Astronomy
ASTRONOMY
The science, which treats of the heavenly bodies, was much studied in Asia in ancient times. The Chaldeans excelled in it. The Hebrews do not appear to have made great proficiency in it, though their climate and mode of life invited to the contemplation of the heavens. Revelation had taught them who created and governed all the world, Gen 1:1,1 -31, and the infinite presence of the one living and true God filled the universe, to their minks, with a glory unknown to others, Ps 19.1-14; Isa 40:26 ; 1Sa 5:8 . The Bible does not aim to teach the science of astronomy, but speaks of the sun, moon, and stars in the familiar language of mankind in all ages. The following heavenly bodies are alluded to particularly in Scripture: Venus, the morning star, Isa 14:12 Jer 2:28 ; Orion, and the Pleiades, Job 9:9 38:31 Am 5:8; the Great Bear, called “Arcturus,” Job 9:9 38:32; Draco, “the crooked serpent” Job 26:13 ; and Gemini, “the twins,” 2Ki 23:5 Mal 28:11 . The planets Jupiter and Venus were worshipped under various names, as Baal and Ahtoreth, Gad and Meni, Isa 65:11 . Mercury is named as Nebo; in Isa 46:1 ; Saturn as Chiun, in 1Sa 5:26 ; and Mars as Nergal, in 2Ki 17:30 . See IDOLATRY and STARS.
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
astronomy
(Greek: astron, star; nomos, distributing)
The science which treats of the motions, positions, constitution, and relations of the heavenly bodies and of the earth in its relation to them. Valuable contributions to the science have been made by Catholics and other Christians .
CATHOLICS
Giovanni Domenico Cassini
Mary Agnes Clerke
Nicolaus Copernicus
Andrew Claude de la Chevois Crommelin
Francesco Denza
Joseph Epping
Herve Auguste Etienne Albans Faye
Galileo Galilei
Edward Heis
Johann Von Lamont
Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier
Giuseppe Piazzi
Lorenzo Respighi
Giovanni Sante Gasparo Santini
Christoph Scheiner, S.J.
Pietro Angelo Secchi, S.J.
Wilhelm Tempel
Francesco de Vico, S.J.
OTHER CHRISTIAN ASTRONOMERS
Johann Bayer
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
Tycho Brahe
Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane
Johann Franze Encke
John Flamsteed
Sir William Herschel
Sir John Frederick William Herschel
Johann Hevelius
Sir William Huggins
Johann Kepler
Joseph Louis Lagrange
Canon A. Stark
New Catholic Dictionary
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Astronomy
(From Gr. astron, star; nemein, to distribute).
A science of prehistoric antiquity, originating in the elementary needs of mankind. It is divided into two main branches, distinguished as astrometry and astrophysics; the former concerned with determining the places of the investigation of the heavenly bodies, the latter, with the investigation of their chemical and physical nature. But the division is of a quite recent date. The possibilities of antique science stopped short at fixing the apparent positions of the objects on the sphere. Nor was any attempt made to rationalize the observed facts until Greeks laboriously built up a speculative system, which was finally displaced by vast fabric of gravitational theory. Descriptive astronomy, meanwhile took its rise from the invention of the telescope, and the facilities thus afforded for the close scrutiny of the denizens of the sky; while practical astronomy gained continually in refinement with the improvement of optical and mechanical arts. At the present time, astrophysics may be said to have absorbed descriptive astronomy, and astrometry necessarily includes practical research. But mathematical astronomy, grounded on the law of gravitation keeps its place apart, though depending for the perfecting of its theories and the widening of its scope upon advances along the old, and explorations in new, directions.
PREHISTORIC ASTRONOMY
Formal systems of astronomical knowledge were early established by the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, and BabyIonians. The Chinese were acquainted, probably in the third millenium B.C., with the cycle of nineteen years (rediscovered in 632 B.C. by Meton at Athens) by which, since it comprised just 235 lunations, the solar and lunar years were harmonized; they recorded cometary apparitions, observed eclipses, and employed effective measuring apparatus. European methods were introduced at Pekin by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. Indian astronomy contained few original elements. It assigned particular prominence to the lunar zodiac, called the nakshatras, or mansions of the moon, variously reckoned at twenty-seven or twenty-eight; and these, which were probably a loan from Chaldea, served mainly for superstitious purposes. In Egypt, on the other hand, considerable technical skill was attained and a constellational system of obscure derivation, came in use. The Babylonians alone, among the nations of the fore-time, succeeded in laying the foundations of a progressive science. Through the medium of the Greeks, they transmitted to the West their entire scheme of uranography, our familiar constellations having been substantially designed on the plain of Shinar about 2800 B.C. Here, too, at a remote epoch, the “Saros” became known. This is a cycle of eighteen years and ten or eleven days, which affords the means of predicting the recurrence of eclipses. The changing situations of the planets among the stars were, moreover, diligently recorded, and accurate acquaintance was secured with the movements of the sun and moon. The interpretation in 1889, by Fathers Epping and Strassmaier, of a collection of inscribed tablets preserved in the British Museum vividly illuminated the methods of official Babylonian astronomy in the second century B.C. They were perfectly effectual for the purpose chiefly in view, which was the preparation of yearly ephemerides announcing expected celestial events, and tracing in advance the paths of the heavenly bodies. Further analysis in 1899 by Father Kugler, S.J., of the tabulated data employed in computing the moon’s place, disclosed the striking fact that the four lunar periods — the synodic, sidereal, anomalistic, and draconitic months — were substantially adopted by Hipparchus from his Chaldean predecessors.
GREEK ASTRONOMY Astronomy, however, no sooner became a distinctively Greek science than it underwent a memorable transformation. Attempts began to be made to render the appearances of the sky intelligible. They were, indeed, greatly hampered by the assumption that movement in space must be conducted uniformly in circles, round an immobile earth; yet the problem was ostensibly solved by Appollonius of Perga (250-220 B.C.), and his solution, applied by Hipparchus to explain the movements of the sun and moon, was extended by Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) to the planets. This was the celebrated theory of eccentrics and epicycles, which, by the ingenuity of its elaboration, held its own among civilized men during fourteen centuries. Hipparchus, the greatest of ancient astronomers, observed at Rhodes (146-126 B.C.), but is considered as belonging to the Alexandrian school. He invented trignometry, and constructed a catalogue of 1080 stars, incited, according to Pliny’s statement, by a temporary stellar outburst in Scorpio (134 B.C.). Comparing, as work progressed, his own results with those obtained 150 years earlier by Timocharis and Aristyllus, he detected the slow retrogression among the stars of the point of intersection of the celestial equator with the ecliptic, which constitutes the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes. The circuit is completed in 25,800 years; hence the tropical year, by which the seasons are regulated, is shorter than the sidereal year by just twenty-one minutes, the equinox shifting backward to meet the sun by the annual amount of 50.25 inches. Greek astronomy was embodied in Ptolerny’s “Almagest” (the name is of mixed Greek and Arabic derivation), composed at Alexandria about the middle of the second century A. D. It was based upon the geocentric principle. The starry spere, with its contents, was supposed to resolve, once in twenty-four hours, about the fixed terrestrial globe, while the sun and moon, and the five planets, besides sharing the common movement, described variously conditioned orbits round the same centre. The body of doctrine it inculcated made part of the universal stock of knowledge until the sixteenth century. The formidable task of demonstrating its falsity, and of replacing it with a system corresponding to the true relations of the world, was undertaken by the active and exemplary ecclesiastic, Nicholas Copernicus, Canon of Frauenburg (1473-1543). The treatise in which it was accomplished, entitled “De Revolutione Orbium Coelestium”, saw the light only when its author lay dying; but a dedication to Pope Paul III bespoke the protection of the Holy See for the new and philosophically subversive views which it propounded. Denounced as impious by Luther and Melanchton, they were, in fact, favourably received at Rome until theological discredit was brought upon them by the wild speculations of Giorano Bruno (1548-1600), and the imprudent utterances of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY
Descriptive astronomy may be said to have originated with the invention of the telescope by Hans Lippershey in 1608. Its application to the scrutiny of the heavenly bodies, by Galileo and others, led at once to a crowd of striking discoveries. Jupiter’s satellites, the phases of Venus, the mountains of the moon, the spots on the sun, Saturn’s unique appendages, all descried with a little instrument resembling a uniocular opera-glass, formed, each in its way, a significant and surprising revelation; and the perception of the stellar composition of the Milky Way represented the first step in sidereal exploration. Johann Kepler (1571-1630) invented in 1611, and Father Scheiner of Ingolstadt (1575-1650) first employed, the modern refracting telescope; and the farther course of discovery corresponded closely to the development of its powers. Christian Huygens (1629-95) resolved, in 1656, the ansae of Saturn into a ring, divided into two by Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) in 1675. Titan, the Iargest of Saturn’s moons, was detected by Huygens in 1655, and four additional members of the family by 1684. The Andremeda nebula was brought to notice by Simon Marius in 1612, the Orion nebula by J.B. Cysatus, a Swiss Jesuit, in 1618; and some few variable and multiple stars were recognized.
THEORETICAL ASTRONOMY
The theoretical, however, far outweighed the practical achievements of the seventeenth century. Kepler published the first two of the “Three Laws” in 1609, the third in 1619. The import of these great generalizations is: that the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one focus; that the straight line joining each planet with the sun (its radius vector) sweeps out equal areas in equal times; that the squares of the planetary periods are severally proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. The geometrical plan of movement in the solar system was thus laid down with marvellous intuition. But it was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) to expound its significance by showing that the same uniformly acting force regulates celestial revolulions, and compels heavy bodies to fall towards the earth’s surface. The law of gravity, published in 1687 in “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathamatica” is to the following effect: every particle of matter attracts every other with a force directly proportional to their masses, and inversely proportional to the squares of their distances apart. Its validlty was tested by comparing the amount of the moon’s orbital deflection in a second with the orbital deflection in a second with the rate at which an apple (say) drops in an orchard. Allowance being made for the distance of the moon, the two velocities proved to tally perfectly, and the identity of terrestrial gravity with the force controlling the revolutions of the heavenly established. But this was only a beginning. The colossal work remained to be accomplished of calclulaIting the consequences of the law, in the minute details of its working, and of comparing them with the heavens. It was carried foreward first by Newton himself, and in the ensuing century, by Euler, Clairaut, d’ Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace. Urbain Leverrier (1811- 77) inherited from these men of genius a task never likely to be completed; and the intricacies of lunar theory have been shown, by the researches of John Cough Adams (1819-92), of Hansen and Delaunay, of Professors Hlll and Newcomb, and many more, to be fraught with issues of unexpected and varied interest.
DISCOVERIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
The extraordinary improvement of reflecting telescopes by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) opened a fresh epoch of discovery. His recognition of the planet Uranus (13 March 1781) as a non-stellar object of old to the solar system; two Uranian moons, Oberon and Titania, were detected by him 11 January 1787, and the innermost Saturnian pair, Enceladus and Mimas, 28 August and 17 September of the same year. Saturn was, in 1906, known to possess ten satellites. Hyperion was descried by W.C. Bond at the observatory of Harvard College 16 September, 1848, and Professor W.H. Pickering, of the same establishment, discovered by laborious photographic researches, Phoebe in 1898, and Themis in 1905. In point of fact, an indefinite number of satellites are agglomerated in the rings of Saturn. Their constitution by separately revolving, small bodies, theoretically demonstrated by J. Clerk Maxwell in 1857, was spectroscopically confirmed by the late Professor Keeler in 1895. The system includes a dusky inner member, detected by Bond, 15 November, 1850. The discovery of the planet Neptune, 23 Sepember, 1846, was a mathematical, not an observational feat. Leverrier and Adams independently divined the existence of a massive body, revolving outside Uranus, and exercising over its movements disturbances the analysis of which led to its capture. Its solitary moon was noted by William Lassell of Liverpool in October, 1846; and he added, in 1851, two inner satellites to the remarkable system Uranus. With the great Washington refractor, 26 inches in aperture, Professor Asaph Hall discerned, 16 and 17 August,1877, Deimos and Phobos, the swiftly circling moonlets Mars; the Lick 36-ich enabled Professor Barnard to perceive, 9 September, 1892, the evasive inner satellite of Jupiter; and two exterior attendants on the same planet were photographically detected by Professor Perrine in 1904-05. The distances of the planets are visibly regulated by a method. They increase by an ordered progression, announced by Titius of Wittenberg in 1772, and since designated as “Bode’s Law”. But their succession was quickly seen to be interrupted by a huge gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter; and the conjecture was hazarded that here a new planet might be found to revolve. It was verified by the discovery of an army of asteiods. Ceres, their leader, was captured at Palermo, 1 January, 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi, a Theatine monk (1746-1826); Pallas, in 1802 by Olbers (1758-1840), and Juno and Vesta in 1804 and 1807, by Harding and Olbers respectively. The original quartette of minor planets began in 1845 to be reinforced with companions, the known number of which now approximates to 600, and may be indefinitely increased. Their discovery has been immensely facilitated by Professor Max Wolf’s introduction, in 1891, of the photographic method of discriminating them from stars through the effects of their motion on sensitive plates.
The solar system, as at present known, consists of four interior planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars; four exterior; and relatively colossal planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the diffuse crowd of pygmy globes called asteroids, or minor planets, and an outlying array of comets with their attentant meteor-systems. All the planets rotate on their axes, though in very different periods. That of Mercury was determined by Signor Schiaparelli of Milan in 1889 to be 88 days, the identical time of his revolution round the sun, and Venus was, in the following year, shown by him to be, in all likelihood, similarly conditioned, the common period of rotation and circulation being, in her case, 225 days. This irnplies that both planets keep the same hemisphere always turned towards the sun, as the moon does towards the earth; nor can we doubt that the friction of tidal waves was, on the three bodies, the agency by which the observed synchronisrn was brought about. All the planets travel round the sun from west to east or counter clock-wise and most of the satellites move in the same direction round their primaries. But there are exceptions. Phoebe, Saturn’s remotest moon, circulates oppositely to the other members of the system; the four moon of Uranus are retrograde, their plane of movement being inclined at more than a right angle to the ecliptic; and the satellite of Neptune travels quite definitely backward. These anomalies are of profound import to the theories of planetary origin. The “canals” of Mars were recognized by Schiaparelli in August 1877, he caught sight of some of them duplicted two years later. Their photographic registration at the Lowell observatory in 1905 proves them to be no optical illusion, but their nature remains enigmatical.
COMETS AND METEORS
The predicted return of Halley’s comet in 1759 afforded the first proof that bodies of the kind are permanently attached to the sun. They accompany its march through space, traversing, in either direction indifferently, highly eccentric orbits inclined ecliptic. They are accordingly subject to violent, even subversive disturbances from planets. Jupiter, in particular, sways the movements of a group of over thirty “captured” comets, which had their periods curtailed, and their primitive velocities reduced by his influence. Schiaparelli announced in 1866 that the August shooting-stars, or Perseids, pursue the same orbit with a bright comet visible in 1862; and equally striking accordances of movement between three other comets and the Leonid, Lyraid, and Andromede meteor-swarms were soon afterwards established by Leverrior and Weiss. The obvious inference is that meteors are the disintegration-products of their cometary fellow-travellers. A theory of comets’ tails, based upon the varying efficacy of electrical repulsion upon chemically different kinds of matter, was announced by Theodor Brédikhine of Moscow in 1882, and gave a satisfactory account of the appearances it was invented to explain. Latterly, however, the authority of Arrhenius of Stockholm has lent vogue to a “light-pressure” hypothesis, according to which, cometary appendages are formed of particles driven from the sun by the mechanical stress of his radiations. But the singular and rapid changes photograpically disclosed as taking place in the tails of comets, remain unassociated with any known cause.
SIDEREAL ASTRONOMY
Sir William Herschel’s discovery, in 1802, of binary stars, imperfectly anticipated by Father Christian Mayer in 1778, was one of far-reaching scope. It virtually proved the realm of gravity to include sidereal regions; and the relations it intimated have since proved to be much more widely prevalent than could have been imagined beforehand. Mutually circling stars exist in such profusion as probably to amount to one in three or four of those unaccompanied. They are of limitless variety, some of the systems by them being exceedingly close and rapid, while others describe, in millennial periods, vastly extended orbits. Many, too, comprise three or more members; and the multiple stars thus constituted merge, by progressive increments of complexity, into actual clusters, globular and irregular. The latter class exemplified by the Pleiades and Hyades, by the Beehive cluster in Cancer, just visible to the naked eye, and by the double cluster in Perseus which makes a splendid show with an opera-glass. Globular clusters are compressed “balls” of minute stars, of which more than one hundred have been catalogued. The scale on which these marvellous systems are constructed remains conjectual, since their distances from the earth are entirely unknown. Variable stars are met with in the utmost diversity. Some are temporary apparitions which spring up from invisibility often to an astonishing pitch of spendor, then sink back more slowly to quasi-extinction. Nova Persei, which blazed 22 February, 1901, and was photographically studied by Father Sidgreaves at Stonyhurst, is the most noteworthy recent instance of the phenomenon. Stars, the vicissitudes of which are comprised in cycles of seven to twenty months, or more, are called “long-period variables”. About 400 had been recorded down to 1906. They not uncommonly attain, at maximum, to 1,000 times their minimum brightness. Mira, the “wonderful” star in the Whale, discovered by David Fabricius in 1596, is the examplar of the class. The fluctuations of “short-period variables” take place in a few days or hours, and with far more punctuality. A certain proportion of them are “eclipsing stars” (about 35 have so far been recognized as such), which owe their regularly recurring failures of light to the interposition of large satellites. Algol in Perseus, the variations of which were perceived by Montanari in 1669, is the best-known specimen. Hundreds of rapid variables have been recently detected among the components of glabular clusters; but their course of change is of a totally different nature from that of eclipsing stars. Edmund Halley (1656-1742), the second Astronomer Royal, announced in 1718 that the stars, far from being fixed, move onward, each on its own account, across the sky. He arrived at this conclusion by comparing modern with antique observations; and stellar “proper motions” now constitute a wide and expansive field of research. A preliminary attempt to regularize them was made by Herschel’s determination, in 1783, of the sun’s line of travel. His success depended upon the fact that the apparent displacements of the stars include a common element, transferred by perpective from the solar advance. Their individual, or “peculiar” movements, however, show no certain trace of method. A good many stars, too, have been ascertained to travel at rates probably uncontrollable by the gravitational power of the entire sidereral system. Arcturus, with its portentous velocity of 250 miles a second, is one of these “runaway” stars. The sun’s pace of about 12 miles a second, seems, by comparison, extremely sedate; and it is probably only half the average stellar speed. The apex of the sun’s way, or the towards which its movement at present tends, is located by the best recent investigations near the bright star Vega.
DISTANCES OF THE SUN AND STARS
The distances of the heavenly bodies can only be determined (speaking generally) by measuring their parallaxes, in other words, their apparent changes of position when seen from different points of view. That of the sun is simply the angle subtended at his distance by the earth’s semi-diameter. Efforts were made with indifferent success to fix its value by the transits of Venus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The asteroids have proved more efficient auxiliaries and through the mediation of Iris, Sappho, and Victoria, in 1889-89, Sir David Gill assigned to the great unit of space a length of 92,800,000 miles, which the photographic measures of Eros, in 1900-01, bid fair to ratify. The stars, however, are so vastly remote that the only chance of detecting their perspective displacements is by observing them at intervals of six months, from opposite extremities of a base-line nearly 186,000 miles in extent. Thus, the annual parallax of a star means the angle under which the semi-diameter of the earth’s orbit would be seen if viewed frorn its situation. This angle is in all cases, extremely minute, and in most cases, altogether evanescent; so that, from only about eighty stars (as at present known), the terrestrial orbit would appear to have sensible dimensions. Our nearest stellar neighbour is the splendid southern binary, Alpha Centauri; yet its distance is such that light needs four and one-third years to perform the journey thence. Thomas Henderson (1798-1844) announced his detection of its parallax in 1839, just after Bessel of Konigsberg (1784-1846) had obtained a similar, but smaller result for an insignificant double star designated 61 Cygni.
CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
The second half of the nineteenth century was signalized by a revolutionary change in the methods and purposes of astronomy. Experiments in lunar photography, begun in 1840 by J.W. Draper of New York, were continued in the fifties by W.C. Bond, Warren de la Rue, and Lewis M. Rutherfund. The first daguerreoype of the sun was secured at Paris in 1845, and traces of the solar corona appeared on a sensitized plate exposed at Konigsberg during the total eclipse of 28 July, 1851. But the epoch of effective solar photography opened with the Spanish eclipse of 18 July, 1860, when the pictures successively obtained by Father Angelo Secchi, S.J., and Waren de la Rue demonstrated the solar status of the crimson protuberances by rendering manifest the advance of the moon in front of them. At subsequent eclipses, the leading task of the camera has been the portrayal of the corona; and its importance was enhanced when A.C. Ranyard pointed out, in 1879, the correspondence of changes in its form with alterations of sunspots was published in 1851 by Schwabe of Dessau; and among the numerous associated phenomena of change, none are better ascertained than those affecting the shape of the silvery aureola seen to encompass the sun when the moon cuts off the glare of direct sunlight. At spot maxima the aureola spreads its beamy radiance round the disc. But at times of minimum, it consists mainly of two great wings, extended in the sun’s equatorial plane. A multitude of photographs, taken during the eclipses of 1898, 1900, 1901 and 1905, attest with certainty the punctual recurrence of these unexplained vicissitudes. The fundamental condition for the progress of sidereal photography is the use of long exposures; since most of the objects to be delineated emit light so feebly that its chemical effects must accumulate before they become sensible. But long exposures were impracticable until Sir William Huggins, in 1876, adopted the dry-plate process; and this date, accordingly, marks the beginning of the wide-spreading serviceableness of the camera to astronomy. In nebular investigations above all, it far outranges the telescope. Halley described in 1716 six nebulae, which he held to be composed of a lucid medium collected from space. The Abbé Lacaille (1713-62) brought back with him from the Cape, in 1754, a list of forty-two such objects; and Charles Messier (1730-1817) enumerated in 1781, 103 nebulae and clusters. But this harvest was scanty indeed compared with the lavish yield of Herschel’s explorations. Between 1786 and 1802 he communicated to the Royal Society catalogues of 2500 nebulae; he distinguished their special forms, classified them in order of brightness, and elaborated a theory of stellar development from nebulae, illustrated by selected instances of progressive condensation. The next considerable step towards a closer acquaintance with nebulae was made by Lord Rosse in 1845, when the prodigious light-grasp of his six-foot reflector afforded him the discovery of the great “Whirlpool” structure in Canes Venatici. It proved to be typical of the entire class of spiral nebulae, the large prevalence of which has been one of the revelations of photography. The superiority in nebula-portraiture of the chemical to the eye-and-hand method was strikingly manifested in a photograph of the Orion nebula taken b Dr. A. A. Common, 30 January, 1883. Its efficacy for discovery became evident through the disclosure, on plates exposed by Paul and Prosper Henry, and by Isaac Roberts in 1885- 86, of complex nebulous formations in the Pleides, almost wholly invisible optically. Professor Keeler (1857-1900) estimated at 120,000 the number of nebulae which the Crossley reflector of the Lick observatory would capable of recording in both hemispheres with an hour’s exposure, while telescopically constructed catalogues include less than 10,000. But it is through the combination of photography with spectroscopy, constituting the spectrographic mode of research, that astrophysics has achieved its most signal triumphs.
ASTROPHYSICS
The fundamental principle of spectrum analysis, enunciated by Gustav Kirchhoff (1824-87), depends upon the equivalence of emission and absorption. This means that, if white light be transmitted through glowing vapours, they arrest just those minute sections of it with which they themselves shine. And if the source of the white light be hotter than the arresting vapour, there results a prismatic spectrum, interrupted by dark lines, distinctive of the chemical nature of the susbtance originating them. Now this is exactly the case of the sun and stars. The white radiance emanating from their photopheres is found, when dispersed into a spectrum, to be crossed by numerous dusky rays indicating absorption by gaseous strata, to the composition of which Kirchhoff’s principle supplies the clue. Kirchhoff himself identified in 1861, as prominent solar constituents, sodium, iron magnesium, calcium, and chromium; by A.J. Angström (1814-74); helium by Sir Norman Lockyer in 1868; and about forty elementary substances are now known with approximate certainty to be common to the earth and sun. The chemistry of the stars is strictly analogous to that of the sun, although their spectra exhibit diversities symptomatic of a considerable variety in physical state. Father Angelo Secchi, S.J. (1818-78), based on these diversities in 1863-67 a classification of the stars into four orders, still regarded as fundamental and supplied by Dr. Vogel in 1874 with an evolutionary interpretation, according to which differences of spectral type are associated with various stages of progress from a tenuous and inchote towards a compact condition. Since 1879, when Sir William Huggins secured impressions of an extended range of ultra-violet white star light, stellar spectra have been mostly studied photographically, the results being, not only precise and permanent, but also more complete than those obtainable by visual means. The same eminent investigator discovered, in 1864, the bright-line spectra of certain classes of nebulae, by which they were known to be of gaseous composition, and recognized, as of carbonaceous origin, the typical coloured bands of the cometary spectrum, noted four years previously, though without specific identification, by G.B. Donati (1827-73) at Florence.
Doppler’s principle, by which light alters in refrangibility through the end-on motion of its source, was first made effective for astronomical reseach by 1868. The criterion of velocilty, whether of recession or approach, is afforded by the shifting of spectral lines from their standard places; and the method was raised to a high grade of accuracy through Dr. Vogel’s adaptation, in 1888, of photography to its requirements. It has since proved extraordinarily fruitful. Its employment enabled Dr. Vogel to demonstrate the reality of AIgol’s eclipses, by showing that the star revolved round an obscure companion in the identical period of light-change; and the first discoveries of non-eclipsing spectroscopic binaries were made at Harvard College in 1889. These interesting systems cannot be sharply distinguished from telescopic double stars, which are, indeed, believed to have developed from them under the influence of tidal friction; their periods vary from a few hours to several months; and their components are often of such unequal luminosity that only one leaves any legible impression on the sensitive plate. Their known number amounted, in 1905, to 140; and it may be indefinitely augmented. It probably includes all short-period variables, even those that escape eclipses; though the connection between their duplicity and luminous variations remains unexplained. The photography in daylight of solar prominences was attempted by Professor Young of Princeton in 1870, and the subject was prosecuted by Dr. Braun, S. J., in 1872. No genuine success was, however, achieved until 1891, when Professor Hale of Chicago and M. Deslandres at Paris independently built up pictures of those objects out of the calcium-ray in their dispersed light, sifted through a double slit onto moving photographic plates. Professor Hale’s invention of the “spectroheliograph” enables him, moreover, to delineate the sun’s disc in any selected of its light, with the result of disclosing vast masses of calcium and hydrogen flocculi, piled up at various heights above the solar surface.
SIDEREAL CONSTRUCTION
The investigation of the structure of the sideral heavens was the leading object of William Herschel’s career. The magnitude of the task, however, which he attempted singlehanded grows more apparent with every fresh attempt to grapple with it; and it now engages the combined efforts of many astronomers, using methods refined and comprehensive to a degree unimagined by Herschel. An immense stock of materials for the purpose will be provided by the international photographic survey, at present advancing towards completion at eighteen observatories in both hemispheres. About thirty million stars will, it is estimated, appear on the chart-plates; and those precisely catalogued are unlikely to fall short of four millions. The labour of discussing these multitudinous data must be severe, but will be animated by the hope of laying bare some hidden spring of the sidereal mechanism. The prospect is indeed remote that the whole of its intricacies will ever be penetrated by science. We only perceive that the stars form a collection of prodigious, but limited, extent, showing strongly concentrative tendencies towards the plane of the Milky Way. Nor can the nebulae be supposed to form a separate scheme. The closeness of their relations, physical and geometrical, with stars excludes that supposition. Stars and nebulae belong to the same system, if such the sidereal world may properly be called in the absence of any sufficient evidence of its being in a state of dynamical equilibrium. We cannot be sure that it has yet reached the definitive term appointed for it by its instability and evanescence help us to realize that the heavens are, in very truth, the changing vesture of Him whose “years cannot fail”.
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AGNES M. CLERKE Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Astronomy
(, the laws of the stars), a science which appears to have grown out of astrology (q.v.). The cradle of astronomy is to be found in Asia. Pliny, in his celebrated enumeration (Hist. Nat. 7, 57) of the inventors of the arts, sciences, and conveniences of life, ascribes the discovery of astronomy to Phoenician mariners, and in the same chapter he speaks of astronomical observations found on burnt bricks (coctilibus laterculis) among the Babylonians, which ascend to above 2200 years before his time. Alexander sent to Aristotle from Babylon a series of astronomical observations, extending through 1900 years. The astronomical knowledge of the Chinese and Indians goes up to a still earlier period (Plin. Hist. Nat. 6, 17-21). From the remote East astronomy traveled in a westerly direction. The Egyptians at a very early period had some acquaintance with it. To them is to be ascribed a pretty near determination of the length of the year, as consisting of 365 days (Herodotus, 2:4). The Egyptians were the teachers of the Greeks. Some portion of the knowledge which prevailed on the subject would no doubt penetrate to and become the inheritance of the Hebrews, who do not, however, appear to have possessed any views of astronomy which raised their knowledge to the rank of a science, or made it approach to a more correct theory of the mechanism of the heavens than that which was generally held. A peculiarity of the greatest importance belongs to the knowledge which the Israelites display of the heavens, namely, that it is thoroughly imbued with a religious character; nor is it possible to find in any other writings, even at this day, so much pure and elevated piety, in connection with observations on the starry firmament, as may be gathered even in single books of the Bible (Amo 5:8; Psalms 19). This was no doubt owing in part to the fact that the practice of astrology was interdicted to the Hebrews (Deu 18:10). As early as the time of the composition of perhaps the oldest book in the Bible, namely, that of Job, the constellations were distinguished one from another, and designated by peculiar and appropriate names (Job 9:9; Job 38:31). In the Bible are found,
(1) Heylel (), the morning star, the planet Venus (Isa 14:12; Rev 2:28);
(2) Kimah’ (), Lucifer, Pleiades, the seven stars (Job 9:9; Job 38:31; Amo 5:8), the Pleiades;
(3) Kesil’ (), Orion, a large and brilliant constellation, which stands in a line with the Pleiades. The Orientals seem to have conceived of Orion as a huge giant who had warred against God, and as bound in chains to the firmament of heaven (Job 38:31); and it has been conjectured that this notion is the foundation of the history of Nimrod (Gesen. Comment. zu Jesaia, 1, 457).
(4) Ash (), (Job 9:9), Arcturus, the Great Bear, which has still the same name among the Arabians (Niebuhr, p. 113). See Job 38:32, where the sons of Arcturus are the three stars in the tail of the Bear, which stand in a curved line to the left.
(5) Nachash’ (), (Job 26:13, the crooked serpent), Draco, between the Great and the Little Bear; a constellation which spreads itself in windings across the heavens.
(6) Dioscziri, (Act 28:11, Castor and Pollux), Gemini, or the Twins, on the belt of the Zodiac, which is mentioned in 2Ki 23:5, under the general name of the planets (, Mazz-loth’), a word which signifies dwellings, stations in which the sun tarries in his apparent course through the heavens; and also by the kindred term MAZZAROTH (, Job 38:32). (Compare Gen 37:9.) The entire body of the stars was called the host of heaven (Isa 40:26; Jer 33:22). (See each of the words here enumerated in its alphabetical order.) No trace is found in the Old Testament of a division of the heavenly bodies into planets, fixed stars, and comets; but inJude 1:13, the phrase wandering stars ( ) is employed figuratively. After the Babylonish exile, the Jews were compelled, even for the sake of their calendar, to attend at least to the course of the moon, which became an object of study, and delineations were made of the shapes that she assumes (Mishna, Rosh Hassh. 2, 8; Mitchell, Astron. of Bible, N.Y. 1863). SEE YEAR.
At an early period of the world the worship of the stars arose from that contemplation of them which in every part of the globe, and particularly in the East, has been found a source of deep and tranquil pleasure, SEE ADORATION. Men by nature deemed either fire or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars. or the violent water, or the lights of heaven to be the gods which govern the world; with whose beauty being delighted, they took them to be gods (Wis 13:2). Accordingly, the religion of the Egyptians, of the Chaldees, Assyrians, and the ancient Arabians, was nothing else than star-worship, although in the case of the first its origin is more thickly veiled. The sun, moon, and seven planets (those, that is, of the fixed stars which shine with especial brightness) excited most attention, and won the greatest observance. We thus find, among the Babylonians, Jupiter (Belus, Gad, , Isa 65:11), Venus (, Meni’, Isa 65:11, where the first is rendered in the common version that troop, the second, that number). Both these were considered good principles, the Hebrews words both signifying fortune, i.e. good luck. Mercury, honored as the secretary of heaven, is also found in Isa 46:1, NEBO () stoopeth; Saturn (, Kiyun’, Chiun, Amo 5:26); Mars (, NERGAL, 2Ki 17:30); the last two were worshipped as principles of evil. The character of this worship was formed from the notions which were entertained of the good or ill which certain stars occasioned. Astrology found its sphere principally in stars connected with the birth of individuals. Thus Herodotus (2, 82) states that among the Egyptians every day was under the influence of some god (some star), and that according to the day on which each person was born, so would be the events he would meet with, the character he would bear, and the period of his death. Astrology concerned itself also with the determination of lucky and unlucky days; so in Job 3:3, Let the day perish wherein I was born; and Gal 4:10, Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. The Chaldaeans, who studied the stars at a very early period, were much given to astrology, and were celebrated for their skill in that pretended science (Isa 47:13). (See further on this general subject, Hammer, Ueber die Sternbilder der Araber; Ideler, Untersuchungen ub. d. Sternnamen, Berl. 1809; also Ueb. die Astron. der Alten, Berl. 1806; Weidler, Hist. Astronom. Viteb. 1714; Neumann, Astrognostische Benennungen im A. T. Bresl. 1819.) SEE STAR.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Astronomy
The Hebrews were devout students of the wonders of the starry firmanent (Amos 5:8; Ps. 19). In the Book of Job, which is the oldest book of the Bible in all probability, the constellations are distinguished and named. Mention is made of the “morning star” (Rev. 2:28; comp. Isa. 14:12), the “seven stars” and “Pleiades,” “Orion,” “Arcturus,” the “Great Bear” (Amos 5:8; Job 9:9; 38:31), “the crooked serpent,” Draco (Job 26:13), the Dioscuri, or Gemini, “Castor and Pollux” (Acts 28:11). The stars were called “the host of heaven” (Isa. 40:26; Jer. 33:22).
The oldest divisions of time were mainly based on the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, the “ordinances of heaven” (Gen. 1:14-18; Job 38:33; Jer. 31:35; 33:25). Such observations led to the division of the year into months and the mapping out of the appearances of the stars into twelve portions, which received from the Greeks the name of the “zodiac.” The word “Mazzaroth” (Job 38:32) means, as the margin notes, “the twelve signs” of the zodiac. Astronomical observations were also necessary among the Jews in order to the fixing of the proper time for sacred ceremonies, the “new moons,” the “passover,” etc. Many allusions are found to the display of God’s wisdom and power as See n in the starry heavens (Ps. 8; 19:1-6; Isa. 51:6, etc.)
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
Astronomy
as-tronomi:
I.The Heavenly Bodies
1.The Ordinances of Heaven
2.The Sun
(1)The Names for the Sun
(2)The City of the Sun
(3)The Greater Light-Giver
(4)The Purpose of the Sun
(5)The Sun as a Type
3.The Moon
(1)The Names for the Moon
(2)The Lesser Light-Giver
(3)Phases of the Moon
4.Signs
(1)Solar and Lunar Eclipses
(2)The Wings of the Morning
5.Seasons
(1)The Meaning of the Word
(2)Natural Seasons for Worship
(3)The Hallowing of the Seventh
(4)The Jubilee a Luni-solar Cycle
(5)The 19-Year Luni-solar Cycle
(6)The Jewish Ritual Prexilic
(7)The Luni-solar Cycles of Daniel
6.The Stars
(1)Their Number
(2)Their Distance
(3)Their Brightness
7.Morning Stars
The Stars as a Dial
8.Falling Stars
(1)Meteorites
(2)The Star Wormwood
9.Wandering Stars
(1)Comets as a Spiritual Type
(2)Comets Referred to in Scripture?
II.The Constellations
1.Nachash, the Crooked Serpent
2.Leviathan
3.The Seed of the Woman
4.The Bow Set in the Cloud
5.The Dragon of Eclipse
6.Joseph’s Dream
7.The Standards of the Tribes
8.The Cherubim
9.Balaam’s Prophecy
10.Pleiades
11.Orion
12.Mazzaroth, the Constellations of the Zodiac
13.Arcturus
(1)The Scatterers, or the North
(2)The Ordinances of Heaven Established on the Earth
14.The Date of the Book of Job
III.Physiography
1.The Circle of the Earth
(1)The Earth a Sphere
(2)The North Stretched out over Empty Space
(3)The Corners of the Earth
2.The Pillars of the Earth
3.The Firmament
(1)The Hebrew Conception
(2)The Alexandrian Conception
4.The Windows of Heaven
5.Rain
6.Clouds
7.The Deep
(1)Meaning of the Word Tehom
(2)The Babylonian Dragon of Chaos
Literature
The keynote of the Hebrew writers respecting the heavenly bodies is sounded in Psa 8:1-9 :
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?
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honor.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet (Psa 8:3-6).
The heavenly bodies were inexpressibly glorious, and they were all the handiwork of Yahweh – without power or vitality of their own – and man, not by any inherent virtue, but by the will and grace of God, was superior to them in importance. Thus there was a great gulf fixed between the superstitions of the heathen who worshipped the sun, moon and stars as gods, and the faith of the pious Hebrew who regarded them as things made and moved by the will of one only God. And it followed from this difference that the Hebrew, beyond all nations of like antiquity, was filled with a keen delight in natural objects and phenomena, and was attentively observant of them.
I. The Heavenly Bodies
1. The Ordinances of Heaven
To the sacred writers, the ordinances of heaven taught the lesson of Order – great, magnificent and immutable. Day by day, the sun rose in the east, as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber (Psa 19:5), and pursued unswervingly his appointed path across the sky, to his going down. Night by night, the stars, the host of heaven, moved in their highways or courses (mesillah), and the words of Joel (Joe 2:7) respecting the Assyrian army might be applied to them. They march every one on his ways, and they break not their ranks. Neither doth one thrust another; they march every one in his path. Some wheeled in northern circuits that were wholly seen; some swept in long courses from their rising in the East to their setting in the West; some scarcely lifted themselves above the southern horizon. Little wonder that this celestial army on the march, the host of heaven, suggested to the Hebrews a comparison with the angels, the unseen messengers of God who in their thousands of thousands ministered unto him (Dan 7:10).
But, as the year revolved, the dial of stars in the North shifted round; whilst of the other stars, those in the West disappeared into the light of the setting sun, and new stars seemed to spring out of the dawning light. There was thus a yearly procession of the stars as well as a nightly one.
And to this ordinance of the heaven the Hebrews noted that there was an answer from the earth, for in unfailing correspondence came the succession of seasons, the revival of vegetation, the ripening of harvest and of fruits, the return of winter’s cold. Of them God asked the question: Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens? Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth? (Job 38:33), and they recognized that to this question no answer could be given, for these ordinances of heaven were the sign and evidence of Almighty wisdom, power and unchangeableness. Thus saith Yahweh, who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night … Yahweh of hosts is his name (Jer 31:35).
We have no writings of the early Hebrews other than the books of the Old Testament, and in them there is no record of any research into the mechanical explanation of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Nor should we expect to find in them a record of the research if such were made, since the purpose of Holy Scripture was, not to work out the relation of thing to thing – the inquiry to which modern science is devoted – but to reveal God to man. Therefore the lesson which is drawn from the observed ordinances of heaven is, not that the earth rotates on its axis or revolves round the sun, but that God is faithful to His purpose for mankind. Thus saith Yahweh: If my covenant of day and night stand not, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David my servant (Jer 33:25, Jer 33:26). And the glory of God which the heavens declare is not only His almighty power, but the image which the order and perfection of the heavenly movements supply of the law which He has revealed unto man. The speech that they utter, the knowledge that they show is: The law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul (Psa 19:7).
2. The Sun
(1) The Names for the Sun
Four words are translated sun in the Old Testament:
(a) ‘Or simply means light and is usually rendered thus, but in one instance (Job 31:26), being in antithesis to moon, it is given as sun, the great light-giver.
(b) Hammah means heat and is used for the sun when this is in association with lebhanah or snow-white for the moon, as in Isa 24:23, ‘Then the snow-white (moon) shall be confounded, and the heat (sun) ashamed,’ the antithesis being drawn between the cold light of the silver moon and the fiery radiance, of the glowing sun.
(c) Shemesh, the Samas of the Babylonians, is a primitive word, probably with the root meaning of ministrant. This is the word most frequently used for the sun, and we find it used topographically as, for instance, in Beth-shemesh, the house of the sun. Four places of this name are mentioned in the Old Testament: one in Judah, a Levitical city, to which the two milch kine bearing the ark took their straight way from the country of the Philistines; one on the border of Issachar; one in Naphtali, a fenced city; and one in Egypt, supposed to be the same as Heliopolis or On, the city of Asenath, wife of Joseph.
(d) Heres means blister or burning heat, from a root to scratch or be rough, and is an unusual term for the sun, and its precise rendering is sometimes in doubt. Once it is translated as itch, when it occurs amongst the evils threatened in the cursings that the six tribes uttered from Mount Ebal (Deu 28:27). Once it is certainly used of the sun itself when Job (Job 9:7) said of God, He commandeth the sun (heres or heres), and it riseth not. Once it is certainly the name of a hill, for Mount Heres was near Aijalon, on the borders of Judah and Dan. In another passage, authorities differ in their rendering, for when Gideon overcame Zebah and Zalmunna (Jdg 8:13), he returned from the battle, according to the King James Version, before the sun was up, but according to the Revised Version (British and American), from the ascent of Heres. In yet another passage (Jdg 14:18), when the Philistines answered Samson’s riddle, both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) translation heres as sun – before the sun went down. We moreover get slight variants of the same word, joined with kr (wall or fortress), in Kr-Hareseth (2Ki 3:25; Isa 16:7) and Kr-Heres (Isa 16:11; Jer 48:31, Jer 48:36). These are probably to be identified with the modern Kerak of Moab.
(2) The City of the Sun
But the most interesting reference is found in Isa 19:18 : In that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Yahweh of hosts; one shall be called The city of destruction. The word here rendered destruction is in Hebrew heres, which has that meaning, but Gesenius and other authorities would substitute for the initial letter, he, the letter, heth, which it so closely resembles, and so read it The city of the sun. With this reading it was identified with On, that is, Heliopolis (the city of the sun), and on this belief Onias, the son of Onias the high priest, persuaded Ptolemy Philometor to allow him to build a temple to Yahweh in that prefecture, 149 bc (Ant., XIII, iii, 1).
(3) The Greater Light-Giver
(a) Yet a fifth expression is used to denote the sun, and in one respect it is the most important and significant of all. In the creation narrative it is called the greater light or rather light-giver (ma’or): ‘And God made the two great light-givers; the greater light-giver to rule the day, and the lesser light-giver to rule the night: He made the stars also’ (Gen 1:16). The extreme simplicity of this passage is most significant. In marked contrast to the Bah creation poem, which by its more complex astronomy reveals its later origin (see post, section II, 12, Mazzaroth), the sun and moon have no distinctive names assigned to them; there is no recognition of the grouping of the stars into constellations, none of any of the planets. The celestial bodies could not be referred to in a more simple manner. And this simplicity is marred by no myth; there is not the faintest trace of the deification of sun or moon or stars; there is no anthropomorphic treatment, no suggestion that they formed the vehicles for spirits. They are described as they were observed when they were first noticed by men, simply as light-givers of different brightness. It is the expression of man’s earliest observation of the heavenly bodies, but it is real observation, free from any taint of savage fantasies; it marks the very first step in astronomy. No record, oral or written, has been preserved to us of a character more markedly primitive than this.
(4) The Purpose of the Sun
Two purposes for the great heavenly bodies are indicated in Gen 1:14, Gen 1:15. The sun and moon are appointed to give light and to measure time. These, from the human and practical point of view, are the two main services which they render to us.
Their purpose for measuring time by their movements will be taken up under another heading; but here it may be pointed out that when it is stated in the Book of The Wisdom of Solomon (7:18) that King Solomon knew the alternations of the solstices and the changes of seasons, the reference is to the whole cycle of changes from winter through summer back to winter again. From winter onward the places of sunrise and sunset move northward along the horizon until midsummer when for some days they show no change – the solstice is reached; then from midsummer onward the movement turns southward until midwinter, when again a solstice is reached, after which the places of sunrise and sunset again move northward. This changing place of sunrise is also referred to when God asked Job (Job 38:12-14): Hast thou caused the dayspring to know its place, and the passage goes on, It (the earth) is changed as clay under the seal; and all things stand forth as a garment. As the shapeless clay takes form under the pressure of the seal, as the garment, shapeless while folded up, takes form when the wearer puts it on, so the earth, shapeless during the darkness, takes form and relief and color with the impress upon it of the dawning light. In the New Testament when James (Jam 1:17) speaks of the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation (parallage), neither shadow that is cast by turning (trope) he is using astronomical technical terms for these same apparent movements of the sun.
(5) The Sun as a Type
But the apparent unchangeability of the sun makes it, as it were, a just measure of eternal duration (Psa 72:5, Psa 72:17). The penetration of its rays renders under the sun (Ecc 1:9) a fit expression for universality of place, and on the other hand the fierceness of its heat as experienced in Palestine makes it equally suitable as a type of oppression and disaster, so the sun is said, in Scripture, to smite those oppressed by its heat (Psa 121:6).
But it was in its light-giving and ministering power that the Hebrew writers used the sun as a type to set forth the power and beneficence of God. Words are the symbols of ideas and it was only by this double symbolism that it was possible to express in intelligible human speech, and to make men partly apprehend some of the attributes of God. So we find in the Ps of pilgrimage (Psa 84:11) Yahweh God is a sun and a shield; Malachi (Mal 4:2) foretells that the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings. But the old Hebrew writers were very guarded and careful in the symbolism they used, whether of word or illustration. Men in those days terribly perverted the benefits which they received through the sun, and made them the occasion and excuse for plunging into all kinds of nature worship and of abominable idolatries. It was not only clear thinking on the part of the sacred writers that made them refer all the benefits that came to them in the natural world direct to the action of God; it was a necessity for clean living. There is no bottom to the abyss in which men plunged when they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever (Rom 1:25).
In New Testament times, though men were no less prone to evil, the fashion of that evil was changing. The pillars of Beth-shemesh were broken down (Jer 43:13), idolatry was beginning to fall into disrepute and men were led away rather by the knowledge (gnosis) which is falsely so called (1Ti 6:20). The apostles could therefore use symbolism from the natural world more freely, and so we find John speaking of our Lord as There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world (Joh 1:9), and again, God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1Jo 1:5); and again, that the glory of the New Jerusalem shall be that the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb (Rev 21:23); while 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 of James that ‘Every good gift and 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’ (Jam 1:17 the English Revised Version).
3. The Moon
(1) The Names for the Moon
Three words are translated moon in the Old Testament, not including cases where month has been rendered moon for the sake of a more flowing sentence:
(a) Lebhanah, white; a poetic expression, used in connection with hammah, heat, for the sun.
(b) Hodhesh, new moon, meaning new, fresh. As the Hebrews reckoned their months from the actual first appearance of the young crescent, chodhesh is most frequently translated month. Thus In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month (Gen 7:11), and in the great majority of cases, the word for month is hodhesh, new moon. In Isa 66:23, from one new moon to another, should be literally, from new moon to new moon. Once it is rendered monthly (Isa 47:13), when it is used to denote the astrologers who fixed the omens of the opening month. Hodhesh, therefore, when translated new moon is not a designation of the actual heavenly body, but denotes the first day of the month. It is a term directly or indirectly connected with the calendar.
(c) Yareah, probably wandering, a very appropriate primitive term for the moon, since her motion among the stars from night to night is sufficiently rapid to have caught the attention of very early observers. Its use therefore as the proper name for the lesser light indicates that the systematic observation of the heavenly bodies had commenced, and that the motion of the moon, relative to the stars, had been recognized.
Yerah, month, is twice translated moon (Deu 33:14; Isa 60:20), but without any great reason for the variation in either case.
(2) The Lesser Light-Giver
The direct references in Scripture to the moon as a light-giver are not numerous, but those that occur are significant of the great importance of moonlight in ancient times, when artificial lights were few, expensive and dim, and the lighting of streets and roads was unthought of. To shepherds, the moon was of especial assistance, and many of the people of Israel maintained the habits of their forefathers and led the shepherd’s life long after the settlement of the nation in Palestine. The return of the moonlit portion of the month was therefore an occasion for rejoicing and for solemn thanks to God, and the new moon as well as the Sabbath was a day of special offerings. On the other hand one of the judgments threatened against the enemies of God was that the light of the moon should be withheld. The threat made against Pharaoh is I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light (Eze 32:7); and in the day of the Lord denounced against Babylon, The sun shall be darkened in its going forth, and the moon shall not cause its light to shine (Isa 13:10). But among the glories of the restoration of Israel it is promised that the light of the moon (lebhanah) shall be as the light of the sun (hammah) (Isa 30:26).
(3) Phases of the Moon
There is no direct mention of the phases of the moon in Scripture; a remarkable fact, and one that illustrates the foolishness of attempting to prove the ignorance of the sacred writers by the argument from silence, since it is not conceivable that men at any time were ignorant of the fact that the moon changes her apparent shape and size. So far from the Hebrews being plunged in such a depth of more than savage ignorance, they based their whole calendar on the actual observation of the first appearance of the young crescent. In two passages in the Revised Version (British and American) we find the expression at the full moon, keseh (Psa 81:3; Pro 7:20), but though this is what is intended, the literal meaning of the word is doubtful, and may be that given in the King James Version, at the day appointed. In another passage already quoted, there is a reference to the dark part of the month. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon (yerah, month) withdraw itself – the withdrawn part of the month being the time near new moon when the moon is nearly in conjunction with the sun and therefore invisible.
The periodical changes of the moon are its ordinances (Jer 31:35). It was also appointed for seasons (Psa 104:19), that is, for religious assemblies or feasts (moadhm). Two of these were held at the full of the moon, the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles; one at the new moon, the Feast of Trumpets; but the ordinary new moon did not rank among the great appointed feasts (moadhm). As light-giver, assisting men in their labors with the flock and in the field and helping them on their journeys; as time-measurer, indicating the progress of the months and the seasons for the great religious festivals, the moon was to the pious Hebrew an evidence of the goodness and wisdom of God.
The round tires like the moon worn by the daughters of Zion (Isa 3:18 the King James Version), and those on the camels of Zeba and Zalmunna (Jdg 8:21 King James Version, margin), were designated by the same Hebrew word, saharonm, translated in the Vulgate (Jerome’s Latin Bible, 390-405 ad) as lunulae, and were little round ornaments, probably round like crescents, not discs like the full moon.
Jericho possibly means the city of the moon, and Jerah, moon, was the name of one of the sons of Joktan.
4. Signs
(1) Solar and Lunar Eclipses
The sun and moon were not only given for days and years (Gen 1:14), but also for signs, and in no way do they better fulfill what was in the old time understood by this word than in their eclipses. Nothing in Nature is more impressive than a total eclipse of the sun; the mysterious darkness, the sudden cold, the shining forth of the weird corona, seen at no other time, affect even those who know its cause, and strike unspeakable terror in those who cannot foresee or understand it. In bygone ages an eclipse of the sun was counted an omen of disaster, indeed as itself the worst of disasters, by all nations except that one to whom the word of the prophet came: Learn not the way of the nations, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the nations are dismayed at them (Jer 10:2). To the Hebrew prophets, eclipses were signs of the power and authority of God who forbade them to be alarmed at portents which distressed the heathen.
The phenomena of both solar and lunar eclipses are briefly but unmistakably described by several of the prophets. Joel refers to them twice (Joe 2:10, Joe 2:31), the second time very definitely: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, and this was quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost (Act 2:19, Act 2:20). John also says that when the sixth seal was opened the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood (Rev 6:12). When the new moon in its revolution or turning comes exactly between the earth and the sun, and its shadow – the shadow that is cast by turning of Jam 1:17 – falls on the earth, the sun is completely hidden and its glowing discovered is replaced by the dark body of the moon; the sun is turned into darkness. When the shadow of the earth falls upon the full moon, and the only rays from the sun that reach it have passed through an immense thickness of our atmosphere and are therefore of a dull copper-red color like clotted blood, the moon is turned into blood.
(2) The Wings of the Morning
But a solar eclipse is not solely darkness and terror. Scarcely has the dark moon hidden the last thread of sunlight than a beautiful pearly halo, the corona, is seen surrounding the blackness. This corona changes its shape from one eclipse to another, but the simplest form is that of a bright ring with outstretched wings, and is characteristic of times when the sun has but few spots upon it. This form appears to have been the origin of the sacred symbol of the ring or discovered with wings, so frequently figured on Egyptian, Babylonian and Persian monuments. It is possible that these coronal wings of the sun may have been in the mind of the prophet Malachi when he wrote, Unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings (Mal 4:2). The metaphor wings of the morning of Psa 139:9 is however more probably due to the long streamers, the crepuscular rays, seen at dawn when the sun rises behind a low bank of clouds.
Total eclipses of the moon must frequently have been visible in Palestine as in other countries, but only two or three total eclipses of the sun were visible there during Old Testament history; that of 831 bc, August 15, was total in Judea, and that of 824 bc, April 2, very nearly total. It has been suggested that two eclipses of the sun were predicted in the Old Testament – that of Nineveh, 763 bc, June 15, in Amo 8:9, and that of Thales, 585 bc, May 28, in Isa 13:10, but the suggestion has little to support it.
5. Seasons
(1) The Meaning of the Word
The sun and moon were appointed to give light upon the earth, and for signs, and for days and years. They were also appointed for seasons (moadhm), i.e. appointed assemblies. These seasons were not primarily such seasons as the progress of the year brings forth in the form of changes of weather or of the condition of vegetation; they were seasons for worship. The word moedh occurs some 219 times; in 149, it is translated congregation, and in about 50 other instances by solemn assembly or some equivalent expression. Thus before ever man was created, God had provided for him times to worship and had appointed two great lights of heaven to serve as signals to call to it.
The appointed sacred seasons of the Jews form a most complete and symmetrical series, developing from times indicated by the sun alone to times indicated by the sun and moon together, and completed in times indicated by luni-solar cycles.
(2) Natural Seasons for Worship
The sun alone indicated the hours for daily worship; at sunrise, when the day began, there was the morning sacrifice; at sunset, when the day closed, there was the evening sacrifice.
The moon indicated the time for monthly worship; when the slender crescent of the new moon was first seen in the western sky, special sacrifices were ordained with the blowing of trumpets over them.
The sun and moon together marked the times for the two great religious festivals of the year. At the beginning of the bright part of the year, when the moon was full in the first month of spring, the Passover, followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, was held. At the end of the bright part of the year, when the moon was full in the first month of autumn, the Feast of Tabernacles was held. These may all be termed natural seasons for worship, obviously marked out as appropriate. The beginning and close of the bright part of the day, and of the bright part of the year, and the beginning of the bright part of the month, have been observed by many nations.
(3) The Hallowing of the Seventh
But that which was distinctive in the system of the Jewish festivals was the hallowing of the seventh: the seventh day, the seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh year were all specially marked out. The sun alone indicated the Sabbath by the application of the sacred number seven to the unit of time given by the day. For the period of seven days, the week was not dependent upon any phase of the moon’s relation to the sun; it was not a quarter month, but a free week, running on independently of the month. The Jewish Sabbath therefore differed from the Babylonian, which was tied to the lunar month. The same principle was applied also to the year; every seventh year was set apart, as a period of rest, the Sabbatic year.
Every seventh day, every seventh year, was thus observed. But for the week and month, the principle of hallowing the seventh came into operation only once in each year. The Feast of Pentecost, or as it was also called, the Feast of Weeks, was held at the close of the seventh week from the morrow after the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread; and the new moon of the seventh month was held as a special feast, the Feast of Trumpets, a holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work (Lev 23:24, Lev 23:25). The other new moons of the year were not thus distinguished.
The weekly Sabbath, the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feasts of Trumpets and of Tabernacles, with one other day of solemnity, were in an especial sense, the moadhm of the Lord.
The seventh day was especially the day of worship, and to correspond, the seventh month was especially the month of worship; and this, not only because it was ushered in with peculiar solemnity, and included one of the chief great feasts of the year, but because it furnished the culminating ceremony of the entire Jewish system, the great Day of Atonement, held on the tenth day of the month, and therefore on a day not marked directly by any phase of the moon. The Day of Atonement purged away the offenses of the past year, and restored Israel to the full enjoyment of the Divine favor.
(4) The Jubilee a Luni-Solar Cycle
The Jewish month was a natural month, based upon the actual observation of the young crescent. The Jewish year was a natural year, that is, a solar tropical year, based upon actual observation of the ripening of the grain. But there is not an exact number of days in a lunar month, nor is there an exact number of months in a solar year; twelve lunar months falling short of the year, by eleven days; so that in three years the error would amount to more than a complete month, and to restore the balance a thirteenth month would have to be intercalated. As the months were determined from actual observation, and as observation would be interrupted from time to time by unfavorable weather, it was necessary to have some means for determining when intercalation would take place, irrespective of it. And this was provided by carrying the principle of hallowing the seventh, one stage farther. Not only was the seventh of the day, week, month and year distinguished, but the seventh week of years was marked by the blowing of the trumpet of Jubilee on the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement meant the restitution of Israel to the Divine favor; the blowing of the trumpet of Jubilee every forty-ninth year meant the restitution of all things; every Hebrew in servitude returned to freedom, all land, mortgaged or sold, returned to its original owner.
And this period of 49 solar years was astronomically a period of restitution, for the sun and moon returned nearly to their original positions relative to each other, since 49 solar years are 606 lunar months with an error of only 32 hours. So that though the Jubilee period is not a perfect lunar cycle, it was quite exact enough to guide the Jewish priests in drawing up their calendar in cases where the failure of observation had given rise to some doubt.
The beginning of each month was marked by the blowing of the two silver trumpets (hacocerah: Num 10:2, Num 10:10). The beginning of the civil, that is to say, of the agricultural year, was marked by a special blowing of trumpets (teruah), giving the name Feast of Trumpets to that new moon (Lev 23:24; Num 29:1). And the beginning of a new cycle of 49 years was marked by the Jubilee, the loud trumpet (shophar: Lev 25:9). Thus the cycle of the Jubilee made symmetrical, completed, and welded together all the moadhm of the Lord – the two great lights were set for seasons.
(5) The 19-Year Luni-Solar Cycle
The cycle of the Jubilee was sufficient for the purposes of the religious calendar so long as the nation inhabited its own land, since from its small extent there would be no conflict of time reckoning and it would be easy to notify the appearance of the new moon from one end of the country to the other. But after the captivities, when the people were scattered from Gozan of the Medes to Syene on the Nile, it was necessary to devise some method by which the Jews, however far they had been dispersed, would be able to reckon for themselves as to when the moon was new for Jerusalem. We have lately learned from the discovery of a number of Aramaic papyri at Syene that there was a colony of Jews there who used a calendar constructed, not from observation, but from calculation based upon a very exact luni-solar cycle (E. B. Knobel, Ancient Jewish Calendar Dates in Aramaic Papyri, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, LXVIII, 334). This cycle, known to us by the name of its supposed discoverer, Meton, is one of 19 years, which is only two hours short of 235 complete months. As this Jewish colony appears to have been founded after Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem by some of the refugees who fled into Egypt with Johanan the son of Kareah (Jer 40 through 44), this acquaintance with the Metonic cycle cannot have been due to Babylonian influence. Nor can it have been due to Egyptian, since the Egyptians did not use or require any such cycle, their year being a solar one of 365 days. Indeed no other nation appears to have been aware of it until, a generation later, Meton, the Athenian, won immortal fame by announcing it. The evidence of these Syene papyri renders it probable that Meton did not himself discover the cycle but learned it from Jewish sources. Many of the Semitic nations used, like the Jews, a natural month in conjunction with the natural year, but the Jews were the most likely to have discovered this cycle, since they alone had their worship centralized at a single shrine which became, in consequence, their standard observatory for their observation of the new moon. These observations, therefore, would all be comparable, and during the 400 years that the Temple stood, it must have been quite clear to them that the 19-year cycle not only gave them seven, the sacred number, of intercalated months, but brought the setting places of the new moons to the same points of the western horizon and in the same order.
It is clear from the evidence of these Syene papyri that the Jews, there, used the 19-year cycle both for fixing the day of the new moon, and in order to determine when a thirteenth month had to be intercalated, an illustration of the futility of the argument from silence, for so far from there being any notice in Scripture of the use of a cycle for determining intercalation, there is no mention of intercalation at all.
(6) The Jewish Ritual Prexilic
Ever since this date of the Captivity, the 19-year cycle has been used by the Jews, and it gives to us the Golden Number which is employed in fixing the date of Easter in our own ecclesiastical calendar. Since the 19-year cycle has been in use ever since the Captivity, the 49-year cycle, the Jubilee, cannot have been an exilic or post-exilic innovation. In this fact we find the decision of the controversy which has so long divided critics as to whether the ritual legislation of the Jews dated from before or from after their captivity. We may take Kuenen as representing the more recent school: Even the later prophets and historians, but more especially and emphatically those that lived before the Exile, were unacquainted with any ritual legislation, and specifically with that which has come down to us (The Hexateuch, 273-74). In determining its antiquity we must begin by considering its relation to Deuteronomy, to which it is evidently subsequent…. This comes out most clearly in the legislation concerning the feasts. Other indications though less unequivocal, plead for the same relationship. In the next place the legislation itself gives evidence of the date of its origin, and those data which justify a positive inference point to the Babylonian captivity…. It would follow that the ‘legislation of sanctity’ arose in the second half of the Babylonian captivity, presumably shortly before its close; and there is not a single valid objection to this date (ibid., 276). Kuenen was evidently unaware of the astronomical relations concerned in the ritual legislation, and was unable to anticipate the striking discoveries made from the Syene papyri. More recent knowledge has reversed the verdict which he pronounced so confidently. The traditional view, that the Hebrew ritual preceded the Captivity, was correct. For the Jubilee, with which the Day of Atonement was bound up, was both the culmination and the completion of the entire ritual, and, since the period of the Jubilee, as a luni-solar cycle, was prexilic, the ritual, as a system, must have been prexilic likewise.
(7) The Luni-Solar Cycles of Daniel
The seasons for which the sun and moon were appointed are mentioned in yet another connection. In the last vision given to Daniel the question was asked, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? and it was answered, It shall be for a time, times (dual), and a half; and when they have made an end of breaking in pieces the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished (Dan 12:6, Dan 12:7). From the parallel passage in Dan 7:25, where it is said of the fourth beast, He shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a time (iddan) and times (dual) and half a time, it is inferred that moedh in the first instance stands, like iddan in the second, for a year; or the period is equivalent to half a week of years. The parallel passages in Rev 11:2, Rev 11:3; Rev 12:6, Rev 12:14; Rev 13:5 have caused these years to be taken as conventional years of 360 days, each year being made up of 12 conventional months of 30 days, and on the year-day principle of interpretation, the entire period indicated would be one of 1,260 tropical years. This again is a luni-solar cycle, since 1,260 years contain 15,584 months correct to the nearest day. To the same prophet Daniel a further chronological vision was given, and a yet more perfect cycle indicated. In answer to the question, How long shall be the vision concerning the continual burnt-offering, and the transgression that maketh desolate, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? the answer was returned, Unto two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed (Dan 8:13, Dan 8:14). Whatever may be the prophetic significance of the passage its astronomical significance is clear: 840,057 days are precisely 2,300 solar years, or 28,447 lunar months, or 30,487 anomalistic months, the anomalistic month being the period in which the moon travels from perigee to perigee. It is the most perfect lunisolar cycle known, and restores the two great lights exactly to their former relationship. This fullest season indicated by the sun and moon is given as that for the cleansing of the sanctuary, for the bringing in, as it were, of the full and perfect Jubilee.
It is not possible at present to decide as to whether the Jews had learnt of this cycle and its significance from their astronomical observations. If so, they must have been far in advance in mathematical science of all other nations of antiquity. If not, then it must have been given to them by Divine revelation, and its astronomical significance has been left for modern science to reveal.
6. The Stars
As with the sun and moon, the stars are regarded under the two aspects of light-givers and time-measurers; or, in other words, as marking the seasons.
(1) Their Number
But two other ideas are also strongly dwelt upon; the stars and the heaven of which they form the host are used to express the superlatives of number and of height. Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them (Gen 15:5); As the host of heaven cannot be numbered (Jer 33:22) are a few of the passages in which the stars are used for limitless number. Those separately visible to the naked eye at any one time do not exceed 2,000 in number, but it was just as evident to the Hebrews of old, as it was to Ptolemy, the astronomer of Alexandria, that beside the stars separately visible, there is a background, a patterned curtain of light, which indicates by its granular and mottled appearance that it is made up of countless myriads of stars, too faint to be individually detected, too close to be individually defined. The most striking feature of this curtain is the grand stellar stream that we call the Milky Way, but the mind easily recognizes that the minute points of light, composing its pattern, are as really stars as the great leaders of the constellations. Later astronomy has confirmed the testimony of the prophets that the stars are without number. The earliest star catalogue, that of Hipparchus, contained a little over one thousand stars; the great International Photographic Chart will show the images of more than fifty millions, and there are photographs which show more than a hundred thousand stars on a single plate. The limit that has been reached is due only to the limited power of our telescopes or the limited time of exposure of the photographs, not to any limitation in the number of stars. To us today, as to the Psalmist of old, it is a token of the infinite power and knowledge of God that He telleth the number of the stars; He giveth them all their names (Psa 147:4 the King James Version).
(2) Their Distance
As regards the height, that is to say, the distance of the stars, this is immeasurable except in a very few cases. By using as a base line the enormous diameter of the earth’s orbit – 186,000,000 miles – astronomers have been able to get a hint as to the distance of some 40 or 50 stars. Of these the nearest, Alpha Centauri, is distant about twenty-five millions of millions of miles; the brighter stars are on the average quite ten times as far; whilst of the distances of the untold millions of stars beyond, we have no gauge. For us, as for King Solomon, the heaven of the stars is for height (Pro 25:3), for a height that is beyond measure, giving us therefore the only fitting image for the immensity of God. So Zophar the Naamathite asked, Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? And Eliphaz the Temanite reiterated the same thought, Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are! (Job 11:7, Job 11:8; Job 22:12). And the height of the heaven, that is to say, the distance of the stars, stands as a symbol, not only of God’s infinitude, but of His faithfulness and of His mercy: Thus saith Yahweh: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then will I also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith Yahweh (Jer 31:37). And the Psalmist sings, For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him (Psa 103:11 the King James Version).
(3) Their Brightness
The stars are not all of equal brightness; a fact alluded to by Paul when he wrote that one star differeth from another star in glory (1Co 15:41). The ancient Greek astronomers divided the stars according to their brightness into six classes or magnitudes, to use the modern technical term, the average star in any particular magnitude giving about two and a half times as much light as the average star of the next magnitude.
Just as the number of the stars and their ordered movement led them to be considered as a mighty army, the host of heaven, and as a type of that other celestial host, the holy angels, so the individual stars are taken as fitly setting forth, by their brightness and exalted position, spiritual powers and intelligences, whether these are the angels of God, as in Job 38:7, or rulers of churches, as in Rev 1:20. The same image is naturally applied in a yet higher sense to Christ Himself, who is the star out of Jacob (Num 24:17), and the bright, the morning star (Rev 22:16; 2Pe 1:19).
7. Morning Stars
The Stars as a Dial
In ancient times there were two methods by which the progress of the year could be learned from observation of the heavens. The sun was for seasons, and the change in its place of rising or of setting supplied the first method. The second method was supplied by the stars. For as the Hebrew shepherds, such as Jacob, Moses, David and Amos, kept watch over their flocks by night, they saw the silent procession of the stars through the hours of darkness, and knew without clock or timepiece how they were progressing. They noticed what stars were rising in the East, what stars were culminating in the South, what were setting in the West, and how the northern stars, always visible, like a great dial, were turning. But as the eastern horizon began to brighten toward the dawn, they would specially note what stars were the last to rise before their shining was drowned in the growing light of day. These, the last stars to appear in the East before sunrise, were the morning stars, the heralds of the sun. As morning followed morning, these morning stars would be seen earlier and earlier, and therefore for a longer time before they disappeared in the dawn, until some morning, other stars, unseen before, would shine out for a few moments, and thus supplant the stars seen earlier as the actual heralds of the sun. Such a first appearance of a star was termed by the Greek astronomers its heliacal rising, and the mention in Scripture of morning stars, or stars of the twilight (Job 38:7; Job 3:9), shows that the Hebrews like the Greeks were familiar with this feature of the ordinances of heaven, and noted the progress of the year by observation of the apparent changes of the celestial host. One star would herald the beginning of spring, another the coming of winter; the time to plow, the time to sow, the time of the rains would all be indicated by successive morning stars as they appeared.
8. Falling Stars
(1) Meteorites
Meteors are not stars at all in the popular sense of the word, but are quite small bodies drawn into our atmosphere, and rendered luminous for a few moments by the friction of their rush through it. But as they have been shown not to be mere distempers of the air, as they were considered at one time, but bodies of a truly planetary nature, traveling round the sun in orbits as defined as that of the earth itself, the epithet is quite appropriate to them. They are astronomical and not merely terrestrial bodies. Meteors are most striking either when they are seen as solitary aerolites or when they fall in some great shower. The most celebrated shower which seemed to radiate from the constellation Leo – and hence called the Leonid – gave for centuries a magnificent spectacle every thirty-Three years; the last great occasion having been on November 14, 1866. Those who saw that shower could appreciate the vivid description given by John when he wrote, The stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind (Rev 6:13), for the meteors fell like autumn leaves, driven by a great storm, as numerous and as fast. The prophet Isaiah also used a very similar figure (Isa 34:4).
(2) The Star Wormwood.
Such great meteoric showers are most impressive spectacles, but solitary meteors are sometimes hardly less striking. Bolides or aerolites, as such great solitary meteors are termed, are apparently of great size, and are sometimes so brilliant as to light up the sky even in broad daylight. Such a phenomenon is referred to by John in his description of the star Wormwood: There fell from heaven a great star, burning as a torch (Rev 8:10). Such aerolites are not entirely consumed in their passage through our atmosphere, but portions of them reach the ground, and in some cases large masses have been found intact. These are generally of a stony nature, but others are either almost pure iron or contain much of that metal. Such a meteoric stone was used as the pedestal of the image of the goddess Diana at Ephesus, and the townclerk of the city referred to this circumstance when he reminded the Ephesians that their city was temple-keeper of the great Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter (Act 19:35).
9. Wandering Stars
It has already been noted that the moon may perhaps have received its Hebrew name from the fact of its being a wanderer among the stars, but there is no direct and explicit reference in Scripture to other celestial wanderers except in Jud 1:13 : Wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved for ever. These asteres planetai are not our planets, but either meteors or comets, more probably the latter, as meteors are more appropriately described as falling stars.
(1) Comets as a Spiritual Type
But as comets and meteors are intimately connected with each other – meteors being in many cases the dbris of comets – the simile applies to either. False professors of religion, unstable or apostate teachers, are utterly unlike the stars which shine forth in heaven for ever, but are fitly represented by comets, which are seen only for a few weeks or days, and then are entirely lost to sight, or by meteors, which flash out for a few moments, and are then totally extinguished.
All the great comets, all the comets that have been conspicuous to the naked eye, with the single exception of that named after Halley, have appeared but once within the period of human records and Halley’s Comet only takes 80 days to traverse that part of its orbit which lies within the orbit of the earth; the rest of its period of revolution – 76 years – is passed outside that boundary, and for 38 years at a time it remains outside the orbit of Neptune, more than 2,800,000,000 miles from the sun. The other great comets have only visited our neighborhood once within our experience.
(2) Comets Referred to in Scripture?
The question has been raised whether the appearance of comets is ever referred to in Scripture. Josephus, speaking of the signs which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, says, Thus there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year (BJ, VI, v, 3). The star resembling a sword was doubtless the return of Halley’s Comet in 66 ad, and the phrase used by Josephus has suggested that it was a stellar phenomenon that is referred to in 1Ch 21:16 : The angel of Yahweh … between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. But this, and the corresponding suggestion as to the nature of the flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life (Gen 3:24), are unsupported conjectures not worthy of attention. The astronomer Pingre thought that the first vision of Jeremiah of the rod of an almond tree and of a boiling caldron (Jer 1:11, Jer 1:13) had its physical basis in a return of Halley’s Comet, and other commentators have thought that cometary appearances were described in the pillars of smoke of Joe 2:30; but none of these suggestions appear to have plausibility.
II. The Constellations
The principal achievement of the science of astronomy in the centuries during which the books of the Old Testament were written was the arrangement and naming of the constellations, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the same system was known to the Hebrews as that which has been handed down to us through the Greek astronomers. Paul certainly knew the Greek constellations, for in his sermon on Mars’ Hill (Act 17:28) he quoted from that poetical description of them which Aratus the great poet of Cilicia had written about 270 bc. But these constellations have a much greater antiquity than this, and it is probable that they were well known to Abraham before he left Ur of the Chaldees. It has been frequently shown (The Astronomy of the Bible, 158; Astronomy without a Telescope, 5) that these constellations themselves supply evidence that they were designed about 2700 bc. They thus antedated the time of Abraham by some centuries, and since some of their most characteristic forms are found upon old Babylonian boundary stones, it is clear that they were known in the country from whence he came out.
1. Nachash, the Crooked Serpent
The direct references to these old constellation-forms in Scripture are not numerous. One of the clearest is in Job 26:13, where formed the crooked serpent (the King James Version) is used as the correlative of garnished the heavens; the great constellation of the writhing Dragon, placed at the crown of the heavens, being used, metaphorically, as an expression for all the constellations of the sky. For by its folds it encircles both the poles, that of the equator and that of the ecliptic.
2. Leviathan
The term barah, rendered crooked but better as in the Revised Version, margin as fleeing, is applied by Isaiah to Leviathan (liwyathan: Isa 27:1), properly a wreathed or writhing animal, twisted in folds, and hence also called by the prophet akallathon, crooked, twisted, or winding; a very appropriate designation for Draco, the great polar Dragon. But the latter was not the only crooked serpent in the constellations; there were three others, two of which were placed with an astronomical significance not less precise than the coiling of Draco round the poles. Hydra, the Watersnake, marked out the original celestial equator for about one-third of its circumference, and Serpens, the Adder, lay partly along the celestial equator and then was twisted up the autumnal colure, and reached the zenith with its head.
The arrangement of the twelve signs of the zodiac to mark out the apparent yearly path of the sun, and of these three serpent-forms to hold their respective and significant positions in the heavens, shows that a real progress in astronomy had been made before the constellations were designed, and that their places were allotted to these figures on a definite astronomical plan.
3. The Seed of the Woman
A further purpose is shown by the relation of the three serpents to the neighboring figures, and it is clear that the history preserved in Gen 3 was known to the designers of the constellations, and that they wished to perpetuate its memory by means of the stellar frescoes. For the constellations, Scorpio, Ophiuchus and Serpens, show us a man strangling a snake and standing on a scorpion; the head of the latter he crushes with one foot, but his other foot is wounded by its reverted sting. When these three constellations were due South, that is to say, at midnight in spring-time, Hercules and Draco were due north, and presented the picture of a man kneeling on one knee, and pressing down with his other foot the head of the great northern serpent or dragon. During the winter midnight the zodiacal constellation on the meridian was the Virgin, figured as a woman holding an ear of corn in her hand, while beneath her the immense length of Hydra was stretched out upon its belly in the attitude of a snake when fleeing at full speed. These figures are evidently meant to set forth in picture that which is expressed in word in Gen 3:14, Gen 3:15, And Yahweh God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
4. The Bow Set in the Cloud
Nor is this the only narrative in Genesis which finds a parallel in the constellations. Among the southern groups we find a ship Argo that has grounded on a rock; and close to it stands a figure, Centaurus, who is apparently slaying an animal, Lupus, beside an Altar. The cloud of smoke arising from the Altar is represented by the Milky Way, and in the midst of the cloud there is set the Bow of the Archer, Sagittarius. Here there seems to be pictured the covenant made with Noah after he offered his sacrifice when he left the ark: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth (Gen 9:13). Thus the constellations, designed several centuries before the time of Abraham, clearly express a knowledge, and appear designed to preserve a remembrance of the two first promises made by God to mankind as recorded in the early chapters of Gen.
There is no need to assume, as some writers have done, that all the 48 primitive constellations were of Divine origin, or even that any of them were. If some of the early astronomers possessed in one form or another the histories that we have in Gen 3; 8 and 9, it would not be unnatural for them to attempt to preserve a memorial of them in the heavens by associating these figures with the stars.
It does not follow that all the old constellations have an analogous significance, or that if they have, we should now be able to detect it, and a great deal of ingenuity has been wasted in the attempt to convert the old 48 constellations into a sort of gospel in hieroglyphic. Interpretations of this order were current quite early in Christian times, for they are denounced at considerable length and in detail by Hippolytus in his Refutation of All the Heresies, circa 210 ad. Their revival in recent years is chiefly due to Mazzaroth, a series of papers by the late Miss Frances Rolleston in which fanciful etymologies were given to the Arabic names by which the principal stars are known. These names, for the most part, simply indicate the places which the stars were severally supposed to hold in the figures to which they were assigned, and Miss Rolleston’s derivations for them are quite misleading and unfounded. Nevertheless her results have been blindly accepted by a number of writers.
5. The Dragon of Eclipse
The peculiar arrangement of the serpent forms in the constellations, and especially the position allotted to Hydra, extended along the equator with its head near the spring equinox and its tail near that of autumn, appears to have given rise to the terms Dragon’s Head (omega) and Dragon’s Tail (an upside-down omega), for the nodes or points of intersection of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the sun) with the celestial equator, and hence for nodes in general. As eclipses of the sun and moon can only occur when those bodies are near the nodes of the moon’s orbit, that is, near the Dragon’s Head or Tail, the myth seems to have arisen that such eclipses were due to one or other of the two great lights being swallowed by a dragon, and a reference to this myth is found in Job 3:8 : Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready (the Revised Version, margin: skillful) to rouse up leviathan. The persons referred to are the magicians who pretended to be able by their incantations to cause an eclipse of the sun by bringing up the mythical dragon that was supposed to devour it. Astronomical nomenclature still retains a trace of these old expressions, for the time taken by the moon to pass from one node to the same node again is still called a draconic month, a month of the dragon.
6. Joseph’s Dream
If we realize that the Hebrews were quite familiar with the same constellation figures that we have inherited through the Greeks, several indirect allusions to them gain an added meaning. Thus Joseph dreamed that the sun and the moon and eleven stars made obeisance to him (Gen 37:9). The twelve constellations of the zodiac are the twelve among which the sun and moon move, and thus constitute, as it were, their family. Eleven of them therefore represented eleven sons of Jacob, Joseph himself being of course the twelfth. There is some evidence that the time came when the suggestion of this dream was acted upon to the extent that some of the tribes adopted certain of the constellation figures by way of crest or armorial bearing. In Nu 2 it is stated that each of the four camps into which the host of Israel was divided had its own standard:
7. The Standards of the Tribes
Neither the Mosaic law nor the Old Testament generally gives us any intimation as to the form or character of the standard (deghel). According to rabbinical tradition, the standard of Judah bore the figure of a lion, that of Reuben the likeness of a man, or of a man’s head, that of Ephraim the figure of an ox, and that of Dan the figure of an eagle; so that the four living creatures united in the cherubic forms described by Ezekiel were represented upon these four standards (Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Pentateuch, III, 17). A variant of this tradition gives as the standard of Reuben, unstable as water (Gen 49:4 the King James Version), a Man and a River, and of Dan, Dan shall be a serpent in the way (Gen 49:17), an Eagle and a Serpent. These four forms are also found in the constellations in the four quarters of the heavens. Aquarius, the man with a stream of water, and Leo were the original zodiacal constellations of the two solstices, Taurus was that of the spring equinox, and Aquila and Serpens were close to the autumnal equinox, the latter being actually upon the colure.
8. The Cherubim
This distribution of the four cherubic forms in the four quarters of heaven gives a special significance to the invocation used by Hezekiah and the Psalmist, Thou that dwellest between the cherubims (Isa 37:16 King James Version: Psa 80:1 the King James Version). The Shekinah glory rested indeed between the golden cherubim over the ark in the Holy of Holies, but the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands (Act 7:48), and the same cherubic forms were pictured on the curtains of the heavens. Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee (1Ki 8:27); ‘Thou dwellest between the cherubim,’ filling the infinite expanse of the stellar universe.
9. Balaam’s Prophecy
When Balaam saw Israel dwelling according to their tribes; and the Spirit of God came upon him (Num 24:2), it was not unnatural that he should allude in his prophecy to the great standards which he would see floating above the camps, and three of the four appear to be indicated: the bull of Joseph – He hath as it were the strength of the wild-ox; the lion of Judah – He lay down as a lion and as a great lion, the King James Version; and Aquarius, the man pouring out a stream of water from a pitcher, the cognizance of Reuben – Water shall flow from his buckets (Num 24:7, Num 24:8, Num 24:9).
In a similar way when the prophets refer to the enemies of Israel under the figure of dragons or reptiles, there seems occasionally an indirect reference to the serpents that represent the powers of evil in the pictures that have been associated with the star groups. Thus in Isa 27:1, the English Revised Version, it is prophesied that the Lord shall punish leviathan the swift serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea; the first allusion being appropriate to the attitude of Hydra, the second to Draco, the third to Cetus. Whilst the group of constellations, Andromeda, Cetus and Eridanus, the woman persecuted by a dragon that casts a river out of its mouth, a river which flowing down below the horizon appears to be swallowed up by the earth, would seem to have furnished John with some of the material for the imagery of Rev 12 in his great vision.
Besides references direct or indirect to the familiar constellation figures, four special astronomical terms occur in the Hebrew of the Old Testament which have given rise to much discussion. These are Kmah, Kesl, Mazzaroth and Ayish. The tradition of their significance had been lost before the Septuagint translation was made, but it may be taken as practically certain that the renderings given in the Revised Version (British and American) are substantially correct.
10. Pleiades
The word Kimah occurs in three passages, in each case in conjunction with Kesl (Amo 5:8; Job 9:9; Job 38:31). It apparently means a heap or cluster, and is hence especially applicable to the beautiful little group of the Pleiades, the most conspicuous star cluster visible to the naked eye. There is the less uncertainty about this identification since kima is the term generally used in Syriac literature to denote the Pleiades.
Six stars can now easily be seen by any good sight, but very keen-sighted persons can detect more; thus Maestlin, the tutor of Kepler, mapped 11 before the invention of the telescope, and in recent times Carrington and Denning have counted 14 with the naked eye. Still, 6 is the number visible to most persons, though there is a curiously widespread and uniform tradition that they once were seven who now are six, and seven is the number almost always assigned to them in literature. Hesiod calls them the seven sisters, the Virgin stars, and Milton, the seven Atlantic sisters, as representing the daughters of Atlas. Many of the Greek poets, however, regarded them as Peleiades, rock pigeons, doves, flying from the hunter Orion; but whether they have been considered as representing doves or maidens, seven has still been their traditional number. Possibly one of the group has declined in brightness in the course of the centuries; Alcyone would seem to have increased in brightness, for though now the brightest, it is not one of the four that figure in Ptolemy’s Catalogue, and if one has increased in brightness, others may have diminished. In the telescope many hundreds of stars are visible. The photographic plate has registered thousands and shows the principal stars as enveloped and threaded together by delicate streams of nebulous matter, the stars shining on these filamentous lines of light like pearls upon a string. This, the appearance of the Pleiades on the best modern photographs, would be strikingly appropriate to the rendering of Job 38:31, which has been adopted in the Revised Version (British and American), Canst thou bind the cluster (m chain) of the Pleiades? and the question put to Job would be equivalent to asking him if it were his power that had brought together the Pleiades and bound them in so compact a cluster. This rendering which involves the reading maanaddoth is supported by the Septuagint, and all the early versions, and hence by nearly all Orientalists. The reading in Massoretic Text, maadhannoth, that is to say, dainties or delights, and adopted in the King James Version, where the word is paraphrased as sweet influences, is however correct, as will be shown below.
The designation of the group as that of the seven stars gives a special significance to one of the details of the vision of John: I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man,… And He had in his right hand seven stars:… The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven churches (Rev 1:12, Rev 1:13, Rev 1:16, Rev 1:20). The seven stars in a single compact cluster shining as one, furnish an image of the church in its many diversities and its essential unity.
It may be well to correct here a certain widely diffused error. When it was discovered that the sun itself with all its attendant planets was traveling rapidly through space, the German astronomer Madler hazarded the suggestion that the center of the sun’s motion, the attracting body that governed it, might lie in the group of the Pleiades, and this suggestion has been quoted in many popular writings as if it were a demonstrated fact. It soon became evident that there was no sufficient ground for the suggestion, and the idea has been entirely abandoned by astronomers.
11. Orion
The word Kesl as denominating a constellation occurs in the singular number in three passages, and in each it is placed in antithesis to Kmah. In a fourth passage (Isa 13:10) it occurs by itself and is in the plural. There is no doubt as to the significance of the word in its common use. In 70 cases it is translated either fool or foolish. It does not signify a weak-minded person, so much as a violent, impious, self-confident one. As a star name, it is probably rightly considered to refer to the glorious constellation of Orion. According to an old tradition, the name of Nimrod, mentioned in Gen 10:10, as the founder of Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh, was given by his courtiers to this most brilliant of all the constellations, one that by its form somewhat suggests a gigantic warrior armed for the fight. Until recently it was not found possible to identify the Nimrod of Scripture with any Babylonian monarch until Dr. T. G. Pinches suggested that Nimrod was a deliberate Hebrew transmutation of Marduk, the name of the great Babylonian national hero, and chief deity of their pantheon. The change was brought about by making the root triliteral, and the ending uk (ak) in Merodach-Baladan disappearing first, Marduk appeared as Marad. This was connected with the root maradh, ‘to be rebellious,’ and the word was still further mutilated, or rather deformed, by having a ni attached, assimilating it to a certain extent to the niphal forms of the Hebrew verbs, and making a change altogether in conformity with the genius of the Hebrew language (The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records of Assyria and Babylonia, 129-30). In the very brief reference to Nimrod in Gen 10:8, Gen 10:9, he is three times overemphatically termed gibbor, a mighty (one) and this has been the name of this constellation among Syrians, Arabs and Jews for many centuries. Indeed 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 Jabbar, though now one of the fainter stars near it more generally bears that name. The word Kesl as applied to this constellation would parallel closely the etymology suggested for the name Merodach, by its transformation into Nimrod as if it were derived from maradh, to rebel. He who was to the Babylonians a deified hero, was to the Hebrews a rebel Titan, bound in chains among the stars that all might behold his punishment, and in this aspect the question, Canst thou … loose the bands of Orion? (Job 38:31) would be equivalent to asking Canst thou bring down out of their places the stars that make up this figure and so, as it were, set the Titan free?
In Isa 13:10, kesl occurs in the plural keslm, for the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; keslm being translated as constellations under the impression that Orion, the brightest of all the constellations, is here put for the constellations in general. This is no doubt correct, but the context shows that the meaning goes farther than this, and that the keslm who were to be darkened were the proud and arrogant tyrants like Nimrod or Merodach who would, if possible, climb up into heaven itself, even as Orion is represented in our star atlases as if trying to climb up into the zodiac – the home of the sun.
12. Mazzaroth, the Constellations of the Zodiac
A further astronomical term which occurs in Job 38:32 is left untranslated in both the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), namely, the word Mazzaroth. It occurs only once in the Old Testament, but the similar word mazzaloth, translated planets in the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), occurs in 2Ki 23:5. For the latter see ASTROLOGY. In the fifth tablet of the Babylonian Epic of Creation, we read:
1. He (Marduk) made the station 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 (mizrata) he divided it.
4. For the twelve months he fixed three stars.
Here in the third line, mizrata, cognate with the Hebrew mazzaroth, means the sections or divisions of the year, corresponding to the signs of the zodiac mentioned in the second line.
Yet again when Job 9:9 is compared with Job 38:31, Job 38:32, it is seen that the place of the word mazzaroth in the latter passage is held by the expression the chambers of the south (hadhre theman) in the earlier. Mazzaroth therefore is equivalent to the chambers of the south, and clearly signifies the twelve constellations of the zodiac through which the sun appears to pass in the course of the year, poetically likened to the inns, the chambers or tabernacles in which the sun successively rests during the several monthly stages of his annual journey. The same idea was employed by the Arabs in their mansions of the moon, its lodging-houses (menazil), which are 28 in number, since the moon takes 28 days to make the circuit of the heavens, just as the sun takes 12 months.
The word Mazzaroth therefore represents the twelve signs or, to speak more correctly, the twelve constellations of the zodiac. These two terms are often used indiscriminately, but there is a real difference between their significations. The constellations of the zodiac are the actual groupings of the stars, lying along the ecliptic, and are quite irregular in form and length. The signs have no connection with the actual stars but are imaginary divisions of the ecliptic, all exactly equal in length, and they are reckoned from that point in the heavens where the sun is at the moment that it is crossing the celestial equator in its northward motion in springtime. As this point, known to astronomers as the first point of Aries, moves slowly amongst the stars, taking 25,800 years to complete a revolution of the heavens, the signs of the zodiac also move among the stars, and hence, though at one time each sign bore a rough and general correspondence to the constellation of the same name, the signs have gradually drawn away from them. The constellations of the zodiac were designed about 2700 bc, but the signs – the equal divisions of the zodiac named from them – cannot have been adopted earlier than 700 bc, and were probably even later. For since Aries is the first of the signs, it is clear that it was the first of the constellations at the time when the equal division of the zodiac was effected, and 700 bc is the very earliest date that the constellation Aries can have been so regarded. Incidentally it may be remarked that the mention in the Babylonian story of creation of the allotment of three stars to each of the sections (Mizrata) of the year, shows that not only had the division of the zodiac into 12 equal signs been effected, but that a further step had been taken, namely, the division of each sign into 3 equal parts, later known amongst the Greeks as its decans, corresponding roughly to the 36 decades of the Egyptian calendar. Whatever, therefore, may have been the antiquity of the traditions embodied in it, the actual Babylonian poem quoted above, so far from being an early document, as it was at one time supposed to be, is probably almost as late as the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.
13. Arcturus
There are three constellations, natural groupings of the stars, the Pleiades and Orion and Charles’s Wain, which have always attracted men’s attention, and we accordingly find them referred to in the earliest poems extant. Thus they are the three groups of the stars most frequently mentioned by Homer and Hesiod. The two first groups, the Pleiades and Orion, are, as we have seen, indicated by Kmah and Kesl. We should therefore naturally expect that the third constellation which we find associated with these in the Book of Job should be none other than the seven bright stars in the North, the principal part of the Great Bear. The Hebrew name for this third constellation appears in two slightly different forms. It is ash in Job 9:9, and ayish in Job 38:32, and in the latter case it is connected with its sons. The last star of Charles’ Wain or the Plough, as the group is often called among ourselves, still bears the name Benetnasch, derived from the Arabic name Benet Nash, the daughters of the Bier, by which the Arabs designated the three stars in the Plough-handle, while they called the four stars in the body of the Plough, Nash, the bier or litter. Nash and its daughters so closely correspond to ayish and its sons, that there can be no reasonable doubt that the same seven bright stars are intended; so that the rendering of the Revised Version (British and American), Canst thou guide the Bear with her train? correctly reproduces the original meaning. The Arcturus of the King James Version is derived from Vulgate, where it is probably a mistake for Arctos, that is to say, Ursa Major, the Great Bear.
The antithesis which is presented in Job 38:32 now reveals itself. The Mazzaroth are the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and of these each one rules the night for about a month in its turn; they are each led forth in its season. Each, in its turn, is the chamber, tabernacle or resting-place of the sun, and they are appropriately called chambers of the south, since it is especially in the southern sky that each is seen. In contrast to these are the northern constellations, those round the pole, of which the Great Bear or Charles’ Wain is the brightest and best known At the time of the origin of the constellations, this group was much nearer the pole of the heavens than at present, but now as then these stars are not led forth, for they are visible at all hours and during every night; but they are guided; they move round the pole of the heavens in an unending circle, as if the wain or chariot were being guided by a skillful driver.
(1) The Scatterers, or the North
There is some probability that in Job 37:9 the same two regions of the heavens are alluded to: Out of the chamber of the south cometh the storm, and cold out of the north. It will be observed that the complete expression, chamber of the south, is not in the original, the translators having supplied of the south from analogy with Job 9:9. The sirocco comes then from the region held by the mazzal, the chamber, or constellation of the zodiac, then on the meridian. But the cold, the blizzard, comes from the scatterers (Mezarm). Who or what are the scatterers, and why do they represent the north? The late Professor Schiaparelli suggested that by a slight difference in the pointing, the word might be read as mizrayim, the two winnowing fans, and that this may well have been a native term for the stars which we now know as the two Bears, Ursa Major and Minor, emphatically the northern constellations; the names being given them from the natural grouping of their chief stars, just as they are known as the two Dippers in the United States, or the two Ladles in China (Astronomy in the Old Testament, 67-72).
(2) The Ordinances of Heaven Established on the Earth
The astronomical antithesis between Mazzaroth, the constellations of the zodiac (led forth each in its season), and Ayish, the Bear with her train (guided in its unceasing revolution round the pole), is so complete and astronomically appropriate, that there is reason to expect an antithesis as clear and as astronomically significant between the two clauses of the preceding verse. But the rendering of the Revised Version (British and American) does not afford anything of the kind: Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? is simply equivalent to the question as to whether Job could fix these stars in their places in the sky; and for an inquiry so perfectly general, one constellation would be no more appropriate than another. The true rendering must certainly bring out some difference or at least distinction between the two constellations or the use that was made of them.
And in the third passage in which Kmah and Kesl are mentioned together an important distinction is hinted at. The order in Amo 5:8 suggests that the Pleiades corresponded in some way to daybreak, Orion to nightfall: That maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night. Sunrise turns the shadow of death into the morning, and in the progress of the seasons the analogous change on the higher scale is effected when Nature revives from the death of winter in the morning of the year, that is to say, at the return of spring. And at the time of the origin of the constellations the Pleiades were the harbingers of this change at their cosmical rising, that is to say, when they rose with the sun at daybreak they brought back the delights of springtime.
Similarly sunset makes the day dark with night, and in the progress of the seasons the analogous change on the higher scale is effected when the long nights and short days of winter set in the evening of the year, and all nature is bound as by iron bands, in cold and frost. And at the time of the origin of the constellations, the acronychal rising of Orion, i.e. its rising at nightfall, was the harbinger of this change; the rigor of winter formed the bands of Orion.
These regular changes in the appearings and positions of the constellations constitute the ordinances of the heavens, ordinances which Job could neither alter for the worse by holding back the delights of springtime, or for the better by breaking the bonds of winter cold. But these ordinances were not confined in their effects to the heavens; their dominion was established on the earth, which answered by the revival of vegetation when the Pleiades, then nearly in conjunction with the sun, appeared for a short time before sunrise; and by the return of the constraints of cold and frost when Orion, in opposition to the sun, rode the sky the whole night long.
The completeness and beauty of the imagery will now be apparent.
The Pleiades stood for the East, since by their rising just before daybreak, they heralded the morning of the year and the delights of springtime.
Orion stood for the West, since his appearing just after nightfall heralded the evening of the year, and the bands of winter cold.
Mazzaroth, the twelve constellations of the zodiac, the chambers of the south, each led forth from the underworld in its own season, stood for the South.
And the Bear with her train, guided in their unceasing course round the pole, stood for the circumpolar constellations in the North.
And the movements of them all in a perfect obedience to the law of God were the ordinances of heaven; whilst the dominion of them was seen to be established upon the earth in the constant succession of the seasons there in unfailing answer to the changes in the stars above.
These three verses give us a vivid picture of the work of primitive astronomy. The science was then in an early stage of development, but it was a real science, a science of observation, thoroughly sound so far as it had progressed, and showing high intelligence on the part of those who pursued it. We now know that the movement of the Bear with her train, that is, the apparent rotation of the heavens round the pole, is due to the real rotation of the earth upon its axis; that the bringing out of the Mazzaroth in their season, apparently due to the revolution of the sun round the earth, is due to the real revolution of the earth round the sun. But this knowledge which has enabled us to see where the actual movements lie has not brought us any nearer penetrating the mystery of those movements. What is the ultimate cause of the rotation of this vast globe, we know no more than the ancients knew what caused the heavens to rotate; what causes it to fly through space 18 miles in every second of time, we know no more than the ancients knew why the sun appeared to move among the stars. To us, as to them, it is the power of God, and the will of God.
14. The Date of the Book of Job
It has been supposed by some scholars that the Book of Job was written during the Captivity in Babylon, but this supposition is untenable in view of the statement in Job’s Apology that the worship of the heavenly bodies was an iniquity to be punished by the judges (Job 31:26-28). This could not have been written by Jews in exile amongst the worshippers of Samas and Sin. But neither can this book have been written after the Return. The meaning of the three terms, Ayish, Kmah and Kesl, had been lost before the Septuagint made the rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, for in Amo 5:8 they left Kmah and Kesl untranslated, and they rendered Aysh and Kesl differently in Job 9:9, and Job 38:31, Job 38:32. Before the Captivity, Kmah and Kesl were plainly in common use, since Amos uses them as if they were familiar to his hearers, and as he himself points out, he was not a man of learning but a simple herdsman. The obvious and sufficient explanation of the later ignorance respecting these three terms lies in the catastrophes of the Assyrian and Bah conquests. Not less significant of their complete loss of the old Hebrew astronomy is the alteration which the Septuagint made in the Hebrew text. The delights of the Pleiades had evidently no more meaning for them than they have had for the majority of modern Orientalists, and no doubt it seemed a plausible and legitimate emendation to write maanaddoth, chains, instead of maadhannoth, delights, so as to bring about a fancied parallelism with moshekhoth, the bands of Orion. But the alteration transforms a complete, beautiful and symmetrical figure, an epitome of the astronomical observation of the time, into a bald tautology. Those critics are therefore right who assign the Book of Job and the Isa 13 to the period before the Captivities, and the three names come to us as indications, not of a Babylonian science of astronomy, learned by the Jews during their exile, but of a Hebrew astronomy destroyed by the unspeakable disaster of the conquest.
III. Physiography
1. The Circle of the Earth
It has generally been assumed that the Hebrews considered the earth to be a vast circular plain, arched over by a solid vault – the firmament – above which were stored, as if in cisterns, the treasuries (Job 38:22) of the rain, snow and hail, and some writers have even attempted to express this supposed conception in diagrammatic form. One of the best of these attempts, reproduced below, is given by Schiaparelli, in his Astronomy in the Old Testament.
But this assumption is in reality based more upon the ideas prevalent in Europe during the Dark Ages than upon any actual statements in the Old Testament. The same word (hugh) used in the Old Testament to express the roundness of the heavens (Job 22:14) is also used when the circle of the earth is spoken of (Isa 40:22), and it is likewise applied to the deep (Pro 8:27). Now it is obvious that the heavens are spherical in appearance, and to an attentive observer it is clear that the surface of the sea is also rounded. There is therefore no sufficient warrant for the assumption that the Hebrews must have regarded the earth as flat.
(1) The Earth a Sphere
Certain astronomical relations were recognized very early. The stars appear as if attached to a globe rotating round the earth once in 24 hours, and this appearance was clearly familiar to the author of the Book of Job, and indeed long before the time of Abraham, since the formation of the constellations could not have been effected without such recognition. But the spherical form of the heavens almost involves a similar form for the earth, and their apparent diurnal rotation certainly means that they are not rigidly connected with the earth, but surround it on all sides at some distance from it. The earth therefore must be freely suspended in space, and so the Book of Job describes it: He stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing (Job 26:7).
(2) The North Stretched out over Empty Space
Here the north signifies the northern circumpolar constellations and the writer recognized that they stretch out beyond the utmost confines of the earth; so that he was not under any impression that the heavens rested upon the earth, or were borne up by mountains. The celestial sphere surrounded the earth entirely, but at a distance from it; between the two there was empty space. Some commentators have indeed claimed that Job 26:10, He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters, unto the confines of light and darkness is equivalent to a statement that the circumference of the terrestrial plain extended to the place where sea and sky met. But no man of intelligence can, at any time, have supposed that the sea horizon marked the dividing line between day and night, and the meaning of the passage is correctly given in the King James Version, until the day and night come to an end; in other words, the waters of the sea will be confined to their appointed place never again to overflow the earth so long as the succession of day and night shall continue (compare Gen 8:22; Gen 9:15).
(3) The Corners of the Earth
See EARTH, CORNERS OF.
2. The Pillars of the Earth
‘erec, the earth, is in general the surface of the earth, the dry land inhabited by man and beast. Hence the pillars of the earth (Job 9:6) are the rocks that bear up that surface, for as has been shown, it was quite clear to the author of the Book of Job, and to the primitive astronomers, that our world was unsupported in space. For Vault of the Earth see EARTH, VAULT OF.
3. The Firmament
(1) The Hebrew Conception
Above the, spherical earth was stretched out the firmament (raka) made on the second day of creation to divide the waters from the waters (Gen 16). To the Hebrews the firmament was the apparent void above, in which clouds float and the lights of heaven pursue their appointed paths. The word raka, by its etymology, suggests an expanse, something stretched, spread or beaten out, as when Isaiah (Isa 40:22) says that the Lord stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. But the Greek word stereoma, by which the Septuagint rendered raka, gives the meaning of a firm and solid structure, and our translators have carried out this same idea in their English rendering of firmament.
(2) The Alexandrian Conception
In this however the Septuagint simply expressed the astronomical science of their day as accepted in Alexandria, where the doctrine of a succession of solid crystalline spheres, each carrying a planet, held currency. But in order to express the Hebrew idea, raka should be rendered expanse or space; it corresponds to the empty space of Job 26:7. This expanse was appointed to divide the waters which were under the expanse, from the waters which were above the expanse; and it has been argued from this that the upper waters must have been regarded as being enclosed in a watertight reservoir, furnished with sluices or floodgates, which could be opened to allow the rain to fall.
4. The Windows of Heaven
Thus in the account of the Flood, the windows of heaven are said to have been opened. But, ‘arubbah, window, means a network, or lattice, a form which can never have been ascribed to a literal floodgate; and in the other passages where the windows of heaven are mentioned the expression is obviously metaphorical (2Ki 7:2, 2Ki 7:19; Isa 24:18; Mal 3:10).
5. Rain
Further the numerous other references to rain connect it with the clouds, as I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain (Isa 5:6), or in the Song of Deborah, The clouds dropped water (Jdg 5:4; see also Psa 77:17; Psa 147:8; Pro 16:15; Ecc 12:2). The fantastic idea of solidly built cisterns in the sky furnished with sluices has no warrant in Scripture. So far from any such crude conception, there is a very clear and complete account of the atmospheric circulation. Elihu describes the process of evaporation, For he draweth up the drops of water, which distilll in rain from his vapor, which the skies pour down and drop upon man abundantly (Job 36:27, Job 36:28).
6. Clouds
Jeremiah and the Psalmist repeat the description, He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasuries (Jer 10:13). 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 upward toward the zenith. Thus God calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth (Amo 9:6); and thus All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again (Ecc 1:7). Other references to the clouds in the Book of Job reveal not merely observation but acute reflection. Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge? (Job 37:16) indicates a perception that the clouds float, each in its own place, at its own level, each perfectly balanced in the thin air.
7. The Deep
(1) Meaning of the Word Tehom
Tehom, the deep, means moving water, and hence the ocean, which is represented as being essentially one, exactly as we now know it to be by actual exploration – Let the waters Under the heavens be gathered together unto one place (Gen 1:9). And the earth is stretched out above the waters (Psa 136:6; Psa 24:2). That is to say that the water surface lies lower than the land surface; and not only so, but, within the substance of the earth itself, there are subterranean waters which form a kind of ocean underground. This also is called in Eze 31:4 the deep, tehom; The waters nourished it, the deep made it to grow. But in general tehom denotes the sea, as when Pharaoh’s chosen captains were drowned in the Red Sea, The deeps cover them (Exo 15:5). Indeed the word appears to be onomatopoetic derived from the moaning or humming of the sea; whilst ‘erec, the earth, seems intended to represent the rattle of shingle, the scream of a madden’d beach dragged down by the wave.
(2) The Babylonian Dragon of Chaos
In Gen 1, tehom denotes the primeval waters, and the resemblance of the word to Tiamat, the name of the Babylonian she-dragon of Chaos, has led some commentators to ascribe a Babylonian origin to this chapter. It need hardly be pointed out that if this resemblance proves any connection between the Hebrew and Babylonian accounts of creation, it proves the Hebrew to be the original. The natural object, tehom, the sea, must have preceded the mythological personification of it.
Literature
Maunder, Astronomy of the Bible; Astronomy without a Telescope; Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament; Warren, The Earliest Cosmologies, 1909.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Astronomy
Astronomy, that science which treats of the laws of the stars, or heavenly bodies, considered in reference to their magnitude, movements, and respective influence one upon another. Astronomy may be divided into empirical and scientific; the first being founded on the apparent phenomena and movements of the heavenly bodies, the second upon their real phenomena and movements. The knowledge of the ancients was limited to the first; or if they possessed any truths connected with the second, they were nothing more than bold or fortunate guesses, which were not followed out to their legitimate consequences, nor formed into a systematic whole.
The cradle of astronomy is to be found in Asia. The few and imperfect, notices which have come down to these times give a concurrent testimony in favor of this statement, and therewith agrees the fact that the climate, the mode of life, and the occupations of the Oriental nations that were first civilized, prompted them to watch and observe the starry heavens. The Chaldeans are accounted to have excelled in astronomical knowledge.
Pliny, in his celebrated enumeration of the inventors of the arts, sciences, and conveniences of life, ascribes the discovery of astronomy to Phoenician mariners; and in the same chapter he speaks of astronomical observations found on burnt bricks among the Babylonians, which ascend to above 2200 years B.C. Alexander sent to Aristotle from Babylon a series of astronomical observations, extending through 1900 years. The astronomical knowledge of the Chinese and Indians goes up to a still earlier period. From the remote East astronomy traveled in a westerly direction. The Egyptians at a very early period had some acquaintance with it. To them is to be ascribed a pretty near determination of the length of the year, as consisting of 365 days 6 hours. The Egyptians were the teachers of the Greeks.
Some portion of the knowledge which prevailed on the subject would no doubt penetrate to and become the inheritance of the Hebrews, who do not, however, appear to have possessed any views of astronomy which raised their knowledge to the rank of a science, or made it approach to a more correct theory of the mechanism of the heavens than that which was generally held. Nor, if the Bible is taken as the witness, do the ancient Israelites appear to have had extensive knowledge in the matter. They possessed such an acquaintance with it as tillers of the ground and herdsmen might be expected to form while pursuing their business, having, as was natural, their minds directed to those regions of the heavens which night after night brought before their eyes: accordingly, the peculiar Oriental names of the constellations are derived from circumstances connected with a nomad people. A peculiarity of the greatest importance belongs to the knowledge which the Israelites display of the heavens, namely, that it is thoroughly imbued with a religious character; nor is it possible to find in any other writings, even at this day, so much pure and elevated piety, in connection with observations on the starry firmament, as may be gathered even in single books of the Bible (Amo 5:8; Psalms 19).
As early as the days of the patriarchs the minds of pious men were attracted and enraptured by the splendor of the skies (Gen 37:9); and imagery borrowed from the starry world soon fixed itself firmly in human speech. The sun and moon were distinguished from other heavenly bodies, in consequence of their magnitude and their brilliancy, as being the lights of heaven and earth (Gen 1:16); and from the course of the moon time was divided into parts, or months, of which the oldest form of the year, the lunar, was made up. Every new moon was greeted with religious festivities. While, however, the sun in his power, the moon walking in brightness, and all the stars of light conspired to excite devotion, their influence on the hearts of the ancient Israelites, who were happily instructed in a knowledge of the true God, the one Jehovah, the sole Creator of the world, stopped short of that idolatrous feeling, and was free from those idolatrous practices to which, among nations of less religious knowledgeand especially among their own neighbors, the Babylonians, for instanceit is unhappily known to have led.
As early as the time of the composition of perhaps the oldest book in the Bible, namely, that of Job, the constellations were distinguished one from another, and designated by peculiar and appropriate names (Job 9:9; Job 38:31). In the Bible are found1. the morning star, the planet Venus (Isa 14:12; Rev 2:28); 2. the Pleiades (Job 9:9; Job 38:31; Amo 5:8); 3. Orion, a large and brilliant constellation, which stands in a line with the Pleiades. The Orientals seemed to have conceived of Orion as a huge giant who had warred against God, and as bound in chains to the firmament of heaven (Job 38:31); and it has been conjectured that this notion is the foundation of the history of Nimrod; 4. Arcturus (Job 9:9), the Great Bear; 5. Draco (Job 26:13, ‘the crooked serpent’), between the Great and the Little Bear; a constellation which spreads itself in windings across the heavens; 6. Castor and Pollux (Act 28:11), Gemini, or the Twins, on the belt of the Zodiac, which is mentioned in 2Ki 23:5, under the general name of ‘the planets.’ The entire body of the stars was called ‘the host of heaven’ (Isa 40:26; Jer 33:22).
No trace is found in the Old Testament of a division of the heavenly bodies into planets, fixed stars, and comets; but in Jud 1:13, the phrase ‘wandering stars’ is employed figuratively.
After the Babylonish exile the Jews were compelled, even for the sake of their calendar, to attend at least to the course of the moon, which became an object of study, and delineations were made of the shapes that she assumes.
At an early period of the world the worship of the stars arose from that contemplation of them which in every part of the globe, and particularly in the East, has been found a source of deep and tranquil pleasure. ‘Men by nature’ ‘deemed either fire or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world;’ ‘with whose beauty being delighted, they took them to be gods’ (Wisdom of Solomon 13:1-2). Accordingly, the religion of the Egyptians, of the Chaldees, Assyrians, and the ancient Arabians, was nothing else than star-worship, although in the case of the first its origin is more thickly veiled. The sun, moon, and seven planets excited most attention, and won the greatest observance. We thus find among the Babylonians Jupiter (Belus, Isa 65:11), Venus (Isa 65:11, where the first is rendered in the common version ‘that troop,’ the second ‘that number’). Both these were considered good principles. Mercury, honored as the secretary of heaven, is also found in Isa 46:1, ‘Nebo stoopeth;’ Saturn (Amo 5:26); Mars (2Ki 17:30): the two last were worshipped as principles of evil. The character of this worship was formed from the notions which were entertained of the good or ill which certain stars occasioned. Astrology found its sphere principally in stars connected with the birth of individuals. It concerned itself also with the determination of lucky and unlucky days: so in Job 3:3, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born;’ and Gal 4:10, ‘Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.’ The Chaldeans, who studied the stars at a very early period, were much given to astrology, and were celebrated for their skill in that pretended science (Isa 47:13). In Dan 2:27; Dan 5:11, the calculators of nativities are named. Comets were for the most part considered heralds of evil tidings. The Orientals of the present day hold astrology in honor, and stipendiary astrologers form a part of their court.
Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature
Astronomy
General references
Job 26:7; Job 26:13; Job 37:18; Job 38:31-33; Psa 8:3; Psa 19:1-6; Psa 68:33; Psa 136:5-9; Isa 13:10; Isa 40:22; Isa 40:26; Isa 47:13; Jer 31:35-37; Jer 33:22; Amo 5:8; 1Co 15:41; Jud 1:13
Sidereal phenomena
Jos 10:12-14; Job 9:6-9; Ecc 1:5; Isa 13:13; Isa 34:4; Eze 32:7-8; Mat 24:29; Mar 13:24-25; Mat 24:35; Mat 27:45; Luk 21:25; Luk 23:44-45; Act 2:19-20; 2Pe 3:10; Rev 6:12-14; Rev 8:10-12; Rev 9:1-2; Rev 10:1-2; Rev 12:3-4; Rev 13:13; Rev 16:8-9; Rev 19:11-14; Rev 21:1 Constellations; Eclipse; Heaven; Meteorology and Celestial Phenomena; Moon; Stars; Sun