we learn from the Canterbury Tales, that Englishmen in the time of
the Plantagenets could read the position of the sun with quite sufficient
accuracy for ordinary purposes. Thus the host of the Tabard inn, though not
a learned man—

"Saw wel, that the brighte sonne
The ark of his artificial day had ronne
The fourthe part, and half an houre and more;
And though he was not depe experte in lore,
He wiste it was the eighte and twenty day
Of April, that is messager to May;
And saw wel that the shadow of every tree
Was as in lengthe of the same quantitee
That was the body erect, that caused it;
And therfore by the shadow he toke his wit,
That Phebus, which that shone so clere and bright,
Degrees was five and fourty clombe on hight;
And for that day, as in that latitude,
It was ten of the clok, he gan conclude."[277:1]

In the latter part of the day there is an expression used several times in
Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers "between the two evenings" which has
given rise to much controversy. The lamb of the Passover was killed in this
period; so also was the lamb of the first year offered daily at the evening
sacrifice; and day by day Aaron was then commanded to light the seven
lamps and burn incense. It is also mentioned once, in no connection with
the evening sacrifice, when the Lord sent quails to the children of Israel
saying, "At even (between the two evenings) ye shall eat flesh." In
Deuteronomy, where a command is again given concerning the Passover, it
is explained that it is "at even, at the going down of the sun." The
Samaritans, the Karaite Jews, and Aben Ezra held "the two evenings" to be
the interval between the sun's setting and the entrance of total darkness; i. e.
between about six o'clock and seven or half-past seven. A graphic
description of the commencement of the sabbath is given in Disraeli's novel
of Alroy, and may serve to illustrate this, the original, idea of "between the
two evenings."
"The dead were plundered, and thrown into the river, the
encampment of the Hebrews completed. Alroy, with his
principal officers, visited the wounded, and praised the valiant.
The bustle which always succeeds a victory was increased in the
present instance by the anxiety of the army to observe with
grateful strictness the impending sabbath.
"When the sun set the sabbath was to commence. The
undulating horizon rendered it difficult to ascertain the precise
moment of his fall. The crimson orb sunk below the purple
mountains, the sky was flushed with a rich and rosy glow. Then
might be perceived the zealots, proud in their Talmudical lore,
holding the skein of white silk in their hands, and announcing
the approach of the sabbath by their observation of its shifting
tints. While the skein was yet golden, the forge of the armourers
still sounded, the fire of the cook still blazed, still the cavalry led
their steeds to the river, and still the busy footmen braced up
their tents, and hammered at their palisades. The skein of silk
became rosy, the armourer worked with renewed energy, the
cook puffed with increased zeal, the horsemen scampered from
the river, the footmen cast an anxious glance at the fading light.

"The skein of silk became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden
tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in
circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters,
the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The forge was
mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses and the bustle
of men in a moment ceased. A deep, a sudden, an all-pervading
stillness dropped over that mighty host. It was night; the sacred
lamps of the sabbath sparkled in every tent of the camp, which
vied in silence and in brilliancy with the mute and glowing
heavens."
In later times, on account of ritualistic necessities, a different interpretation
was held. So Josephus says: "So these high-priests, upon the coming of
their feast which is called the Passover, . . . slay their sacrifices, from the
ninth hour till the eleventh."[279:1] And the Talmud made the first evening to
begin with the visible decline of the sun and the second with sunset, or "the
two evenings" to last from three till about six. Schiaparelli gives the first
evening from sunset until the time that the newly visible lunar crescent
could be seen in the twilight sky, or about half an hour after sunset, and the
second evening from that until darkness set in, basing his argument on the
directions to Aaron to light the lamps "between the two evenings," since, he
argues, these would not be made to burn in the daylight. Probably in the
days of Moses and Aaron the period could not be defined as accurately as
this would imply, as the opportunity of seeing the new moon could only
come once a month, and we have no evidence of any mechanical time-
measurer being then in use with them.
For shorter spaces of time we have the word "moment" or "instant" many
times mentioned. The words may mean, the opening or winking of the eye,
"the twinkling of an eye," spoken of by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the
Corinthians, and do not describe any actual duration of time, or division of
the day.
The only time-measurer mentioned in the Bible is the dial of Ahaz, which
will form the subject of a later chapter. It need only be noted here that, as it
depended upon the fall of the shadow, it was of use only whilst the sun was
shining; not during cloudy weather, or at night.

As the day had three main divisions, so had also the night. There were three
"watches," each, like the watches on ship-board, about four hours in length.
So in the Psalms, "the watches" are twice put as an equivalent for the night.
The ancient Hebrews would have no difficulty in roughly dividing the night
into three equal parts, whenever the stars could be seen. Whether they
watched "Arcturus and his sons,"—the circumpolar constellations moving
round like a vast dial in the north—or the bringing forth of Mazzaroth, the
zodiacal constellations, in the south, they would soon learn to interpret the
signs of night with sufficient accuracy for their purpose.
The first watch of night is mentioned in the book of Lamentations.
"Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour
out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord."
It was "in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the
watch," that Gideon and his gallant three hundred made their onslaught on
the host of the Midianites.
It was in the third, the morning watch, that "the Lord looked unto the host
of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the
host of the Egyptians" as they pursued Israel into the midst of the Red Sea.
In this watch also, Saul surprised the Ammonites as they besieged Jabesh-
Gilead, and scattered them, "so that two of them were not left together."
In the New Testament, the Roman method of dividing the night is adopted;
viz. into four watches. When the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee
in their little boat, and they had toiled all night in rowing because the wind
was contrary, it was in "the fourth watch of the night" that Jesus came unto
them.
There is no mention of any mechanical time-measurer in the Old Testament,
and in only one book is there mention in the English version of the word
"hour." Five times it is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as the rendering of
the Chaldean word sha‘ah, which literally means "the instant of time."
No mention either is made of the differing lengths of the days or nights
throughout the year—at midsummer the day is 14-1/4 hours long, and the
night 9-3/4. Job speaks, however, of causing "the day-spring to know its

place," which may well refer to the varying places along the eastern horizon
at which the sun rose during the course of the year. Thus in mid-winter the
sun rose 28° south of the east point, or half a point south of E.S.E. Similarly
in midsummer it rose 28° north of east, or half a point north of E.N.E.[282:1]
The Babylonians divided the whole day interval into twelve kasbu, or
"double hours." Those again were divided into sixty parts, each equal to two
of our minutes; this being about the time that is required for the disc of the
sun to rise or set wholly. The Babylonian kasbu was not only a division of
time, but a division of space, signifying the space that might be marched in
a kasbu of time. Similarly we find, in the Old Testament, the expression "a
day's journey," or "three days' journey," to express distance, and in the New
Testament we find the same idea applied to a shorter distance in the
"sabbath-day's journey," which was about two miles. But the Jews in New
Testament times adopted, not the Babylonian day of twelve hours, but the
Egyptian of twenty-four. So we find, in the parable of the Labourers in the
Vineyard, mention made of hiring early in the morning, and at the third,
sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours; and since those hired latest worked for but
one hour, it is evident that there were twelve hours in the daylight. Our Lord
alludes to this expressly in the Gospel according to St. John, where he says
—
"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the
day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.
But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no
light in him."

FOOTNOTES:
[277:1] The Man of Lawe's Prologue, lines 4421-4434.
[279:1] Josephus, Wars, VI. ix. 3.
[282:1] See the diagram on p. 363.

CHAPTER II
THE SABBATH AND THE WEEK

The present chapter has little, if anything, to do with astronomy, for the
week, as such, is not an astronomical period. But the sabbath and the week
of seven days are so intimately connected with the laws and customs of
Israel that it is impossible to leave them out of consideration in dealing with
the "times and seasons" referred to in the Bible.
The day, the month and the year are each defined by some specific
revolution of one of the great cosmical bodies; there is in each case a return
of the earth, or of the earth and moon together, to the same position, relative
to the sun, as that held at the beginning of the period.
The week stands in a different category. It is not defined by any
astronomical revolution; it is defined by the return of the sabbath, the
consecrated day.
A need for the division of time into short periods, less than a month, has
been generally felt amongst civilized men. Business of state, commercial
arrangements, social intercourse, are all more easily carried out, when some
such period is universally recognized. And so, what we may loosely term a
"week," has been employed in many ancient nations. The Aztecs, using a
short month of 20 days, divided it into four quarters of 5 days each. The
Egyptians, using a conventional month of 30 days, divided it into 3
decades; and decades were also used by the Athenians, whose months were
alternately of 29 and of 30 days.
Hesiod tells us that the days regarded as sacred in his day were the fourth,
fourteenth and twenty-fourth of each month.

"The fourth and twenty-fourth, no grief should prey
Within thy breast, for holy either day.

Pierce on the fourth thy cask; the fourteenth prize
As holy; and, when morning paints the skies,
The twenty-fourth is best."

The Babylonians divided the month somewhat differently; the seventh,
fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth days being regarded
as "sabbaths."[284:1]
The sabbath enjoined upon the Hebrews was every seventh day. The week
as defined by it was a "free" week; it was tied neither to month nor year, but
ran its course uninterruptedly, quite irrespective of the longer divisions of
time. It was, therefore, a different conception from that underlying the
usages of the Greeks or Babylonians, and, it may be added, a more
reasonable and practical one.
Four origins have been assigned for the week. There are those who assert
that it is simply the closest possible approximation to the quarter-month; the
mean month being 29-1/2 days in length, a quarter-month would be 7-3/8
days, and since fractions of a day cannot be recognized in any practical
division of time for general use, the week of seven days forms the nearest
approach to the quarter-month that could be adopted. This is undeniably
true, but it is far more likely that such an origin would give rise to the
Babylonian system than to the Jewish one, for the Babylonian system
corrected the inequality of quarter-month and week every month, and so
kept the two in harmony; whilst the Hebrew disregarded the month
altogether in the succession of his weeks.
Next, it is asserted that the Hebrew sabbath was derived from the
Babylonian, and that "it is scarcely possible for us to doubt that we owe the
blessings decreed in the sabbath or Sunday day of rest in the last resort to
that ancient and civilized race on the Euphrates and Tigris."[285:1]
There are two points to be considered here. Did the Babylonians observe
their "sabbaths" as days of rest; and, were they or the Hebrews the more
likely to hand on their observances to another nation?
We can answer both these questions. As to the first, a large number of
Babylonian documents on tablets, preserved in the British Museum, have
been published by Father Strassmaier, and discussed by Prof. Schiaparelli.

In all there were 2,764 dated documents available for examination, nearly
all of them commercial and civil deeds, and covering practically the whole
period from the accession of Nebuchadnezzar to the twenty-third year of
Darius Hystaspes. This number would give an average of 94 deeds for each
day of the month; the number actually found for the four "sabbaths," i. e.
for the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days, were 100, 98, 121 and 91 respectively.
The Babylonians evidently did not keep these days as days of rest, or of
abstinence from business, as the Jews keep their sabbath, or Christian
countries their Sunday. They cannot even have regarded it as an unlucky
day, since we find the average of contracts is rather higher for a "sabbath"
than for a common day.
The case is a little different with the 19th day of the month. This, as the
49th day from the beginning of the previous month, was a sabbath of
sabbaths, at the end of a "week of weeks." In this case only 89 contracts are
found, which is slightly below the average, though twelve common days
show a lower record still. But in most cases the date is written, not as 19,
but as 20-1; as if there were a superstition about the number 19. On the
other hand, this method of indicating the number may be nothing more than
a mode of writing; just as in our Roman numerals, XIX., one less than XX.,
is written for 19.
The Babylonians, therefore, did not observe these days as days of rest,
though they seem to have marked them in the ritual of temple and court.
Nor did they make every seventh or every fifth a rest-day, for Prof.
Schiaparelli has specially examined these documents to see if they gave any
evidence of abstention from business either on one day in seven or on one
day in five, and in both cases with a purely negative result.
When we inquire which nation has been successful in impressing their
particular form of sabbath on the nations around the case is clear. We have
no evidence of the Babylonians securing the adoption of their sabbatic
arrangements by the Persians, Greeks and Parthians who successively
overcame them. It was entirely different with the Jews. The Jewish
kingdom before the Captivity was a very small one compared with its
enemies on either side—Assyria, Babylon and Egypt; it was but a shadow
even of its former self after the Return. And imperial Rome was a mightier
power than Assyria or Babylon at their greatest. If ever one state was secure

from influence by another on the score of its greater magnitude and power,
Rome was safe from any Jewish impress. Yet it is perfectly well known that
the impression made upon the Romans by the Jews in this very matter of
sabbath-keeping was widespread and deep. Jewish influence was felt and
acknowledged almost from the time that Syria, of which Judæa was but a
petty division, became a Roman province, and a generation had not passed
away before we find Horace making jocular allusion to the spread of the
recognition of the Jewish sabbath. In his ninth satire he describes himself as
being buttonholed by a bore, and, seeing a friend pass by, as begging the
latter to pretend business with him and so relieve him of his trouble. His
friend mischievously excuses himself from talking about business:—

"To-day's the thirtieth sabbath. Can you mean
Thus to insult the circumcised Jews?"

Persius, in his fifth satire, speaks of those who—

"Move their lips with silence, and with fear
The sabbath of the circumcised revere."

Juvenal, in his fourteenth satire, describes how many Romans reverence the
sabbath; and their sons, bettering the example, turn Jews themselves:—

"Others there are, whose sire the sabbath heeds,
And so they worship naught but clouds and sky.
They deem swine's flesh, from which their father kept,
No different from a man's. And soon indeed
Are circumcised; affecting to despise
The laws of Rome, they study, keep and fear
The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book
Moses has handed down,—to show the way
To none but he who the same rites observes,
And those athirst to lead unto the spring
Only if circumcised. Whereof the cause
Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day
Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand
No part in life."

Ovid, Tibullus, and others also speak of the Jewish sabbath, not merely as
universally known, but as largely observed amongst the Romans, so that it
obtained almost a public recognition, whilst the success of Judaism in
making proselytes, until Christianity came into rivalry with it, is known to
every one.
As to the general influence of Judaism in securing the recognition of the
week with its seventh day of rest, the testimony of Josephus is emphatic.
"The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of
a long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not
any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any
nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh
day hath not come, and by which our fasts and lighting up
lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to our food, are not
observed; they also endeavour to imitate our mutual concord
with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods,
and our diligence in our trades, and our fortitude in undergoing
the distresses we are in, on account of our laws; and, what is
here matter of the greatest admiration, our law hath no bait of
pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and
as God Himself pervades all the world, so hath our law passed
through all the world also."[289:1]
Philo, the Jew, bears equally distinct testimony to the fact that wheresoever
the Jews were carried in their dispersion, their laws and religious customs,
especially their observance of every seventh day, attracted attention, and
even secured a certain amount of acceptance. The Jews, therefore, even
when, as a nation, they were ruined and crushed, proved themselves
possessed of such vital force, of such tenacity, as to impress their
conquerors with interest in, and respect for, their sabbatic customs. Of their
tenacity and force in general, of their power to influence the nations
amongst whom they have been scattered, the history of the last two
thousand five hundred years is eloquent. It is not reasonable, nor scientific,
to suppose that this nation, steel since it returned from its captivity in
Babylon, was wax before.

But the third suggestion as to the origin of the week of seven days,—that it
was derived from the influence of the planets,—makes the matter clearer
still. This suggestion has already been noticed in the chapter on "Saturn and
Astrology." It is sufficient to say here that it presupposes a state of
astronomical advancement not attained until long after the sabbath was
fully known. The Babylonians did observe the seven planets, but there is no
trace of their connection with the Babylonian week. But when the Greek
astronomers had worked out that system of the planetary motions which we
call after Ptolemy, and the planets had been fitted by the Alexandrian
observers to the days of the Jewish week and the hours of the Egyptian day,
then the Babylonian astrologers also adopted the mongrel combination.
Thus indirectly Babylon received the free week from the Jews, and did not
give it.
"The oldest use of the free and uniform week is found among
the Jews, who had only a most imperfect knowledge of the
planets. The identity of the number of the days in the week with
that of the planets is purely accidental, and it is not permissible
to assert that the former number is derived from the latter."[290:1]
"Carried by the Jews into their dispersion, adopted by the
Chaldæan astrologers for use in their divinations, received by
Christianity and Islam, this cycle" (the free week of seven days),
"so convenient and so useful for chronology, has now been
adopted throughout the world. Its use can be traced back for
about 3,000 years, and there is every reason to believe that it
will last through the centuries to come, resisting the madness of
useless novelty and the assaults of present and future
iconoclasts."[290:2]
The fourth account of the origin of the week is that given us in the Bible
itself.
"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord
blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
The institution of the sabbath day is the crown of the work of creation, the
key to its purpose. Other times and seasons are marked out by the

revolutions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. This day is set apart
directly by God Himself; it is His express handiwork,—"the day which the
Lord hath made."
The great truth taught in the first chapter of Genesis is that God is the One
Reality. All that we can see above or around was made by Him. He alone is
God.
And His creative work has a definite goal to which its several details all
lead up—the creation of man, made in the image of God.
As such, man has a higher calling than that of the beasts that perish. The
chief object of their lives is to secure their food; their aspirations extend no
further. But he is different; he has higher wants, nobler aspirations. How
can they be met?
The earth was created to form an abode suitable for man; the varied forms
of organic life were brought into existence to prepare the way for and
minister to him. For what was man himself made, and made in the image of
God, but that he might know God and have communion with Him? To this
the sabbath day gave the call, and for this it offered the opportunity.

"For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer?"

FOOTNOTES:
[284:1] This is learnt from a single tablet of a Babylonian Calendar (preserved in
the British Museum), which unfortunately contains one month only.
[285:1] Babel and Bible, Dr. Fried. Delitzsch, Johns' Translation, pp. 40, 41.
[289:1] Flavius Josephus against Apion, book ii. 40.
[290:1] Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 135.
[290:2] Ibid., p. 133.

CHAPTER III
THE MONTH

The shortest natural division of time is the day. Next in length comes the
month.
As was pointed out in the chapter on the Moon, the Hebrews used two
expressions for month—Chodesh, from a root meaning "to be new"; and
Yerach, from the root meaning "to be pale."
Chodesh is the word most commonly employed, and this, in itself, is
sufficient to show that the Hebrew calendar month was a lunar one. But
there are, besides, too many references to the actual new moons for there to
be any doubt on the question.
Every seventh day was commanded to be held as a sabbath of rest, and on it
were sacrificed four lambs, instead of the two offered up, the one at the
morning and the other at the evening sacrifice of the six working days. But
the new moons are also mentioned as holy days, and are coupled with the
sabbaths. The husband of the Shunamite asked her why she wished to go to
Elisha, as "it is neither new moon, nor sabbath." Isaiah, speaking in the
name of the Lord, says—
"The new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I
cannot away with; . . . your new moons and your appointed
feasts My soul hateth"; and again, "From one new moon to
another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to
worship."
Amos speaks of degenerate Israel, that they say—
"When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and
the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?"
As late as Apostolic times, St. Paul refers to the feasts of the new moons,
saying, "Let no man therefore judge you . . . in respect . . . of the new

moon."
The ordinances respecting the observance of the new moons—the
"beginnings of months"—were explicit. Trumpets were blown over the
burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of the peace offerings, and the nature
of these offerings is given in detail in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book
of Numbers. The ordinances were reiterated and emphasized in the days of
David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Ezra and Nehemiah. Amongst the Jews
of the present day the trumpets are not blown at new moons; extra prayers
are read, but the burnt and peace offerings are of necessity omitted.
Beside the "new moons" and the sabbaths, the ancient Hebrews had three
great festivals, all defined as to the time of their celebration by the natural
months.
The first was the Feast of the Passover, which lasted a week, and began
with the killing of a lamb "between the two evenings"; on the 14th day of
the month Abib, the first month of the year—that is to say, on the evening
that the first moon of the year became full. This feast corresponded to our
Easter. The second was that of Pentecost, and was bound to the Feast of the
Passover by being appointed to occur seven weeks after the consecration of
the harvest season by the offering of the sheaf on the second day of the
Passover. We still celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, keeping
it in remembrance of the birthday of the Christian Church. This feast lasted
but a single day, and did not occur at either the new or the full of the moon,
but nearly at first quarter.
The third festival was threefold in its character. It began with special
sacrifices besides those usually offered at the new moon:—
"In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall
have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a
day of blowing of trumpets unto you."
This then was especially dependent on the new moon, being on the first day
of the month.
On the 10th day of the month was the Day of Atonement, when the people
should afflict their souls. On the 15th day of the month began the Feast of

Tabernacles, which commenced on the night that the moon was full, and
lasted for a week.
We have no special religious seasons in the Christian Church to correspond
with these.
We thus see that with the Hebrews all the days of the new moons, and two
days of full moon (in the first and in the seventh months), were days for
which special ordinances were imposed. And there is no doubt that the
beginnings of the new months were obtained by direct observation of the
moon, when weather or other conditions permitted, not by any rule of
thumb computation. The new moon observed was, necessarily, not the new
moon as understood in the technical language of astronomy; i. e. the
moment when the moon is in "conjunction" with the sun, having its dark
side wholly turned towards the earth, and being in consequence completely
invisible. "The new moon" as mentioned in the Scriptures, and as we
ordinarily use the term, is not this conjunction, but the first visible crescent
of the moon when it has drawn away from the sun sufficiently to be seen
after sunset for a short time, in the twilight, before it sets; for the moon
when very slender cannot be seen in daylight. It may, therefore, be first seen
any time between about 18 hours and 40 hours after its conjunction with the
sun; in other words, it may be first seen on one of two evenings. But for the
ecclesiastical rites it was necessary that there should be an authoritative
declaration as to the time of the commencement of the month, and,
moreover, the great feasts were fixed for certain days in the month, and so
were dependent on its beginning.
During the period of the Jewish restoration, up to the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus, the Sanhedrim used to sit in the "Hall of Polished
Stones" to receive the testimony of credible witnesses that they had seen the
new moon. If the new moon had appeared at the commencement of the 30th
day—corresponding to our evening of the 29th—the Sanhedrim declared
the previous month "imperfect," or consisting only of 29 days. If credible
witnesses had not appeared to testify to the appearance of the new moon on
the evening of the 29th, the next evening, i. e. that of the 30th—according
to our mode of reckoning—was taken as the commencement of the new
month, and the previous month was then declared to be "full," or of 30
days.

"Easter day is always the first Sunday after the full moon which
happens upon, or next after, the 21st day of March; and if the
full moon happens on a Sunday, Easter day is the Sunday after."
But the "moon" we choose for the ecclesiastical calendar is an imaginary
body, which is so controlled by specially constructed tables as to be "full"
on a day not differing by more than two or three days at most from the date
on which the actual moon is full. This may seem, at first sight, a very
clumsy arrangement, but it has the advantage of defining the date of Easter
precisely, without introducing any question as to the special meridian where
the moon might be supposed to be observed. Thus, in 1905, the moon was
full at 4h 56m Greenwich mean time on the morning of March 21. But
Easter Day was not fixed for March 26, the next Sunday following that full
moon, but a month later, for April 23. For the calendar moon, the imaginary
moon, was full on March 20; and it may be added that the actual moon,
though full on March 21 for European time, was full on March 20 for
American time. There would have been an ambiguity, therefore, if the
actual moon had been taken, according to the country in which it was
observed, an ambiguity which is got rid of by adopting a technical or
imaginary moon.
The names given to the different months in Scripture have an interest of
their own. For the most part the months are simply numbered; the month of
the Passover is the first month, and the others follow, as the second, third,
fourth, etc., throughout the year; examples of each occurring right up to the
twelfth month. There is no mention of a thirteenth month.
But occasionally we find names as well as numbers given to the months.
The first of these is Abib, meaning the month of "green ears." This was the
first month, the month of the Passover, and it received its name no doubt
from the first green ears of barley offered before the Lord during the feast
that followed the Passover.
The second month was called Zif, "splendour"; apparently referring to the
splendour of the flowers in full spring time. It is mentioned together with
two other names, Ethanim, the seventh month, and Bul, the eighth month, in
the account of the building and dedication of Solomon's Temple. The last
two are certainly Phœnician names, having been found on Phœnician

inscriptions; the first is possibly Phœnician also. Their occurrence in this
special connection was no doubt a result of the very large part taken in the
building of the Temple and the construction of its furniture by the workmen
of Hiram, king of Tyre. The Phœnician names of the months would
naturally appear in the contracts and accounts for the work, side by side
with the Hebrew equivalents; just as an English contractor to-day, in
negotiating for a piece of work to be carried out in Russia, would probably
take care to use the dating both of the Russian old style calendar, and of the
English new style. The word used for month in these cases is generally, not
chodesh, the month as beginning with the new moon, but yerach, as if the
chronicler did not wish them to be understood as having been determined
by Jewish authorities or methods. In one case, however, chodesh is used in
connection with the month Zif.
The other instances of names for the months are Nisan, Sivan, Elul,
Chisleu, Tebeth, Sebat, and Adar, derived from month names in use in
Babylonia, and employed only in the books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Zechariah, all avowedly post-exilic writers. The month word used in
connection with them is chodesh—since the Babylonian months were also
lunar—except in the single case where Ezra used a month name, terming it
yerach. The other post-exilic writers or editors of the books of Holy
Scripture would seem to have been at some pains to omit all Babylonian
month names. These Babylonian month names continue to be used in the
Jewish calendar of to-day.
In four places in Scripture mention is made of a month of days, the word for
month being in two cases chodesh, and in two, yerach. Jacob, when he
came to Padan-aram, abode with Laban for "the space of a month," before
his crafty uncle broached the subject of his wages. This may either merely
mean full thirty days, or the term chodesh may possibly have a special
appropriateness, as Laban may have dated Jacob's service so as to
commence from the second new moon after his arrival. Again, when the
people lusted for flesh in the wilderness, saying, "Who shall give us flesh to
eat?" the Lord promised to send them flesh—
"And ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor
five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days, but even a whole

month. . . . And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and
brought quails from the sea."

"He rained flesh also upon them as dust,
And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea."

The "whole month" in this case was evidently a full period of thirty days,
irrespective of the particular phase of the moon when it began and ended.
Amongst the Babylonians the sign for the word month was xxx, expressing
the usual number of days that it contained, and without doubt amongst the
Hebrews that was the number of days originally assigned to the month,
except when the interval between two actually observed new moons was
found to be twenty-nine. In later times it was learned that the length for the
lunation lay between twenty-nine and thirty days, and that these lengths for
the month must be alternate as a general rule. But in early times, if a long
spell of bad weather prevented direct observation of the new moon, we
cannot suppose that anything less than thirty days would be assigned to
each month.
Such a long spell of bad observing weather did certainly occur on one
occasion in the very early days of astronomy, and we accordingly find that
such was the number of days allotted to several consecutive months, though
the historian was evidently in the habit of observing the new moon, for
chodesh is the word used to express these months of thirty days.
We are told that—
"In the six hundreth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the
seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of
heaven were opened."
And later that—
"After the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were
abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."

The five months during which the waters prevailed upon the earth were,
therefore, reckoned as of thirty days each. If all the new moons, or even that
of the seventh month, had been actually observed, this event would have
been ascribed to the nineteenth day of the month, since 150 days is five
months and two days; but in the absence of such observations a sort of
"dead reckoning" was applied, which would of course be corrected directly
the return of clear weather gave an opportunity for observing the new moon
once again.
A similar practice was followed at a much later date in Babylon, where
astronomy is supposed to have been highly developed from remote
antiquity. Thus an inscription recently published by Dr. L. W. King records
that—
"On the 26th day of the month Sivan, in the seventh year, the
day was turned into night, and fire in the midst of heaven."
This has been identified by Mr. P. H. Cowell, F.R.S., Chief Assistant at the
Royal Observatory, Greenwich, as the eclipse of the sun that was total at
Babylon on July 31, b.c. 1063. The Babylonians, when bad weather obliged
them to resort to dead reckoning, were, therefore, still reckoning the month
as precisely thirty days so late as the times of Samuel and Saul, and in this
particular instance were two, if not three, days out in their count. Had the
new moon of Sivan been observed, or correctly calculated, the eclipse must
have been reckoned as falling on the 28th or 29th day of the month.
The Athenians in the days of Solon, five hundred years later than this,
adopted months alternately twenty-nine and thirty days in length, which
gives a result very nearly correct.
The Jews after the Dispersion adopted the system of thus alternating the
lengths of their months, and with some slight modifications it holds good to
the present day. As will be shown in the following chapter, the ordinary
years are of twelve months, but seven years in every nineteen are
"embolismic," having an extra month. The names employed are those
learned during the Babylonian captivity, and the year begins with the month
Tishri, corresponding to September-October of our calendar. The lengths of
most of the months are fixed as given in the following table, but any
adjustment necessary can be effected either by adding one day to Heshvan,

which has usually twenty-nine days, or taking away one day from Kislev,
which has usually thirty—

Ordinary Year Embolismic Year
Days Days
Tishri 30 30
Heshvan 29 + 29 +
Kislev 30 - 30 -
Tebeth 29 29
Shebat 30 30
Adar 29 30
Ve-adar ... 29
Nisan 30 30
Yiar 29 29
Sivan 30 30
Tamuz 29 29
Ab 30 30
Elul 29 29

The Jewish month, therefore, continues to be essentially a true lunar one,
though the exact definition of each month is, to some extent, conventional,
and the words of the Son of Sirach still apply to the Hebrew calendar—

"The moon also is in all things for her season,
For a declaration of times, and a sign of the world.
From the moon is the sign of the feast day;
A light that waneth when she is come to the full."

For so God—

"Appointed the moon for seasons."

CHAPTER IV
THE YEAR

The third great natural division of time is the year, and, like the day and the
month, it is defined by the relative apparent movements of the heavenly
bodies.
As the Rabbi Aben Ezra pointed out, shanah, the ordinary Hebrew word
used for year, expresses the idea of annus or annulus, a closed ring, and
therefore implies that the year is a complete solar one. A year, that is purely
lunar, consists of twelve lunations, amounting to 354 days. Such is the year
that the Mohammedans use; and since it falls short of a solar year of 365
days by 10 or 11 days, its beginning moves backwards rather rapidly
through the seasons.
The Jews used actual lunations for their months, but their year was one
depending on the position of the sun, and their calendar was therefore a
luni-solar one. But lunations cannot be made to fit in exactly into a solar
year—12 lunations are some 11 days short of one year; 37 lunations are 2 or
3 days too long for three years—but an approximation can be made by
giving an extra month to every third year; or more nearly still by taking 7
years in every 19 as years of 13 months each. This thirteenth month is
called an intercalary month, and in the present Jewish calendar it is the
month Adar which is reduplicated under the name of Ve-Adar. But, though
from the necessity of the case, this intercalation, from time to time, of a
thirteenth month must have been made regularly from the first institution of
the feast of unleavened bread, we find no allusion, direct or indirect, in the
Hebrew Scriptures to any such custom.
Amongst the Babylonians a year and a month were termed "full" when they
contained 13 months and 30 days respectively, and "normal" or
"incomplete" when they contained but 12 months or 29 days. The
succession of full and normal years recurred in the same order, at intervals
of nineteen years. For 19 years contain 6939 days 14-1/2 hours; and 235

months, 6939 days 16-1/2 hours; the two therefore differing only by about a
couple of hours. The discovery of this cycle is attributed to Meton, about
433 b.c., and it is therefore known as the Metonic cycle. It supplies the
"Golden Numbers" of the introduction to the Book of Common Prayer.
There are two kinds of solar years, with which we may have to do in a luni-
solar calendar—the tropical or equinoctial year, and the sidereal year. The
tropical year is the interval from one season till the return of that season
again—spring to spring, summer to summer, autumn to autumn, or winter
to winter. It is defined as the time included between two successive
passages of the sun through the vernal equinox, hence it is also called the
equinoctial year. Its length is found to be 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and
some ancient astronomers derived its length as closely as 365 days, 6 hours,
by observing the dates when the sun set at exactly the opposite part of the
horizon to that where it rose.
The sidereal year is the time occupied by the sun in apparently completing
the circuit of the heavens from a given star to the same star again. The
length of the sidereal year is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes. In some cases
the ancients took the sidereal year from the "heliacal" risings or settings of
stars, that is from the interval between the time when a bright star was first
seen in the morning just before the sun rose, until it was first so seen again;
or last seen just after the sun set in the evening, until it was last so seen
again.
But to connect the spring new moon with the day when the sun has returned
to the equinox is a more difficult and complicated matter. The early
Hebrews would seem to have solved the problem practically, by simply
watching the progress of the growing grain. If at one new moon in spring
time it appeared clear that some of the barley would be ready in a fortnight
for the offering of the green ears at the feast of unleavened bread, then that
was taken as beginning the new year. If it appeared doubtful if it would be
ready, or certain that it would not be, then the next new moon was waited
for. This method was sufficient in primitive times, and so long as the nation
of Israel remained in its own land. In the long run, it gave an accurate value
for the mean tropical year, and avoided all the astronomical difficulties of
the question. It shows the early Hebrews as practical men, for the solution
adopted was easy, simple and efficient. This practical method of

determining the beginning of the year amongst the early Hebrews, does not
appear to have been the one in use amongst the Babylonians either early or
late in their history. The early Babylonians used a sidereal year, as will be
shown shortly. The later Babylonians used a tropical year dependent on the
actual observation of the spring equinox.
To those who have no clocks, no telescopes, no sundials, no instruments of
any kind, there are two natural epochs at which the day might begin; at
sunrise, the beginning of daylight; and at sunset, the beginning of darkness.
Similarly, to all nations which use the tropical year, whether their calendar
is dependent on the sun alone, or on both sun and moon, there are two
natural epochs at which the year may begin; at the spring equinox, the
beginning of the bright half of the year, when the sun is high in the heavens,
and all nature is reviving under its heat and light; and at the autumn
equinox, the beginning of the dark half of the year, when the sun is low in
the heavens, and all nature seems dying. As a nation becomes more highly
equipped, both in the means of observing, and in knowledge, it may not
retain either of these epochs as the actual beginning of its year, but the
determination of the year still rests directly or indirectly upon the
observation of the equinoxes.
At the exodus from Egypt, in the month Abib, the children of Israel were
commanded in these words—
"This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall
be the first month of the year to you."
This command may have abolished and reversed the previously existing
calendar, or it may have related solely to the ecclesiastical calendar, and the
civil calendar may have been still retained with a different epoch of
commencement.
An inquiry into the question as to whether there is evidence in Scripture of
the use of a double calendar, shows that in every case that the Passover is
mentioned it is as being kept in the first month, except when Hezekiah
availed himself of the regulation which permitted its being kept in the
second month. Since the Passover was a spring feast, this links the
beginning of the year to the spring time. Similarly the feast of Tabernacles,

which is an autumn festival, is always mentioned as being held in the
seventh month.
These feasts would naturally be referred to the ecclesiastical calendar. But
the slight evidences given in the civil history point the same way. Thus
some men joined David at Ziklag during the time of his persecution by
Saul, "in the first month." This was spring time, for it is added that Jordan
had overflowed all its banks. Similarly, the ninth month fell in the winter:
for it was as he "sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was a
fire on the hearth burning before him" that king Jehoiakim took the
prophecy of Jeremiah and "cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire
that was on the hearth." The same ninth month is also mentioned in the
Book of Ezra as a winter month, a time of great rain.
The same result is given by the instances in which a Babylonian month
name is interpreted by its corresponding Jewish month number. In each case
the Jewish year is reckoned as beginning with Nisan, the month of the
spring equinox.
In one case, however, two Babylonian month names do present a difficulty.
In the Book of Nehemiah, in the first chapter, the writer says—
"It came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I
was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren,
came"—
and told him concerning the sad state of Jerusalem. In consequence of this
he subsequently approached the king on the subject "in the month Nisan, in
the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king."
If the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes began in the spring, Nisan, which is
a spring month, could not follow Chisleu, which is a month of late autumn.
But Artaxerxes may have dated his accession, and therefore his regnal
years, from some month between Nisan and Chisleu; or the civil year may
have been reckoned at the court of Shushan as beginning with Tishri. It may
be noted that Nehemiah does not define either of these months in terms of
the Jewish. Elsewhere, when referring to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles,
he attributes it to the seventh month, in accord with its place in the Mosaic
calendar. An alteration of the beginning of the year from the spring to the

autumn was brought about amongst the Jews at a later date, and was
systematized in the Religious Calendar by the Rabbis of about the fourth
century a.d. Tishri begins the Jewish year at the present day; the first day of
Tishri being taken as the anniversary of the creation of the world.
The Mishna, "The Law of the Lip," was first committed to writing in 191
a.d., and the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, based on the Mishna,
was completed about 500 a.d. In its commentary on the first chapter of
Genesis, there is an allusion to the year as beginning in spring, for it says
that—
"A king crowned on the twenty-ninth of Adar is considered as
having completed the first year of his reign on the first of Nisan"
(i. e. the next day). "Hence follows (observes some one) that the
first of Nisan is the new year's day of kings, and that if one had
reigned only one day in a year, it is considered as a whole year."
[311:1]

It is not indicated whether this rule held good for the kings of Persia, as
well as for those of Israel. If so, and this tradition be correct, then we cannot
explain Nehemiah's reckoning by supposing that he was counting from the
month of the accession of Artaxerxes, and must assume that a civil or court
year beginning with Tishri, i. e. in the autumn, was the one in question.
A further, but, as it would seem, quite an imaginary difficulty, has been
raised because the feast of ingathering, or Tabernacles, though held in the
seventh month, is twice spoken of as being "in the end of the year," or, as it
is rendered in the margin in one case, "in the revolution of the year." This
latter expression occurs again in 2 Chron. xxiv. 23, when it is said that, "at
the end of the year, the host of Syria came up"; but in this case it probably
means early spring, for it is only of late centuries that war has been waged
in the winter months. Down to the Middle Ages, the armies always went
into winter quarters, and in the spring the kings led them out again to battle.
One Hebrew expression used in Scripture means the return of the year, as
applied to the close of one and the opening of another year. This is the
expression employed in the Second Book of Samuel, and of the First Book
of Chronicles, where it is said "after the year was expired, at the time when
kings go forth to battle," implying that in the time of David the year began

in the spring. The same expression, no doubt in reference to the same time
of the year, is also used in connection with the warlike expeditions of
Benhadad, king of Syria, and of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
It is admitted that the Feast of Tabernacles was held in the autumn, and in
the seventh month. The difficulty lies in the question of how it could be said
to be "in the end of the year," "at the year's end," although it is clear from
the cases just cited that these and similar expressions are merely of a
general character, as we ourselves might say, "when the year came round,"
and do not indicate any rigid connection with a specific date of the calendar.
We ourselves use several years and calendars, without any confusion. The
civil year begins, at midnight, on January 1; the financial year on April 1;
the ecclesiastical year with Advent, about December 1; the scholastic year
about the middle of September, and so on. As the word "year" expresses
with ourselves many different usages, there is no reason to attribute to the
Jews the extreme pedantry of invariably using nothing but precise
definitions drawn from their ecclesiastical calendar.
The services of the Tabernacle and the Temple were—with the exception of
the slaying of the Paschal lambs—all comprised within the hours of
daylight; there was no offering before the morning sacrifice, none after the
evening sacrifice. So, too, the Mosaic law directed all the great feasts to be
held in the summer half of the year, the light half; none in the winter. The
Paschal full moon was just after the spring equinox; the harvest moon of the
Feast of Tabernacles as near as possible to the autumn equinox. Until the
introduction, after the Captivity, of the Feast of Purim in the twelfth month,
the month Adar, the ecclesiastical year might be said to end with those
seven days of joyous "camping-out" in the booths built of the green boughs;
just as all the great days of the Christian year lie between Advent and the
octave of Pentecost, whilst the "Sundays after Trinity" stretch their length
through six whole months. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the
command in Exod. xii., to make Abib, the month of the Passover, the first
month, and the references elsewhere in Exodus to the Feast of Ingathering
as being in "the end of the year." It was at the end of the agricultural year; it
was also at the end of the period of feasts. So, if a workman is engaged for a
day's work, he comes in the morning, and goes home in the evening, and
expects to be paid as he leaves; no one would ask him to complete the

twenty-four hours before payment and dismissal. It is the end of his day;
though, like the men in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, he has
only worked twelve hours out of the twenty-four. In the same way the Feast
of Tabernacles, though in the seventh month, was in "the end of the year,"
both from the point of view of the farmer and of the ordinances of the
sacred festivals.
The method employed in very early times in Assyria and Babylonia for
determining the first month of the year was a simple and effective one, the
principle of which may be explained thus: If we watch for the appearance of
the new moon in spring time, and, as we see it setting in the west, notice
some bright star near it, then 12 months later we should see the two together
again; but with this difference, that the moon and star would be seen
together, not on the first, but on the second evening of the month. For since
12 lunar months fall short of a solar year by 11 days, the moon on the first
evening would be about 11 degrees short of her former position. But as she
moves about 13 degrees in 24 hours, the next evening she would practically
be back in her old place. In the second year, therefore, moon and star would
set together on the second evening of the first month; and in like manner
they would set together on the third evening in the third year; and, roughly
speaking, on the fourth evening of the fourth year. But this last conjunction
would mean that they would also set together on the first evening of the
next month, which would thus be indicated as the true first month of the
year. Thus when moon and star set together on the third evening of a month,
thirteen months later they would set together on the first evening of a
month. Thus the setting together of moon and star would not only mark
which was to be first month of the year, but if they set together on the first
evening it would show that the year then beginning was to be an ordinary
one of 12 months; if on the third evening, that the year ought to be a full
one of 13 months.
This was precisely the method followed by the Akkadians some 4000 years
ago. For Prof. Sayce and Mr. Bosanquet translate an old tablet in Akkadian
as follows:—
"When on the first day of the month Nisan the star of stars (or
Dilgan) and the moon are parallel, that year is normal. When on

the third day of the month Nisan the star of stars and the moon
are parallel, that year is full."[315:1]
The "star of stars" of this inscription is no doubt the bright star Capella, and
the year thus determined by the setting together of the moon and Capella
would begin on the average with the spring equinox about 2000 b.c.
When Capella thus marked the first month of the year, the "twin stars,"
Castor and Pollux, marked the second month of the year in just the same
way. A reminiscence of this circumstance is found in the signs for the first
two months; that for the first month being a crescent moon "lying on its
back;" that for the second month a pair of stars.
The significance of the crescent being shown as lying on its back is seen at
once when it is remembered that the new moon is differently inclined to the
horizon according to the time of the year when it is seen. It is most nearly
upright at the time of the autumn equinox; it is most nearly horizontal,
"lying on its back," at the spring equinox. It is clear from this symbol,
therefore, that the Babylonians began their year in the spring.

POSITION OF THE NEW MOON AT THE EQUINOXES.ToList

This method, by which the new moon was used as a kind of pointer for
determining the return of the sun to the neighbourhood of a particular star at
the end of a solar year, is quite unlike anything that commentators on the
astronomical methods of the ancients have supposed them to have used. But
we know from the ancient inscription already quoted that it was actually
used; it was eminently simple; it was bound to have suggested itself
wherever a luni-solar year, starting from the observed new moon, was used.
Further, it required no instruments or star-maps; it did not even require a
knowledge of the constellations; only of one or two conspicuous stars.
Though rough, it was perfectly efficient, and would give the mean length of
the year with all the accuracy that was then required.

BOUNDARY-STONE IN THE LOUVRE; APPROXIMATE
DATE, B.C. 1200.
(From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. Mansell.)ToList

But it had one drawback, which the ancients could not have been expected
to foresee. The effect of "precession," alluded to in the chapter on "The
Origin of the Constellations," p. 158, would be to throw the beginning of
the year, as thus determined, gradually later and later in the seasons,—
roughly speaking, by a day in every seventy years,—and the time came, no
doubt, when it was noticed that the terrestrial seasons no longer bore their
traditional relation to the year. This probably happened at some time in the
seventh or eighth centuries before our era, and was connected with the
astronomical revolution that has been alluded to before; when the ecliptic
was divided into twelve equal divisions, not associated with the actual stars,
the Signs were substituted for the Constellations of the Zodiac, and the Ram
was taken as the leader instead of the Bull. The equinox was then
determined by direct measurement of the length of the day and night; for a
tablet of about this period records—
"On the sixth day of the month Nisan the day and night were
equal. The day was six double-hours (kasbu), and the night was
six double-hours."
So long as Capella was used as the indicator star, so long the year must
have begun with the sun in Taurus, the Bull; but when the re-adjustment
was made, and the solar tropical year connected with the equinox was
substituted for the sidereal year connected with the return of the sun to a
particular star, it would be seen that the association of the beginning of the
year with the sun's presence in any given constellation could no longer be
kept up. The necessity for an artificial division of the zodiac would be felt,
and that artificial division clearly was not made until the sun at the spring
equinox was unmistakably in Aries, the Ram; or about 700 b.c.
The eclipse of 1063 b.c. incidentally proves that the old method of fixing
Nisan by the conjunction of the moon and Capella was then still in use; for
the eclipse took place on July 31, which is called in the record "the 26th of
Sivan." Sivan being the third month, its 26th day could not have fallen so

late, if the year had begun with the equinox; but it would have so fallen if
the Capella method were still in vogue.
There is a set of symbols repeated over and over again on Babylonian
monuments, and always given a position of eminence;—it is the so-called
"Triad of Stars," a crescent lying on its back and two stars near it. They are
seen very distinctly at the top of the photograph of the boundary-stone from
the Louvre, given on p. 318, and also immediately above the head of the
Sun-god in the photograph of the tablet from Sippar, on p. 322. Their
significance is now clear. Four thousand years before the Christian era, the
two Twin stars, Castor and Pollux, served as indicators of the first new
moon of the year, just as Capella did two thousand years later. The "triad of
stars," then, is simply a picture of what men saw, year after year, in the
sunset sky at the beginning of the first month, six thousand years ago. It is
the earliest record of an astronomical observation that has come down to us.

WORSHIP OF THE SUN-GOD AT SIPPARA.ToList

How simple and easy the observation was, and how distinctly the year was
marked off by it! The month was marked off by the first sight of the new
thin crescent in the evening sky. The day was marked off by the return of
darkness, the evening hour in which, month by month, the new moon was
first observed; so that "the evening and the morning were the first day." The
year was marked off by the new moon being seen in the evening with a
bright pair of stars, the stars we still know as the "Twins;" and the length of
the year was shown by the evening of the month, when moon and stars
came together. If on the first evening, it was a year of twelve months; if on
the third, one of thirteen. There was a time when these three observations
constituted the whole of primitive astronomy.
In later days the original meaning of the "Triad of Stars" would seem to
have been forgotten, and they were taken as representing Sin, Samas, and
Istar;—the Moon, the Sun and the planet Venus. Yet now and again a hint of
the part they once played in determining the length of the year is preserved.
Thus, on the tablet now in the British Museum, and shown on p. 322,
sculptured with a scene representing the worship of the Sun-god in the
temple of Sippar, these three symbols are shown with the explanatory
inscription:—

"The Moon-god, the Sun-god, and Istar, dwellers in the
abyss,
Announce to the years what they are to expect;"

possibly an astrological formula, but it may well mean—"announce whether
the years should expect twelve or thirteen months."
As already pointed out, this method had one drawback; it gave a sidereal
year, not a tropical year, and this inconvenience must have been discovered,
and Capella substituted for the Twin stars, long before the giving of the Law
to Israel. The method employed by the priests of watching the progress of
the ripening of the barley overcame this difficulty, and gave a year to Israel
which, on the average, was a correct tropical one.
There is a detail in the history of the flood in Gen. vii. and viii. which has
been taken by some as meant to indicate the length of the tropical year.

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of
heaven were opened."
"And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, . . . in
the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month,
was the earth dried."
The interval from the commencement of the deluge to its close was
therefore twelve lunar months and ten days; i. e. 364 or 365 days. The
beginning of the rain would, no doubt, be sharply marked; the end of the
drying would be gradual, and hence the selection of a day exactly (so far as
we can tell) a full tropical year from the beginning of the flood would seem
to be intentional. A complete year had been consumed by the judgment.
No such total interruption of the kindly succession of the seasons shall ever
occur again:—
"While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."
The rain is no longer for judgment, but for blessing:—

"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it,
Thou greatly enrichest it;
The river of God is full of water:
Thou providest them corn, when Thou hast so prepared the
earth.
Thou waterest her furrows abundantly;
Thou settlest the ridges thereof:
Thou makest it soft with showers;
Thou blessest the springing thereof.
Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness."

FOOTNOTES:

[311:1] P. I. Hershon, Genesis with a Talmudical Commentary, p. 30.
[315:1] Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxxix. p. 455.

CHAPTER V
THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE JUBILEE

The principle of the week with its sabbath of rest was carried partially into
the month, and completely into the year. The seventh month of the year was
marked out pre-eminently by the threefold character of its services, though
every seventh month was not distinguished. But the weekly sabbath was
expressed not only in days but in years, and was one both of rest and of
release.
The sabbath of years was first enjoined from Mount Sinai, in the third
month after the departure from Egypt, certainly within a day or so, if not on
the actual day, of the second great feast of the year, variously known to the
Hebrews as the Feast of Firstfruits, or the Feast of Weeks, and to us as
Pentecost, that is Whitsuntide. It is most shortly given in Exod. xxi. 2, and
xxiii. 10, 11:—
"If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in
the seventh he shall go out free for nothing."
"Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits
thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still;
that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the
beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with
thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard."
These laws are given at greater length and with fuller explanation in the
twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Leviticus. In addition there is given a
promise of blessing for the fulfilment of the laws, and, in the twenty-sixth
chapter, a sign to follow on their breach.
"If ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we
shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command
My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth
fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat

yet of old fruit until the ninth year: until her fruits come in ye
shall eat of the old store."
"Ye shall keep My sabbaths . . . and if ye walk contrary unto Me
. . . I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a
sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities
waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth
desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the
land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it
shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye
dwelt upon it."
In the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy this sabbatic year is
called a year of release. The specific injunctions here relate to loans made to
a Hebrew and to a foreigner, and to the taking of a Hebrew into bondage.
The laws as to loans had direct reference to the sabbath of the land, for
since only Hebrews might possess the Holy Land, interest on a debt might
not be exacted from a Hebrew in the sabbatic year, as the land did not then
yield him wherewith he might pay. But loans to foreigners would be
necessarily for commercial, not agricultural, purposes, and since commerce
was not interdicted in the sabbatic year, interest on loans to foreigners might
be exacted. Warning was given that the loans to a poor Hebrew should not
be withheld because the sabbatic year was close at hand. The rules with
respect to the Hebrew sold for debt into bondage are the same as those
given in the Book of the Exodus.
In Deuteronomy it was also enjoined that—
"at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of
release, in the Feast of Tabernacles" (that is, in the feast of the
seventh month), "when all Israel is come to appear before the
Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt
read this law before all Israel in their hearing."
We find no more mention of the sabbatic year until the reign of Zedekiah,
the last king of Judah. He had made a covenant with all the people which
were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them, that every Hebrew
bondservant should go free, but the princes and all the people caused their
Hebrew bondservants to return and be in subjection to them. Then Jeremiah

the prophet was sent to remind them of the covenant made with their fathers
when they were brought out from the land of Egypt, from the house of
bondmen; and in the Second Book of Chronicles it is said that the sign of
the breaking of this covenant, already quoted from the Book of Leviticus,
was being accomplished. The Captivity was—
"to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until
the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay
desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil three-score and ten years."
After the exile, we find one reference to the sabbatic year in the covenant
sealed by the princes, Levites, and priests and people, in the Book of
Nehemiah:—
"That we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of
every debt."
Just as the Feast of Weeks was bound to the Feast of the Passover by
numbering seven sabbaths from the day of the wave-offering—"even unto
the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days:"—so the
year of Jubilee was bound to the sabbatic year:—
"Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven
times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years
shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the
trumpet of the Jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh
month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound
throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year,
and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubile unto you; and ye shall
return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every
man unto his family."
In this year of Jubilee all land, and village houses, and the houses of the
Levites were to revert to their original owners. These, in other words, could
be leased only, and not bought outright, the price of the lease depending
upon the number of years until the next Jubilee. A foreigner might not buy a
Hebrew outright as a bondslave; he could but contract with him as a servant
hired for a term; this contract might be abolished by the payment of a sum

dependent on the number of years until the next year of Jubilee, and in any
case the Hebrew servant and his family must go out free at the year of
Jubilee. In the last chapter of the Book of Numbers we get a reference again
to the year of Jubilee, and indirect allusions to it are made by Isaiah, in "the
acceptable year of the Lord" when liberty should be proclaimed, and in "the
year of the redeemed." In his prophecy of the restoration of Israel, Ezekiel
definitely refers to "the year of liberty," when the inheritance that has been
granted to a servant shall return again to the prince.
The interpretation of the sabbatic year and the year of Jubilee has greatly
exercised commentators. At what season did the sabbatic year begin? was it
coterminous with the ecclesiastical year; or did it differ from it by six
months? Was the year of Jubilee held once in every forty-nine years or once
in every fifty? did it begin at the same season as the sabbatic year? did it
interrupt the reckoning of the sabbatic year, so that a new cycle commenced
immediately after the year of Jubilee; or was the sabbatic year every
seventh, irrespective of the year of Jubilee? did the year of Jubilee always
follow immediately on a sabbatic year, or did this only happen
occasionally?
The problem will be much simpler if it is borne in mind that the Law, as
originally proclaimed, was eminently practical and for practical men. The
period of pedantry, of hair-splitting, of slavery to mere technicalities, came
very late in Jewish history.
It is clear from what has been already said in the chapter on the year, that
the only calendar year in the Old Testament was the sacred one, beginning
with the month Abib or Nisan, in the spring. At the same time the Jews, like
ourselves, would occasionally refer vaguely to the beginning, or the end, or
the course of the year, without meaning to set up any hard and fast
connection with the authorized calendar.
Now it is perfectly clear that the sabbatic year cannot have begun with the
first day of the month Abib, because the first fruits were offered on the
fifteenth of that month. That being so, the ploughing and the sowing must
have taken place very considerably earlier. It is not possible to suppose that
the Hebrew farmer would plough and sow his land in the last months of the
previous year, knowing that he could not reap during the sabbatic year.

Similarly, it seems hardly likely that it was considered as beginning with the
first of Tishri, inasmuch as the harvest festival, the Feast of the Ingathering,
or Tabernacles, took place in the middle of that month. The plain and
practical explanation is that, after the Feast of Tabernacles of the sixth year,
the farmer would not again plough, sow, or reap his land until after the
Feast of Tabernacles in the sabbatic year. The sabbatic year, in other words,
was a simple agricultural year, and it did not correspond exactly with the
ecclesiastical or with any calendar year.
For practical purposes the sabbatic year therefore ended with the close of
the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Law was read before the whole people
according to the command of Moses; and it practically began a year earlier.
The year of Jubilee appears in the directions of Lev. xxv. to have been most
distinctly linked to the sabbatic year.
"The space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee
forty and nine years, . . . and ye shall hallow the fiftieth year,
and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubile unto you."
It would seem, therefore, that just as the week of days ran on continuously,
uninterrupted by any feasts or fasts, so the week of years ran on
continuously. And as the Feast of Pentecost was the 49th day from the
offering of the first-fruits on the morrow of the Passover, so the Jubilee was
the 49th year from the "morrow" of a sabbatic year; it followed immediately
after a sabbatic year. The Jubilee was thus the 49th year from the previous
Jubilee; it was the 50th from the particular sabbatic year from which the
original reckoning was made.
Actually the year of Jubilee began before the sabbatic year was completed,
because the trumpet of the Jubilee was to be blown upon the Day of
Atonement, the 10th day of the seventh month—that is to say, whilst the
sabbatic year was yet in progress. Indeed, literally speaking, this trumpet,
"loud of sound," blown on the 10th day of the seventh month, was the
Jubilee, that is to say, the sound of rejoicing, the joyful sound. A difficulty
comes in here. The Israelites were commanded—