SATURN AND ASTROLOGY
The planets, as such, are nowhere mentioned in the Bible. In the one
instance in which the word appears in our versions, it is given as a
translation of _Mazzaloth_, better rendered in the margin as the "twelve
signs or constellations." The evidence is not fully conclusive that
allusion is made to any planet, even in its capacity of a god worshipped
by the surrounding nations.
Of planets, besides the earth, modern astronomy knows Mercury, Venus,
Mars, many planetoids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. And of
satellites revolving round planets there are at present known, the moon
which owns our earth as primary, two satellites to Mars, seven
satellites to Jupiter, ten to Saturn, four to Uranus, and one to
Neptune.
The ancients counted the planets as seven, numbering the moon and the
sun amongst them. The rest were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn. They recognized no satellites to any planet. We have no evidence
that the ancient Semitic nations considered that the moon was more
intimately connected with the earth than any of the other six.
But though the planets were sometimes regarded as "seven" in number,
the ancients perfectly recognized that the sun and moon stood in a
different category altogether from the other five. And though the
heathen recognized them as deities, confusion resulted as to the
identity of the deity of which each was a manifestation. Samas was the
sun-god and Baal was the sun-god, but Samas and Baal, or Bel, were not
identical, and both were something more than merely the sun personified.
Again, Merodach, or Marduk, is sometimes expressly identified with Bel
as sun-god, sometimes with the divinity of the planet Jupiter. Similarly
Ashtoreth, or I[vs]tar, is sometimes identified with the goddess of the
moon, sometimes with the planet Venus. It would not be safe, therefore,
to assume that reference is intended to any particular heavenly body,
because a deity is mentioned that has been on occasions identified with
that heavenly body. Still less safe would it be to assume astronomical
allusions in the description of the qualities or characteristics of that
deity. Though Ashtoreth, or I[vs]tar, may have been often identified
with the planet Venus, it is ridiculous to argue, as some have done,
from the expression "Ashteroth-Karnaim," Ashteroth of "the horns," that
the ancients had sight or instruments sufficiently powerful to enable
them to observe that Venus, like the moon, had her phases, her "horns."
Though Nebo has been identified with the planet Mercury, we must not see
any astronomical allusion to its being the nearest planet to the sun in
Isaiah's coupling the two together, where he says, "Bel boweth down,
Nebo stoopeth."
Isaiah speaks of the King of Babylon--
"How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!"
The word here translated Lucifer, "light-bearer," is the word _h[=e]lel_
from the root _halal_, and means _spreading brightness_. In the
Assyrio-Babylonian, the planet Venus is sometimes termed _Must[=e]lel_,
from the root _[=e]lil_, and she is the most lustrous of all the
"morning stars," of the stars that herald the dawn. But except that her
greater brilliancy marks her as especially appropriate to the
expression, Sirius or any other in its capacity of morning star would be
suitable as an explanation of the term.
St. Peter uses the equivalent Greek expression _Ph[=o]sphorus_ in his
second epistle: "A light that shineth in a dark place, until the day
dawn and the day-star" (light-bringer) "arise in your hearts."
Isaiah again says--
"Ye are they that forsake the Lord, that forget My holy
mountain, that prepare a table for that Troop, and that
furnish the drink offering unto that Number."
"Gad" and "Meni," here literally translated as "Troop" and "Number," are
in the Revised Version rendered as "Fortune" and "Destiny." A reference
to this god "Meni" has been suggested in the mysterious inscription
which the King of Babylon saw written by a hand upon the wall, which
Daniel interpreted as "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to
an end." By some commentators Meni is understood to be the planet Venus,
and Gad to be Jupiter, for these are associated in Arabian astrology
with Fortune or Fate in the sense of good luck. Or, from the similarity
of Meni with the Greek _m[=e]n[=e]_, moon, "that Number" might be
identified with the moon, and "that Troop," by analogy, with the sun.
It is more probable, if any astrological deities are intended, that the
two little star clusters--the Pleiades and the Hyades--situated on the
back and head of the Bull, may have been accounted the manifestations of
the divinities which are by their names so intimately associated with
the idea of multitude. The number seven has been held a sacred number,
and has been traditionally associated with both the little star groups.
In one instance alone does there seem to be any strong evidence that
reference is intended to one of the five planets known to the ancients,
when worshipped as a god; and even that is not conclusive. The prophet
Amos, charging the Israelites with idolatry even in the wilderness,
asks--
"Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne
the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star
of your god, which ye made to yourselves."
But the Septuagint Version makes the accusation run thus:--
"Ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god
Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them."
This was the version which St. Stephen quoted in his defence before the
High Priest. It is quite clear that it was star worship to which he was
referring, for he prefaces his quotation by saying, "God turned and gave
them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the
prophets."
The difference between the names "Chiun" and "Remphan" is explained by a
probable misreading on the part of the Septuagint translators into the
Greek, who seemed to have transcribed the initial of the word as "resh,"
where it should have been "caph"--"R" instead of "K,"--thus the real
word should be transliterated "_Kaivan_," which was the name of the
planet Saturn both amongst the ancient Arabs and Syrians, and also
amongst the Assyrians, whilst "_Kevan_" is the name of that planet in
the sacred books of the Parsees. On the other hand, there seems to be
some difficulty in supposing that a deity is intended of which there is
no other mention in Scripture, seeing that the reference, both by Amos
and St. Stephen, would imply that the particular object of idolatry
denounced was one exceedingly familiar to them. Gesenius, therefore,
after having previously accepted the view that we have here a reference
to the worship of Saturn, finally adopted the rendering of the Latin
Vulgate, that the word "Chiun" should be translated "statue" or "image."
The passage would then become--
"Ye have borne the booth of your Moloch and the image of your
idols, the star of your god which ye made for yourselves."
If we accept the view that the worship of the planet Saturn is indeed
referred to, it does not necessarily follow that the prophet Amos was
stating that the Israelites in the wilderness actually observed and
worshipped him as such. The prophet may mean no more than that the
Israelites, whilst outwardly conforming to the worship of Jehovah, were
in their secret desires hankering after Sabæism--the worship of the
heavenly host. And it may well be that he chooses Moloch and Saturn as
representing the cruellest and most debased forms of heathenism.
The planet Saturn gives its name to the seventh day of our week,
"Saturn's day," the sabbath of the week of the Jews, and the coincidence
of the two has called forth not a few ingenious theories. Why do the
days of our week bear their present names, and what is the explanation
of their order?
The late well-known astronomer, R. A. Proctor, gives the explanation as
follows:--
"The twenty-four hours of each day were devoted to those
planets in the order of their supposed distance from the
earth,--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and
the Moon. The outermost planet, Saturn, which also travels in
the longest period, was regarded in this arrangement as of
chief dignity, as encompassing in his movement all the rest,
Jupiter was of higher dignity than Mars, and so forth.
Moreover to the outermost planet, partly because of Saturn's
gloomy aspect, partly because among half-savage races the
powers of evil are always more respected than the powers that
work for good, a maleficent influence was attributed. Now, if
we assign to the successive hours of a day the planets as
above-named, beginning with Saturn on the day assigned to that
powerful deity, it will be found that the last hour of that
day will be assigned to Mars--'the lesser infortune,' as
Saturn was 'the greater infortune,' of the old system of
astrology--and the first hour of the next day to the next
planet, the Sun; the day following Saturday would thus be
Sunday. The last hour of Sunday would fall to Mercury, and the
first of the next to the Moon; so Monday, the Moon's day,
follows Sunday. The next day would be the day of Mars, who, in
the Scandinavian theology, is represented by Tuisco; so
Tuisco's day, or Tuesday (Mardi), follows Monday. Then, by
following the same system, we come to Mercury's day
(Mercredi), Woden's day, or Wednesday; next to Jupiter's day,
Jove's day (Jeudi), Thor's day, or Thursday; to Venus's day,
Vendredi (Veneris dies), Freya's day, or Friday, and so to
Saturday again. That the day devoted to the most evil and most
powerful of all the deities of the Sabdans (_sic_) should be
set apart--first as one on which it was unlucky to work, and
afterwards as one on which it was held to be sinful to
work--was but the natural outcome of the superstitious belief
that the planets were gods ruling the fates of men and
nations."[136:1]
This theory appears at first sight so simple, so plausible, that many
are tempted to say, "It must be true," and it has accordingly gained a
wide acceptance. Yet a moment's thought shows that it makes many
assumptions, some of which rest without any proof, and others are known
to be false.
When were the planets discovered? Not certainly at the dawn of
astronomy. The fixed stars must have become familiar, and have been
recognized in their various groupings before it could have been known
that there were others that were not fixed,--were "planets," _i. e._
wanderers. Thus, amongst the Greeks, no planet is alluded to by Hesiod,
and Homer mentions no planet other than Venus, and apparently regarded
her as two distinct objects, according as she was seen as a morning and
as an evening star. Pythagoras is reputed to have been the first of the
Greek philosophers to realize the identity of Phosphorus and Hesperus,
that is Venus at her two elongations, so that the Greeks did not know
this until the sixth century before our era. We are yet without certain
knowledge as to when the Babylonians began to notice the different
planets, but the order of discovery can hardly have been different from
what it seems to have been amongst the Greeks--that is to say, first
Venus as two separate objects, then Jupiter and Mars, and, probably much
later, Saturn and Mercury. This last, again, would originally be
considered a pair of planets, just as Venus had been. Later these
planets as morning stars would be identified with their appearances as
evening stars. After this obscurity had been cleared up, there was a
still further advance to be made before the astrologers could have
adopted their strange grouping of the sun and moon as planets equally
with the other five. This certainly is no primitive conception; for the
sun and moon have such appreciable dimensions and are of such great
brightness that they seem to be marked off (as in the first chapter of
Genesis) as of an entirely different order from all the other heavenly
bodies. The point in common with the other five planets, namely their
apparent periodical movements, could only have been brought out by very
careful and prolonged observation. The recognition, therefore, of the
planets as being "seven," two of the seven being the sun and moon, must
have been quite late in the history of the world. The connection of the
"seven planets" with the seven days of the week was something much later
still. It implies, as we have seen, the adoption of a particular order
for the planets, and this order further implies that a knowledge had
been obtained of their relative distances, and involves a particular
theory of the solar system, that which we now know as the Ptolemaic. It
is not the order of the Babylonians, for they arranged them, Moon, Sun,
Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
There are further considerations which show that the Babylonians could
not have given these planetary names to the days of the week. The order
of the names implies that a twenty-four hour day was used, but the
Babylonian hours were twice the length of those which we use; hence
there were only twelve of them. Further, the Babylonian week was not a
true week running on continuously; it was tied to the month, and hence
did not lend itself to such a notation.
But the order adopted for the planets is that current amongst the Greek
astronomers of Alexandria, who did use a twenty-four hour day. Hence it
was certainly later than 300 B.C. But the Greeks and Egyptians alike
used a week of ten days, not of seven. How then did the planetary names
come to be assigned to the seven-day week?
It was a consequence of the power which the Jews possessed of impressing
their religious ideas, and particularly their observance of the sabbath
day, upon their conquerors. They did so with the Romans. We find such
writers as Cicero, Horace, Juvenal and others remarking upon the
sabbath, and, indeed, in the early days of the Empire there was a
considerable observance of it. Much more, then, must the Alexandrian
Greeks have been aware of the Jewish sabbath,--which involved the Jewish
week,--at a time when the Jews of that city were both numerous and
powerful, having equal rights with the Greek inhabitants, and when the
Ptolemies were sanctioning the erection of a Jewish temple in their
dominions, and the translation of the Jewish Scriptures into Greek. It
was after the Alexandrian Greeks had thus learned of the Jewish week
that they assigned the planets to the seven days of that week, since it
suited their astrological purposes better than the Egyptian week of ten
days. That allotment could not possibly have brought either week or
sabbath into existence. Both had been recognized many centuries earlier.
It was foisted upon that which had already a venerable antiquity. As
Professor Schiaparelli well remarks, "we are indebted for these names to
mathematical astrology, the false science which came to be formed after
the time of Alexander the Great from the strange intermarriage between
Chaldean and Egyptian superstitions and the mathematical astronomy of
the Greeks."[139:1]
There is a widespread notion that early astronomy, whether amongst the
Hebrews or elsewhere, took the form of astrology; that the
fortune-telling came first, and the legitimate science grew out of it.
Indeed, a claim is not infrequently made that no small honour is due to
the early astrologers, since from their efforts, the most majestic of
all the sciences is said to have arisen.
These ideas are the exact contrary of the truth. Mathematical, or
perhaps as we might better call it, planetary astrology, as we have it
to-day, concerns itself with the apparent movements of the planets in
the sense that it uses them as its material; just as a child playing in
a library might use the books as building blocks, piling, it may be, a
book of sermons on a history, and a novel on a mathematical treatise.
Astrology does not contribute, has not contributed a single observation,
a single demonstration to astronomy. It owes to astronomy all that it
knows of mathematical processes and planetary positions. In astronomical
language, the calculation of a horoscope is simply the calculation of
the "azimuths" of the different planets, and of certain imaginary points
on the ecliptic for a given time. This is an astronomical process,
carried out according to certain simple formulæ. The calculation of a
horoscope is therefore a straightforward business, but, as astrologers
all admit, its interpretation is where the skill is required, and no
real rules can be given for that.
Here is the explanation why the sun and moon are classed together with
such relatively insignificant bodies as the other five planets, and are
not even ranked as their chief. The ancient astrologer, like the modern,
cared nothing for the actual luminary in the heavens; all he cared for
was its written symbol on his tablets, and there Sun and Saturn could be
looked upon as equal, or Saturn as the greater. It is a rare thing for a
modern astrologer to introduce the place of an actual star into a
horoscope; the calculations all refer to the positions of the _Signs_
of the Zodiac, which are purely imaginary divisions of the heavens; not
to the _Constellations_ of the Zodiac, which are the actual star-groups.
Until astronomers had determined the apparent orbits of the planets, and
drawn up tables by which their apparent places could be predicted for
some time in advance, it was impossible for astrologers to cast
horoscopes of the present kind. All they could do was to divide up time
amongst the deities supposed to preside over the various planets. To
have simply given a planet to each day would have allowed the astrologer
a very small scope in which to work for his prophecies; the ingenious
idea of giving a planet to each hour as well, gave a wider range of
possible combinations. There seems to have been deliberate spitefulness
in the assignment of the most evil of the planetary divinities to the
sacred day of the Jews--their sabbath. It should be noticed at the same
time that, whilst the Jewish sabbath coincides with the astrological
"Saturn's Day," that particular day is the seventh day of the Jewish
week, but the first of the astrological. For the very nature of the
reckoning by which the astrologers allotted the planets to the days of
the week, implies, as shown in the extract quoted from Proctor, that
they began with Saturn and worked downwards from the "highest
planet"--as they called it--to the "lowest." This detail of itself
should have sufficed to have demonstrated to Proctor, or any other
astronomer, that the astrological week had been foisted upon the already
existing week of the Jews.
Before astrology took its present mathematical form, astrologers used
as their material for prediction the stars or constellations which
happened to be rising or setting at the time selected, or were upon the
same meridian, or had the same longitude, as such constellations. One of
the earliest of these astrological writers was Zeuchros of Babylon, who
lived about the time of the Christian era, some of whose writings have
been preserved to us. From these it is clear that the astrologers found
twelve signs of the zodiac did not give them enough play. They therefore
introduced the "decans," that is to say the idea of thirty-six
divinities--three to each month--borrowed from the Egyptian division of
the year into thirty-six weeks (of ten days), each under the rule of a
separate god. Of course this Egyptian year bore no fixed relation to the
actual lunar months or solar year, nor therefore to the Jewish year,
which was related to both. But even with this increase of material, the
astrologers found the astronomical data insufficient for their
fortune-telling purposes. Additional figures quite unrepresented in the
heavens, were devised, and were drawn upon, as needed, to supplement the
genuine constellations, and as it was impossible to recognize these
additions in the sky, the predictions were made, not from observation of
the heavens, but from observations on globes, often very inaccurate.
Earlier still we have astrological tablets from Assyria and Babylon,
many of which show that they had nothing to do with any actual
observation, and were simply invented to give completeness to the tables
of omens. Thus an Assyrian tablet has been found upon which are given
the significations of eclipses falling upon each day of the month
Tammuz, right up to the middle of the month. It is amusing to read the
naïve comment of a distinguished Assyriologist, that tablets such as
these prove how careful, and how long continued had been the
observations upon which they were based. It was not recognized that no
eclipses either of sun or moon could possibly occur on most of the dates
given, and that they could never occur "in the north," which is one of
the quarters indicated. They were no more founded on actual observation
than the portent mentioned on another tablet, of a woman giving birth to
a lion, which, after all, is not more impossible than that an eclipse
should occur in the north on the second day of Tammuz. In all ages it
has been the same; the astrologer has had nothing to do with science as
such, even in its most primitive form; he has cared nothing for the
actual appearance of the heavens upon which he pretended to base his
predictions; an imaginary planet, an imaginary eclipse, an imaginary
constellation were just as good for his fortune-telling as real ones.
Such fortune-telling was forbidden to the Hebrews; necessarily
forbidden, for astrology had no excuse unless the stars and planets were
gods, or the vehicles and engines of gods. Further, all attempts to
extort from spirits or from inanimate things a glimpse into the future
was likewise forbidden them. They were to look to God, and to His
revealed will alone for all such light.
"When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have
familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter:
should not a people seek unto their God?"
The Hebrews were few in number, their kingdoms very small compared with
the great empires of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon, but here, in this
question of divination or fortune-telling, they stand on a plane far
above any of the surrounding nations. There is just contempt in the
picture drawn by Ezekiel of the king of Babylon, great though his
military power might be--
"The king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the
head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows
to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the
liver."
And Isaiah calls upon the city of Babylon--
"Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of
thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if
so thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels: let now the
astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators stand
up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon
thee."
Isaiah knew the Lord to be He that "frustrateth the tokens of the liars
and maketh diviners mad." And the word of the Lord to Israel through
Jeremiah was--
"Thus saith the Lord. Learn not the way of the heathen, and be
not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are
dismayed at them."
It is to our shame that even to-day, in spite of all our enlightenment
and scientific advances, astrology still has a hold upon multitudes.
Astrological almanacs and treatises are sold by the tens of thousands,
and astrological superstitions are still current. "The star of the god
Chiun" is not indeed openly worshipped; but Saturn is still looked upon
as the planet bringing such diseases as "toothache, agues, and all that
proceeds from cold, consumption, the spleen particularly, and the bones,
rheumatic gouts, jaundice, dropsy, and all complaints arising from fear,
apoplexies, etc."; and charms made of Saturn's metal, lead, are still
worn upon Saturn's finger, in the belief that these will ward off the
threatened evil; a tradition of the time when by so doing the wearers
would have proclaimed themselves votaries of the god, and therefore
under his protection.
Astrology is inevitably linked with heathenism, and both shut up spirit
and mind against the knowledge of God Himself, which is religion; and
against the knowledge of His works, which is science. And though a man
may be religious without being scientific, or scientific without being
religious, religion and science alike both rest on one and the same
basis--the belief in "One God, Maker of heaven and earth."
That belief was the reason why Israel of old, so far as it was faithful
to it, was free from the superstitions of astrology.
"It is no small honour for this nation to have been wise
enough to see the inanity of this and all other forms of
divination. . . . Of what other ancient civilized nation could
as much be said?"[145:1]
FOOTNOTES:
[136:1] R. A. Proctor, _The Great Pyramid_, pp. 274-276.
[139:1] G. V. Schiaparelli, _Astronomy in the Old Testament_, p. 137.
[145:1] G. V. Schiaparelli, _Astronomy in the Old Testament_, p. 52.
[Illustration: _By permission of the Autotype Co._
_74, New Oxford Street, London, W.C._
ST. PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS (_by Raphael_).
"As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His
offspring."]
BOOK II
THE CONSTELLATIONS
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF THE CONSTELLATIONS
The age of Classical astronomy began with the labours of Eudoxus and
others, about four centuries before the Christian Era, but there was an
Earlier astronomy whose chief feature was the arrangement of the stars
into constellations.
The best known of all such arrangements is that sometimes called the
"Greek Sphere," because those constellations have been preserved to us
by Greek astronomers and poets. The earliest complete catalogue of the
stars, as thus arranged, that has come down to us was compiled by
Claudius Ptolemy, the astronomer of Alexandria, and completed 137 A.D.
In this catalogue, each star is described by its place in the supposed
figure of the constellation, whilst its celestial latitude and longitude
are added, so that we can see with considerable exactness how the
astronomers of that time imagined the star figures. The earliest
complete description of the constellations, apart from the places of the
individual stars, is given in the poem of Aratus of Soli--_The
Phenomena_, published about 270 B.C.
Were these constellations known to the Hebrews of old? We can answer
this question without hesitation in the case of St. Paul. For in his
sermon to the Athenians on Mars' Hill, he quotes from the opening verses
of this constellation poem of Aratus:--
"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that
He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made
with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though
He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath,
and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their
habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they
might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from
every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our
being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are
also His offspring."
The poem of Aratus begins thus:--
"To God above we dedicate our song;
To leave Him unadored, we never dare;
For He is present in each busy throng,
In every solemn gathering He is there.
The sea is His; and His each crowded port;
In every place our need of Him we feel;
FOR WE HIS OFFSPRING ARE."
Aratus, like St. Paul himself, was a native of Cilicia, and had been
educated at Athens. His poem on the constellations came, in the opinion
of the Greeks, next in honour to the poems of Homer, so that St. Paul's
quotation from it appealed to his hearers with special force.
The constellations of Ptolemy's catalogue are forty-eight in number.
Those of Aratus correspond to them in almost every particular, but one
or two minor differences may be marked. According to Ptolemy, the
constellations are divided into three sets:--twenty-one northern, twelve
in the zodiac, and fifteen southern.
The northern constellations are--to use the names by which they are now
familiar to us--1, _Ursa Minor_, the Little Bear; 2, _Ursa Major_, the
Great Bear; 3, _Draco_, the Dragon; 4, _Cepheus_, the King; 5, _Boötes_,
the Herdsman; 6, _Corona Borealis_, the Northern Crown; 7, _Hercules_,
the Kneeler; 8, _Lyra_, the Lyre or Swooping Eagle; 9, _Cygnus_, the
Bird; 10, _Cassiopeia_, the Throned Queen, or the Lady in the Chair; 11,
_Perseus_; 12, _Auriga_, the Holder of the Reins; 13, _Ophiuchus_, the
Serpent-holder; 14, _Serpens_, the Serpent; 15, _Sagitta_, the Arrow;
16, _Aquila_, the Soaring Eagle; 17, _Delphinus_, the Dolphin; 18,
_Equuleus_, the Horse's Head; 19, _Pegasus_, the Winged Horse; 20,
_Andromeda_, the Chained Woman; 21, _Triangulum_, the Triangle.
The zodiacal constellations are: 1, _Aries_, the Ram; 2, _Taurus_, the
Bull; 3, _Gemini_, the Twins; 4, _Cancer_, the Crab; 5, _Leo_, the Lion;
6, _Virgo_, the Virgin; 7, _Libra_, the Scales,--also called the Claws,
that is of the Scorpion; 8, _Scorpio_, the Scorpion; 9, _Sagittarius_,
the Archer; 10, _Capricornus_, the Sea-goat, _i. e._ Goat-fish; 11,
_Aquarius_, the Water-pourer; 12, _Pisces_, the Fishes.
The southern constellations are: 1, _Cetus_, the Sea-Monster; 2,
_Orion_, the Giant; 3, _Eridanus_, the River; 4, _Lepus_, the Hare; 5,
_Canis Major_, the Great Dog; 6, _Canis Minor_, the Little Dog; 7,
_Argo_, the Ship and Rock; 8, _Hydra_, the Water-snake; 9, _Crater_, the
Cup; 10, _Corvus_, the Raven; 11, _Centaurus_, the Centaur; 12,
_Lupus_, the Beast; 13, _Ara_, the Altar; 14, _Corona Australis_, the
Southern Crown; 15, _Piscis Australis_, the Southern Fish.
Aratus, living four hundred years earlier than Ptolemy, differs only
from him in that he reckons the cluster of the Pleiades--counted by
Ptolemy in Taurus--as a separate constellation, but he has no
constellation of _Equuleus_. The total number of constellations was thus
still forty-eight. Aratus further describes the Southern Crown, but
gives it no name; and in the constellation of the Little Dog he only
mentions one star, _Procyon_, the Dog's Forerunner. He also mentions
that the two Bears were also known as two Wagons or Chariots.
Were these constellations, so familiar to us to-day, known before the
time of Aratus, and if so, by whom were they devised, and when and
where?
They were certainly known before the time of Aratus, for his poem was
confessedly a versification of an account of them written by Eudoxus
more than a hundred years previous. At a yet earlier date, Panyasis,
uncle to the great historian Herodotus, incidentally discusses the name
of one of the constellations, which must therefore have been known to
him. Earlier still, Hesiod, in the second book of his _Works and Days_,
refers to several:--
"Orion and the Dog, each other nigh,
Together mounted to the midnight sky,
When in the rosy morn Arcturus shines,
Then pluck the clusters from the parent vines.
* * * * *
Next in the round do not to plough forget
When the Seven Virgins and Orion set."
Much the same constellations are referred to by Homer. Thus, in the
fifth book of the _Odyssey_,--
"And now, rejoicing in the prosperous gales,
With beating heart Ulysses spreads his sails:
Placed at the helm he sate, and marked the skies,
Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes.
There view'd the Pleiads and the Northern Team,
And great Orion's more refulgent beam,
To which around the axle of the sky
The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye."
Thus it is clear that several of the constellations were perfectly
familiar to the Greeks a thousand years before the Christian era; that
is to say, about the time of Solomon.
We have other evidence that the constellations were known in early
times. We often find on Greek coins, a bull, a ram, or a lion
represented; these may well be references to some of the signs of the
zodiac, but offer no conclusive evidence. But several of the
constellation figures are very unusual in form; thus the Sea-goat has
the head and fore-legs of a goat, but the hinder part of a fish; and the
Archer has the head and shoulders of a man, but the body and legs of a
horse. Pegasus, the horse with wings, not only shows this unnatural
combination, but the constellation figure only gives part of the
animal--the head, neck, wings, breast, and fore-legs. Now some of these
characteristic figures are found on quite early Greek coins, and yet
earlier on what are known as "boundary stones" from Babylonia. These are
little square pillars, covered with inscriptions and sculptures, and
record for the most part the gift, transfer, or sale of land. They are
dated according to the year of the reigning king, so that a clear idea
can be formed as to their age. A great many symbols, which appear to be
astronomical, occur upon them; amongst these such very distinguishing
shapes as the Archer, Sea-goat, and Scorpion (_see_ p. 318). So that,
just as we know from Homer and Hesiod that the principal constellations
were known of old by the same names as those by which we know them
to-day, we learn from Babylonian boundary stones that they were then
known as having the same forms as we now ascribe to them. The date of
the earliest boundary stones of the kind in our possession would show
that the Babylonians knew of our constellations as far back as the
twelfth century B.C., that is to say, whilst Israel was under the
Judges.
We have direct evidence thus far back as to the existence of the
constellations. But they are older than this, so much older that
tradition as well as direct historical evidence fails us. The only
earlier evidence open to us is that of the constellations themselves.
A modern celestial globe is covered over with figures from pole to pole,
but the majority of these are of quite recent origin and belong to the
Modern period of astronomy. They have been framed since the invention of
the telescope, and since the progress of geographical discovery brought
men to know the southern skies. If these modern constellations are
cleared off, and only those of Aratus and Ptolemy suffered to remain, it
becomes at once evident that the ancient astronomers were not acquainted
with the entire heavens. For there is a large space in the south, left
free from all the old constellations, and no explanation, why it should
have been so left free, is so simple and satisfactory as the obvious
one, that the ancient astronomers did not map out the stars in that
region because they never saw them; those stars never rose above their
horizon.
[Illustration: THE ANCIENT CONSTELLATIONS SOUTH OF THE ECLIPTIC.]
Thus at the present time the heavens for an observer in England are
naturally divided into three parts, as shown in the accompanying
diagram. In the north, round the pole-star are a number of
constellations that never set; they wheel unceasingly around the pole.
On every fine night we can see the Great Bear, the Little Bear, the
Dragon, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. But the stars in the larger portion of
the sky have their risings and settings, and the seasons in which they
are visible or are withdrawn from sight. Thus we see Orion and the
Pleiades and Sirius in the winter, not in the summer, but the Scorpion
and Sagittarius in the summer. Similarly there is a third portion of the
heavens which never comes within our range. We never see the Southern
Cross, and hardly any star in the great constellation of the Ship,
though these are very familiar to New Zealanders.
[Illustration: THE CELESTIAL SPHERE.
Zenith
* *
* * North Pole
*
* Stars /
. * Always
. Visible
. /
. Visible /
. Hemisphere /
. /
. /
. /
. /
(Earth surface) . / (Earth surface)
South --------------------------------------- North
/ . Celestial
/ . / Equator
Invisible .
/ .
/ Hemisphere .
/ .
Stars / .
Never .
/ Visible
/
South
Pole
THE CELESTIAL SPHERE.]
The outline of this unmapped region must therefore correspond roughly to
the horizon of the place where the constellations were originally
designed, or at least be roughly parallel to it, since we may well
suppose that stars which only rose two or three degrees above that
horizon might have been neglected.
From this we learn that the constellations were designed by people
living not very far from the 40th parallel of north latitude, not
further south than the 37th or 36th. This is important, as it shows that
they did not originate in ancient Egypt or India, nor even in the city
of Babylon, which is in latitude 32-1/2°.[157:1]
But this vacant space reveals another fact of even more importance. It
gives us a hint as to the date when the constellations were designed.
An observer in north latitude 40° at the present time would be very far
from seeing all the stars included in the forty-eight constellations. He
would see nothing at all of the constellation of the Altar, and a good
deal of that of the Centaur would be hidden from him.
On the other hand, there are some bright constellations, such as the
Phoenix and the Crane, unknown to the ancients, which would come within
his range of vision. This is due to what is known as "precession;" a
slow movement of the axis upon which the earth rotates. In consequence
of this, the pole of the heavens seems to trace out a circle amongst the
stars which it takes 25,800 years to complete. It is therefore a matter
of very simple calculation to find the position of the south pole of the
heavens at any given date, past or future, and we find that the centre
of the unmapped space was the south pole of the heavens something like
4,600 years ago, that is to say about 2,700 B.C.
It is, of course, not possible to fix either time or latitude very
closely, since the limits of the unmapped space are a a little vague.
But it is significant that if we take a celestial globe, arranged so as
to represent the heavens for the time 2,700 B.C., and for north latitude
40°, we find several striking relations. First of all, the Great Dragon
then linked together the north pole of the celestial equator, and the
north pole of the ecliptic; it was as nearly as possible symmetrical
with regard to the two; it occupied the very crown of the heavens. With
the single exception of the Little Bear, which it nearly surrounds, the
Dragon was the only constellation that never set. Next, the Water-snake
(see diagram, p. 200) lay at this time right along the equator,
extending over 105° of Right Ascension; or, to put it less technically,
it took seven hours out of the twenty-four to cross the meridian. It
covered nearly one-third of the equatorial belt. Thirdly, the
intersection of the equator with one of the principal meridians of the
sky was marked by the Serpent, which is carried by the Serpent-holder
in a very peculiar manner. The meridian at midnight at the time of the
spring equinox is called a "colure,"--the "autumnal colure," because the
sun crosses it in autumn. Now the Serpent was so arranged as to be shown
writhing itself for some distance along the equator, and then struggling
upwards, along the autumnal colure, marking the zenith with its head.
The lower part of the autumnal colure was marked by the Scorpion, and
the foot of the Serpent-holder pressed down the creature's head, just
where the colure, the equator, and the ecliptic intersected (_see_
diagram, p. 164).
It is scarcely conceivable that this fourfold arrangement, not suggested
by any natural grouping of the stars, should have come about by
accident; it must have been intentional. For some reason, the equator,
the colure, the zenith and the poles were all marked out by these
serpentine or draconic forms. The unmapped space gives us a clue only to
the date and latitude of the designing of the most southerly
constellations. We now see that a number of the northern hold positions
which were specially significant under the same conditions, indicating
that they were designed at about the same date. There is therefore
little room for doubt that some time in the earlier half of the third
millennium before our era, and somewhere between the 36th and 40th
parallels of north latitude, the constellations were designed,
substantially as we have them now, the serpent forms being intentionally
placed in these positions of great astronomical importance.
It will have been noticed that Ptolemy makes the Ram the first
constellation of the zodiac. It was so in his days, but it was the Bull
that was the original leader, as we know from a variety of traditions;
the sun at the spring equinox being in the centre of that constellation
about 3000 B.C. At the time when the constellations were designed, the
sun at the spring equinox was near Aldebaran, the brightest star of the
Bull; at the summer solstice it was near Regulus, the brightest star of
the Lion; at the autumnal equinox it was near Antares, the brightest
star of the Scorpion; at the winter solstice it was near Fomalhaut, the
brightest star in the neighbourhood of the Waterpourer. These four stars
have come down to us with the name of the "Royal Stars," probably
because they were so near to the four most important points in the
apparent path of the sun amongst the stars. There is also a celebrated
passage in the first of Virgil's _Georgics_ which speaks of the white
bull with golden horns that opens the year. So when the Mithraic
religion adopted several of the constellation figures amongst its
symbols, the Bull as standing for the spring equinox, the Lion for the
summer solstice, were the two to which most prominence was given, and
they are found thus used in Mithraic monuments as late as the second or
third century A.D., long after the Ram had been recognized as the
leading sign.
It is not possible to push back the origin of the constellations to an
indefinite antiquity. They cannot at the very outside be more than 5000
years old; they must be considerably more than 4000. But during the
whole of this millennium the sun at the spring equinox was in the
constellation of the Bull. There is therefore no possible doubt that
the Bull--and not the Twins nor the Ram--was the original leader of the
zodiac.
The constellations, therefore, were designed long before the nation of
Israel had its origin, indeed before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees.
The most probable date--2700 B.C.--would take us to a point a little
before the Flood, if we accept the Hebrew chronology, a few centuries
after the Flood, if we accept the Septuagint chronology. Just as the
next great age of astronomical activity, which I have termed the
Classical, began after the close of the canon of the Old Testament
scriptures, so the constellation age began before the first books of
those scriptures were compiled. Broadly speaking, it may be said that
the knowledge of the constellation figures was the chief asset of
astronomy in the centuries when the Old Testament was being written.
Seeing that the knowledge of these figures was preserved in Mesopotamia,
the country from which Abraham came out, and that they were in existence
long before his day, it is not unreasonable to suppose that both he and
his descendants were acquainted with them, and that when he and they
looked upward to the glories of the silent stars, and recalled the
promise, "So shall thy seed be," they pictured round those glittering
points of light much the same forms that we connect with them to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[157:1] Delitzsch is, therefore, in error when he asserts that "when we
divide the zodiac into twelve signs and style them the Ram, Bull, Twins,
etc. . . . the Sumerian-Babylonian culture is still living and operating
even at the present day" (_Babel and Bible_, p. 67). The constellations
may have been originally designed by the _Akkadians_, but if so it was
before they came down from their native highlands into the Mesopotamian
valley.
CHAPTER II
GENESIS AND THE CONSTELLATIONS
As we have just shown, the constellations evidently were designed long
before the earliest books of the Old Testament received their present
form. But the first nine chapters of Genesis give the history of the
world before any date that we can assign to the constellations, and are
clearly derived from very early documents or traditions.
When the constellations are compared with those nine chapters, several
correspondences appear between the two; remarkable, when it is borne in
mind how few are the events that can be plainly set forth in a group of
forty-eight figures on the one hand, and how condensed are the
narratives of those nine chapters on the other.
Look at the six southern constellations (_see_ pp. 164, 165) which were
seen during the nights of spring in that distant time. The largest of
these six is a great Ship resting on the southern horizon. Just above, a
Raven is perched on the stretched-out body of a reptile. A figure of a
Centaur appears to have just left the Ship, and is represented as
offering up an animal on an Altar. The animal is now shown as a Wolf,
but Aratus, our earliest authority, states that he did not know what
kind of animal it was that was being thus offered up. The cloud of
smoke from the Altar is represented by the bright coiling wreaths of the
Milky Way, and here in the midst of that cloud is set the Bow--the bow
of Sagittarius, the Archer. Is it possible that this can be mere
coincidence, or was it indeed intended as a memorial of the covenant
which God made with Noah, and with his children for ever?--"I do set My
bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me
and the earth."
Close by this group was another, made up of five constellations. Towards
the south, near midnight in spring, the observer in those ancient times
saw the Scorpion. The figure of a man was standing upon that venomous
beast, with his left foot pressed firmly down upon its head; but the
scorpion's tail was curled up to sting him in the right heel. Ophiuchus,
the Serpent-holder, the man treading on the Scorpion, derives his name
from the Serpent which he holds in his hands and strangles; the Serpent
that, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, marked the autumnal
colure. The head of Ophiuchus reached nearly to the zenith, and there
close to it was the head of another hero, so close that to complete the
form of the two heads the same stars must be used to some extent twice
over. Facing north, this second hero, now known to us as Hercules, but
to Aratus simply as the "Kneeler," was seen kneeling with his foot on
the head of the great northern Dragon. This great conflict between the
man and the serpent, therefore, was presented in a twofold form. Looking
south there was the picture of Ophiuchus trampling on the scorpion and
strangling the snake, yet wounded in the heel by the scorpion's sting;
looking north, the corresponding picture of the kneeling figure of
Hercules treading down the dragon's head. Here there seems an evident
reference to the word spoken by God to the serpent in the garden in
Eden: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy
seed and her Seed; It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His
heel."
[Illustration: THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF SPRING, B.C. 2700.]
These two groups of star-figures seem therefore to point to the two
great promises made to mankind and recorded in the early chapters of
Genesis; the Promise of the Deliverer, Who, "Seed of the woman," should
bruise the serpent's head, and the promise of the "Bow set in the
cloud," the pledge that the world should not again be destroyed by a
flood.
[Illustration: THE MIDNIGHT CONSTELLATIONS OF WINTER, B.C. 2700.]
One or two other constellations appear, less distinctly, to refer to the
first of these two promises. The Virgin, the woman of the zodiac,
carries in her hand a bright star, the ear of corn, the seed; whilst,
immediately under her, the great Water-snake, Hydra, is drawn out at
enormous length, "going on its belly;" not writhing upwards like the
Serpent, nor twined round the crown of the sky like the Dragon.
Yet again, the narrative in Genesis tells us that God "drove out the
man" (_i. e._ Adam), "and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden
the cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep
the way of the tree of life." No description is given of the form of the
cherubim in that passage, but they are fully described by Ezekiel, who
saw them in vision when he was by the river Chebar, as "the likeness of
four living creatures." The same beings were also seen in vision by St.
John, and are described by him in the Apocalypse as "four living
creatures" (_Z[=o]a_). "The first creature was like a lion, and the
second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face as of a
man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle." Ezekiel gives a
fuller and more complex description, but agreeing in its essential
elements with that given by the Apostle, and, at the close of one of
these descriptions, he adds, "This is the living creature that I saw
under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they
were cherubim"--no doubt because as a priest he had been familiar with
the cherubic forms as they were embroidered upon the curtains of the
Temple, and carved upon its walls and doors.
The same four forms were seen amongst the constellation figures; not
placed at random amongst them, but as far as possible in the four most
important positions in the sky. For the constellations were originally
so designed that the sun at the time of the summer solstice was in the
middle of the constellation _Leo_, the Lion; at the time of the spring
equinox in the middle of _Taurus_, the Bull; and at the time of the
winter solstice, in the middle of _Aquarius_, the Man bearing the
waterpot. The fourth point, that held by the sun at the autumnal
equinox, would appear to have been already assigned to the foot of the
Serpent-holder as he crushes down the Scorpion's head; but a flying
eagle, _Aquila_, is placed as near the equinoctial point as seems to
have been consistent with the ample space that it was desired to give to
the emblems of the great conflict between the Deliverer and the Serpent.
Thus, as in the vision of Ezekiel, so in the constellation figures, the
Lion, the Ox, the Man, and the Eagle, stood as the upholders of the
firmament, as "the pillars of heaven." They looked down like watchers
upon all creation; they seemed to guard the four quarters of the sky.
If we accept an old Jewish tradition, the constellations may likewise
give us some hint of an event recorded in the tenth chapter of Genesis.
For it has been supposed that the great stellar giant Orion is none
other than "Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord," and the founder
of the Babylonian kingdom; identified by some Assyriologists with
Merodach, the tutelary deity of Babylon: and by others with Gilgamesh,
the tyrant of Erech, whose exploits have been preserved to us in the
great epic now known by his name. Possibly both identifications may
prove to be correct.
More than one third of the constellation figures thus appear to have a
close connection with some of the chief incidents recorded in the first
ten chapters of Genesis as having taken place in the earliest ages of
the world's history. If we include the Hare and the two Dogs as adjuncts
of Orion, and the Cup as well as the Raven with Hydra, then no fewer
than twenty-two out of the forty-eight are directly or indirectly so
connected. But the constellation figures only deal with a very few
isolated incidents, and these are necessarily such as lend themselves to
graphic representation. The points in common with the Genesis narrative
are indeed striking, but the points of independence are no less
striking. The majority of the constellation figures do not appear to
refer to any incidents in Genesis; the majority of the incidents in the
Genesis narrative find no record in the sky. Even in the treatment of
incidents common to both there are differences, which make it impossible
to suppose that either was directly derived from the other.
But it is clear that when the constellations were devised,--that is to
say, roughly speaking, about 2,700 B.C.,--the promise of the Deliverer,
the "Seed of the woman" who should bruise the serpent's head, was well
known and highly valued; so highly valued that a large part of the sky
was devoted to its commemoration and to that of the curse on the
serpent. The story of the Flood was also known, and especially the
covenant made with those who were saved in the ark, that the world
should not again be destroyed by water, the token of which covenant was
the "Bow set in the cloud." The fourfold cherubic forms were known, the
keepers of the way of the tree of life, the symbols of the presence of
God; and they were set in the four parts of the heaven, marking it out
as the tabernacle which He spreadeth abroad, for He dwelleth between the
cherubim.
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF THE DELUGE
Beside the narrative of the Flood given to us in Genesis, and the
pictorial representation of it preserved in the star figures, we have
Deluge stories from many parts of the world. But in particular we have a
very striking one from Babylonia. In the _Epic of Gilgamesh_, already
alluded to, the eleventh tablet is devoted to an interview between the
hero and Pir-napistim, the Babylonian Noah, who recounts to him how he
and his family were saved at the time of the great flood.
This Babylonian story of the Deluge stands in quite a different relation
from the Babylonian story of Creation in its bearing on the account
given in Genesis. As we have already seen, the stories of Creation have
practically nothing in common; the stories of the Deluge have many most
striking points of resemblance, and may reasonably be supposed to have
had a common origin.
Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch, in his celebrated lectures _Babel and Bible_,
refers to this Babylonian Deluge story in the following terms:--
"The Babylonians divided their history into two great periods:
the one before, the other after the Flood. Babylon was in
quite a peculiar sense the land of deluges. The alluvial
lowlands along the course of all great rivers discharging into
the sea are, of course, exposed to terrible floods of a
special kind--cyclones and tornadoes accompanied by
earthquakes and tremendous downpours of rain."
After referring to the great cyclone and tidal wave which wrecked the
Sunderbunds at the mouths of the Ganges in 1876, when 215,000 persons
met their death by drowning, Prof. Delitzsch goes on--
"It is the merit of the celebrated Viennese geologist, Eduard
Suess, to have shown that there is an accurate description of
such a cyclone, line for line, in the Babylonian Deluge
story. . . . The whole story, precisely as it was written
down, travelled to Canaan. But, owing to the new and entirely
different local conditions, it was forgotten that the sea was
the chief factor, and so we find in the Bible two accounts of
the Deluge, which are not only scientifically impossible, but,
furthermore, mutually contradictory--the one assigning to it a
duration of 365 days, the other of [40 + (3 x 7)] = 61 days.
Science is indebted to Jean Astruc, that strictly orthodox
Catholic physician of Louis XIV., for recognizing that two
fundamentally different accounts of a deluge have been worked
up into a single story in the Bible."[171:1]
The importance of the Babylonian Deluge story does not rest in anything
intrinsic to itself, for there are many deluge stories preserved by
other nations quite as interesting and as well told. It derives its
importance from its points of resemblance to the Genesis story, and from
the deduction that some have drawn from these that it was the original
of that story--or rather of the two stories--that we find imperfectly
recombined in Genesis.
The suggestion of Jean Astruc that "two fundamentally different
accounts of a deluge have been worked up into a single story in the
Bible" has been generally accepted by those who have followed him in the
minute analysis of the literary structure of Holy Scripture; and the
names of the "Priestly Narrative" and of the "Jehovistic Narrative"
have, for the sake of distinctness, been applied to them. The former is
so called because the chapters in Exodus and the two following books,
which treat with particular minuteness of the various ceremonial
institutions of Israel, are considered to be by the same writer. The
latter has received its name from the preference shown by the writer for
the use, as the Divine name, of the word _Jehovah_,--so spelt when given
in our English versions, but generally translated "the LORD."
There is a very close accord between different authorities as to the way
in which Genesis, chapters vi.-ix., should be allotted to these two
sources. The following is Dr. Driver's arrangement:--
PRIESTLY NARRATIVE. | JEHOVISTIC NARRATIVE.
|
Chap. Verse. | Chap. Verse.
Genesis vi. 9-22. |Genesis vii. 1-5.
vii. 6. | 7-10.
11. | 12.
13-16a. | 16b.
17a. | 17b.
18-21. | 22-23.
24. | viii. 2b-3a.
viii. 1-2a. | 6-12.
3b-5. | 13b.
13a. | 20-22.
14-19. |
ix. 1-17. |
The Priestly narrative therefore tells us the cause of the Flood--that
is to say, the corruption of mankind; describes the dimensions of the
ark, and instructs Noah to bring "of every living thing of all flesh,
two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with
thee; they shall be male and female." It further supplies the dates of
the chief occurrences during the Flood, states that the waters prevailed
above the tops of the mountains, that when the Flood diminished the ark
rested upon the mountains of Ararat; and gives the account of Noah and
his family going forth from the ark, and of the covenant which God made
with them, of which the token was to be the bow seen in the cloud.
The most striking notes of the Jehovistic narrative are,--the incident
of the sending out of the raven and the dove; the account of Noah's
sacrifice; and the distinction made between clean beasts and beasts that
are not clean--the command to Noah being, "Of every clean beast thou
shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts
that are not clean by two, the male and his female." The significant
points of distinction between the two accounts are that the Priestly
writer gives the description of the ark, the Flood prevailing above the
mountains, the grounding on Mount Ararat, and the bow in the cloud; the
Jehovistic gives the sending out of the raven and the dove, and the
account of Noah's sacrifice, which involves the recognition of the
distinction between the clean and unclean beasts and the more abundant
provision of the former. He also lays emphasis on the Lord's "smelling a
sweet savour" and promising never again to smite everything living,
"for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."
The chief features of the Babylonian story of the Deluge are as
follows:--The God Ae spoke to Pir-napistim, the Babylonian Noah--
"'Destroy the house, build a ship,
Leave what thou hast, see to thy life.
Destroy the hostile and save life.
Take up the seed of life, all of it, into the midst of the ship.
The ship which thou shalt make, even thou.
Let its size be measured;
Let it agree as to its height and its length.'"
The description of the building of the ship seems to have been very
minute, but the record is mutilated, and what remains is difficult to
translate. As in the Priestly narrative, it is expressly mentioned that
it was "pitched within and without."
The narrative proceeds in the words of Pir-napistim:--
"All I possessed, I collected it,
All I possessed I collected it, of silver;
All I possessed I collected it, of gold;
All I possessed I collected it, the seed of life, the whole.
I caused to go up into the midst of the ship,
All my family and relatives,
The beasts of the field, the animals of the field, the sons of the
artificers--all of them I sent up.
The God [vS]ama[vs] appointed the time--
Muir Kukki--'In the night I will cause the heavens to rain
destruction,
Enter into the midst of the ship, and shut thy door.'
That time approached--
Muir Kukki--In the night the heavens rained destruction
I saw the appearance of the day:
I was afraid to look upon the day--
I entered into the midst of the ship, and shut my door
* * * * *
At the appearance of dawn in the morning,
There arose from the foundation of heaven a dark cloud:
* * * * *
The first day, the storm? . . . .
Swiftly it swept, and . . . .
Like a battle against the people it sought.
Brother saw not brother.
The people were not to be recognized. In heaven
The gods feared the flood, and
They fled, they ascended to the heaven of Anu.
The gods kenneled like dogs, crouched down in the enclosures.
* * * * *
The gods had crouched down, seated in lamentation,
Covered were their lips in the assemblies,
Six days and nights
The wind blew, the deluge and flood overwhelmed the land.
The seventh day, when it came, the storm ceased, the raging flood,
Which had contended like a whirlwind,
Quieted, the sea shrank back, and the evil wind and deluge ended.
I noticed the sea making a noise,
And all mankind had turned to corruption.
* * * * *
I noted the regions, the shore of the sea,
For twelve measures the region arose.
The ship had stopped at the land of Nisir.
The mountain of Nisir seized the ship, and would not let it pass.
The first day and the second day the mountains of Nisir seized the
ship, and would not let it pass.
* * * * *
The seventh day, when it came
I sent forth a dove, and it left;
The dove went, it turned about,
But there was no resting-place, and it returned.
I sent forth a swallow, and it left,
The swallow went, it turned about,
But there was no resting-place, and it returned.
I sent forth a raven, and it left,
The raven went, the rushing of the waters it saw,
It ate, it waded, it croaked, it did not return.
I sent forth (the animals) to the four winds, I poured out a
libation,
I made an offering on the peak of the mountain,
Seven and seven I set incense-vases there,
In their depths I poured cane, cedar, and rosewood (?).
The gods smelled a savour;
The gods smelled a sweet savour.
The gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer.
Then the goddess Sîrtu, when she came,
Raised the great signets that Anu had made at her wish:
'These gods--by the lapis-stone of my neck--let me not forget;
These days let me remember, nor forget them for ever!
Let the gods come to the sacrifice,
But let not Bêl come to the sacrifice,
For he did not take counsel, and made a flood,
And consigned my people to destruction.'
Then Bêl, when he came,
Saw the ship. And Bêl stood still,
Filled with anger on account of the gods and the spirits of
heaven.
'What, has a soul escaped?
Let not a man be saved from the destruction.'
Ninip opened his mouth and spake.
He said to the warrior Bêl:
'Who but Ae has done the thing?
And Ae knows every event.'
Ae opened his mouth and spake,
He said to the warrior Bêl:
'Thou sage of the gods, warrior,
Verily thou hast not taken counsel, and hast made a flood.
The sinner has committed his sin,
The evil-doer has committed his misdeed,
Be merciful--let him not be cut off--yield, let not perish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let the lion come, and let men diminish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let the hyena come, and let men diminish.
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let a famine happen, and let the land be (?)
Why hast thou made a flood?
Let Ura (pestilence) come, and let the land be (?)'"[176:1]
Of the four records before us, we can only date one approximately. The
constellations, as we have already seen, were mapped out some time in
the third millennium before our era, probably not very far from 2700
B.C.
When was the Babylonian story written? Does it, itself, afford any
evidence of date? It occurs in the eleventh tablet of the _Epic of
Gilgamesh_, and the theory has been started that as Aquarius, a watery
constellation, is now the eleventh sign of the zodiac, therefore we have
in this epic of twelve tablets a series of solar myths founded upon the
twelve signs of the zodiac, the eleventh giving us a legend of a flood
to correspond to the stream of water which the man in Aquarius pours
from his pitcher.
If this theory be accepted we can date the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ with much
certainty: it must be later, probably much later, than 700 B.C. For it
cannot have been till about that time that the present arrangement of
the zodiacal signs--that is to say with Aries as the first and Aquarius
as the eleventh--can have been adopted. We have then to allow for the
growth of a mythology with the twelve signs as its _motif_. Had this
supposed series of zodiacal myths originated before 700 B.C., before
Aries was adopted as the leading sign, then the Bull, Taurus, would have
given rise to the myth of the first tablet and Aquarius to the tenth,
not to the eleventh where we find the story of the flood.
Assyriologists do not assign so late a date to this poem, and it must be
noted that the theory supposes, not merely that the tablet itself, but
that the poem and the series of myths upon which it was based, were all
later in conception than 700 B.C. One conclusive indication of its early
date is given by the position in the pantheon of Ae and Bêl. Ae has not
receded into comparative insignificance, nor has Bêl attained to that
full supremacy which, as Merodach, he possesses in the Babylonian
Creation story. We may therefore put on one side as an unsupported and
unfortunate guess the suggestion that the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is the
setting forth of a series of zodiacal myths.
Any legends, any mythology, any pantheon based upon the zodiac must
necessarily be more recent than the zodiac; any system involving Aries
as the first sign of the zodiac must be later than the adoption of Aries
as the first sign, that is to say, later than 700 B.C. Systems arising
before that date would inevitably be based upon Taurus as first
constellation.
We cannot then, from astronomical relationships, fix the date of the
Babylonian story of the Flood. Is it possible, however, to form any
estimate of the comparative ages of the Babylonian legend and of the two
narratives given in Genesis, or of either of these two? Does the
Babylonian story connect itself with one of the Genesis narratives
rather than the other?
The significant points in the Babylonian story are these:--the command
to Pir-napistim to build a ship, with detailed directions; the great
rise of the flood so that even the gods in the heaven of Anu feared it;
the detailed dating of the duration of the flood; the stranding of the
ship on the mountain of Nisir; the sending forth of the dove, the
swallow, and their return; the sending forth of the raven, and its
non-return; the sacrifice; the gods smelling its sweet savour; the vow
of remembrance of the goddess by the lapis-stone necklace; the
determination of the gods not to send a flood again upon the earth,
since sin is inevitable from the sinner. To all these points we find
parallels in the account as given in Genesis.
But it is in the Priestly narrative that we find the directions for the
building of the ship; the great prevalence of the flood even to the
height of the mountains; the stranding of the ship on a mountain; and
the bow in the clouds as a covenant of remembrance--this last being
perhaps paralleled in the Babylonian story by the mottled
(blue-and-white) lapis necklace of the goddess which she swore by as a
remembrancer. There is therefore manifest connection with the narrative
told by the Priestly writer.
But it is in the Jehovistic narrative, on the other hand, that we find
the sending forth of the raven, and its non-return; the sending forth of
the dove, and its return; the sacrifice, and the sweet savour that was
smelled of the Lord; and the determination of the Lord not to curse the
earth any more for man's sake, nor smite any more every living thing,
"for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." There is,
therefore, no less manifest connection with the narrative told by the
Jehovistic writer.
But the narrative told by the writer of the Babylonian story is one
single account; even if it were a combination of two separate
traditions, they have been so completely fused that they cannot now be
broken up so as to form two distinct narratives, each complete in
itself.
"The whole story precisely as it was written down travelled to
Canaan,"--so we are told. And there,--we are asked to believe,--two
Hebrew writers of very different temperaments and schools of thought,
each independently worked up a complete story of the Deluge from this
Gilgamesh legend. They chose out different incidents, one selecting what
the other rejected, and _vice versa_, so that their two accounts were
"mutually contradictory." They agreed, however, in cleansing it from its
polytheistic setting, and giving it a strictly monotheistic tone. Later,
an "editor" put the two narratives together, with all their
inconsistencies and contradictions, and interlocked them into one, which
presents all the main features of the original Gilgamesh story except
its polytheism. In other words, two Hebrew scribes each told in his own
way a part of the account of the Deluge which he had derived from
Babylon, and a third unwittingly so recombined them as to make them
represent the Babylonian original!
The two accounts of the Deluge, supposed to be present in Genesis,
therefore cannot be derived from the Gilgamesh epic, nor be later than
it, seeing that what is still plainly separable in Genesis is
inseparably fused in the epic.
On the other hand, can the Babylonian narrative be later than, and
derived from, the Genesis account? Since so many of the same
circumstances are represented in both, this is a more reasonable
proposition, if we assume that the Babylonian narrator had the Genesis
account as it now stands, and did not have to combine two separate
statements. For surely if he had the separate Priestly and Jehovistic
narratives we should now be able to decompose the Babylonian narrative
just as easily as we do the one in Genesis. The Babylonian adapter of
the Genesis story must have either been less astute than ourselves, and
did not perceive that he had really two distinct (and "contradictory")
narratives to deal with, or he did not consider this circumstance of the
slightest importance, and had no objection to merging them inextricably
into one continuous account.
It is therefore possible that the Babylonian account was derived from
that in Genesis; but it is not probable. The main circumstances are the
same in both, but the details, the presentment, the attitude of mind are
very different. We can better explain the agreement in the general
circumstances, and even in many of the details, by presuming that both
are accounts--genuine traditions--of the same actual occurrence. The
differences in detail, presentment, and attitude, are fully and
sufficiently explained by supposing that we have traditions from two, if
not three, witnesses of the event.
We have also the pictorial representation of the Flood given us in the
constellations. What evidence do they supply?
Here the significant points are: the ship grounded upon a high rock; the
raven above it, eating the flesh of a stretched-out reptile; a sacrifice
offered up by a person, who has issued forth from the ship, upon an
altar, whose smoke goes up in a cloud, in which a bow is set.
In this grouping of pictures we have two characteristic features of the
Priestly narrative, in the ship grounded on a rock, and in the bow set
in the cloud; we have also two characteristic features of the Jehovistic
narrative, in the smoking altar of sacrifice, and in the carrion bird.
There is therefore manifest connection between the constellation
grouping and _both_ the narratives given in Genesis.
But the constellational picture story is the only one of all these
narratives that we can date. It must have been designed--as we have
seen--about 2700 B.C.
The question again comes up for answer. Were the Genesis and Babylonian
narratives, any or all of them, derived from the pictured story in the
constellations; or, on the other hand, was this derived from any or all
of them?
The constellations were mapped out near the north latitude of 40°, far
to the north of Babylonia, so the pictured story cannot have come from
thence. We do not know where the Genesis narratives were written, but if
the Flood of the constellations was pictured from them, then they must
have been already united into the account that is now presented to us in
Genesis, very early in the third millennium before Christ.
Could the account in Genesis have been derived from the constellations?
If it is a double account, most decidedly not; since the pictured story
in the constellations is one, and presents impartially the
characteristic features of _both_ the narratives.
And (as in comparing the Genesis and the Babylonian narratives) we see
that though the main circumstances are the same--in so far as they lend
themselves to pictorial representations--the details, the presentment,
the attitude are different. In the Genesis narrative, the bow set in the
cloud is a rainbow in a cloud of rain; in the constellation picture, the
bow set in the cloud is the bow of an archer, and the cloud is the
pillar of smoke from off the altar of sacrifice. In the narratives of
Genesis and Babylonia, Noah and Pir-napistim are men: no hint is given
anywhere that by their physical form or constitution they were marked
off from other men; in the storied picture, he who issues from the ship
is a centaur: his upper part is the head and body of a man, his lower
part is the body of a horse.
As before, there is no doubt that we can best explain the agreement in
circumstance of all the narratives by presuming that they are
independent accounts of the same historical occurrence. We can, at the
same time, explain the differences in style and detail between the
narratives by presuming that the originals were by men of different
qualities of mind who each wrote as the occurrence most appealed to him.
The Babylonian narrator laid hold of the promise that, though beast, or
famine, or pestilence might diminish men, a flood should not again sweep
away every living thing, and connected the promise with the signets--the
lapis necklace of the goddess Sîrtu that she touched as a remembrancer.
The picturer of the constellations saw the pledge in the smoke of the
sacrifice, in the spirit of the words of the Lord as given by Asaph,
"Gather My saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with
Me by sacrifice." The writer in Genesis saw the promise in the
rain-cloud, for the rainbow can only appear with the shining of the sun.
The writer in Genesis saw in Noah a righteous man, worthy to escape the
flood of desolation that swept away the wickedness around; there is no
explanation apparent, at least on the surface, as to why the designer of
the constellations made him, who issued from the ship and offered the
sacrifice, a centaur--one who partook of two natures.
The comparison of the Deluge narratives from Genesis, from the
constellations, and from Babylonia, presents a clear issue. If all the
accounts are independent, and if there are two accounts intermingled
into one in Genesis, then the chief facts presented in both parts of
that dual narrative must have been so intermingled at an earlier date
than 2700 B.C. The editor who first united the two stories into one must
have done his work before that date.
But if the accounts are not independent histories, and the narrative as
we have it in Genesis is derived either in whole or in part from
Babylonia or from the constellations--if, in short, the Genesis story
came from a Babylonian or a stellar myth--then we cannot escape from
this conclusion: that the narrative in Genesis is not, and never has
been, two separable portions; that the scholars who have so divided it
have been entirely in error. But we cannot so lightly put on one side
the whole of the results which the learning and research of so many
scholars have given us in the last century-and-a-half. We must therefore
unhesitatingly reject the theory that the Genesis Deluge story owes
anything either to star myth or to Babylonian mythology. And if the
Genesis Deluge story is not so derived, certainly no other portion of
Holy Scripture.
FOOTNOTES:
[171:1] _Babel and Bible_, Johns' translation, pp. 42-46.
[176:1] T. G. Pinches, _The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical
Records of Assyria and Babylonia_, pp. 102-107.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL AND THE ZODIAC
The earliest reference in Scripture to the constellations of the zodiac
occurs in the course of the history of Joseph. In relating his second
dream to his brethren he said--
"Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and
the moon, and the eleven stars made obeisance to me."
The word "_Kochab_" in the Hebrew means both "star" and "constellation."
The significance, therefore, of the reference to the "eleven stars" is
clear. Just as Joseph's eleven brethren were eleven out of the twelve
sons of Jacob, so Joseph saw eleven constellations out of the twelve
come and bow down to him. And the twelve constellations can only mean
the twelve of the zodiac.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the zodiac in question was
practically the same as we have now, the one transmitted to us through
Aratus and Ptolemy. It had been designed quite a thousand years earlier
than the days of Joseph; it was known in Mesopotamia from whence his
ancestors had come; it was known in Egypt; that is to say it was known
on both sides of Canaan. There have been other zodiacs: thus the
Chinese have one of their own: but we have no evidence of any zodiac,
except the one transmitted to us by the Greeks, as having been at any
time adopted in Canaan or the neighbouring countries.
There is no need to suppose that each of the brethren had a zodiacal
figure already assigned to him as a kind of armorial bearing or device.
The dream was appropriate, and perfectly intelligible to Jacob, to
Joseph, and his brethren, without supposing that any such arrangement
had then been made. It is quite true that there are Jewish traditions
assigning a constellation to each of the tribes of Israel, but it does
not appear that any such traditions can be distinctly traced to a great
antiquity, and they are mostly somewhat indefinite. Josephus, for
instance, makes a vague assertion about the twelve precious stones of
the High Priest's breast-plate, each of which bore the name of one of
the tribes, connecting them with the signs of the zodiac:--
"Now the names of all those sons of Jacob were engraven in
these stones, whom we esteem the heads of our tribes, each
stone having the honour of a name, in the order according to
which they were born. . . . And for the twelve stones whether
we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the
like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call
the Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning."[187:1]
But whilst there is no sufficient evidence that each of the sons of
Jacob had a zodiacal figure for his coat-of-arms, nor even that the
tribes deriving their names from them were so furnished, there is
strong and harmonious tradition as to the character of the devices borne
on the standards carried by the four divisions of the host in the march
through the wilderness. The four divisions, or camps, each contained
three tribes, and were known by the name of the principal tribe in each.
The camp of Judah was on the east, and the division of Judah led on the
march. The camp of Reuben was on the south. The camp of Ephraim was on
the west. The camp of Dan was on the north, and the division of Dan
brought up the rear. And the traditional devices shown on the four
standards were these:--For Judah, a lion; for Reuben, a man and a river;
for Ephraim, a bull; for Dan, an eagle and a serpent.
In these four standards we cannot fail to see again the four cherubic
forms of lion, man, ox and eagle; but in two cases an addition was made
to the cherubic form, an addition recalling the constellation figure.
For just as the crest of Reuben was not a man only, but a man and a
river, so Aquarius is not a man only, but a man pouring out a stream of
water. And as the crest of Dan was not an eagle only, but an eagle and a
serpent, so the great group of constellations, clustering round the
autumnal equinox, included not only the Eagle, but also the Scorpion and
the Serpent (_see_ diagram, p. 189).
There appears to be an obvious connection between these devices and the
blessings pronounced by Jacob upon his sons, and by Moses upon the
tribes; indeed, it would seem probable that it was the former that
largely determined the choice of the devices adopted by the four great
divisions of the host in the wilderness.
The blessing pronounced by Jacob on Judah runs, "Judah is a lion's
whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he
couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?" "The
Lion of the tribe of Judah" is the title given to our Lord Himself in
the Apocalypse of St. John.
[Illustration: OPHIUCHUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]
The blessing pronounced upon Joseph by Moses bears as emphatic a
reference to the bull. "The firstling of his bullock, majesty is his;
and his horns are the horns of the wild-ox."
Jacob's blessing upon Joseph does not show any reference to the ox or
bull in our Authorized Version. But in our Revised Version Jacob says of
Simeon and Levi--
"In their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they houghed an ox."
The first line appears to refer to the massacre of the Shechemites; the
second is interpreted by the Jerusalem Targum, "In their wilfulness they
sold Joseph their brother, who is likened to an ox." And in the blessing
of Joseph it is said that his "branches (_margin_, daughters), run over
the wall." Some translators have rendered this, "The daughters walk upon
the bull," "wall" and "bull" being only distinguishable in the original
by a slight difference in the pointing.
Of Reuben, his father said, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel;"
and of Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path,
that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
These two last prophecies supply the "water" and the "serpent," which,
added to the "man" and "eagle" of the cherubic forms, are needed to
complete the traditional standards, and are needed also to make them
conform more closely to the constellation figures.
No such correspondence can be traced between the eight remaining tribes
and the eight remaining constellations. Different writers combine them
in different ways, and the allusions to constellation figures in the
blessings of those tribes are in most cases very doubtful and obscure,
even if it can be supposed that any such allusions are present at all.
The connection cannot be pushed safely beyond the four chief tribes, and
the four cherubic forms as represented in the constellations of the four
quarters of the sky.
These four standards, or rather, three of them, meet us again in a very
interesting connection. When Israel reached the borders of Moab, Balak,
the king of Moab, sent for a seer of great reputation, Balaam, the son
of Beor, to "Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel." Balaam came,
but instead of cursing Jacob, blessed the people in four prophecies,
wherein he made, what would appear to be, distinct references to the
standards of Judah, Joseph and Reuben.
"Behold the people riseth up as a lioness,
And as a lion doth he lift himself up."
Then again--
"He couched, he lay down as a lion,
And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?"
And in two passages--
"God bringeth him forth out of Egypt;
He hath as it were the strength of the wild ox."
The wild ox and lion are obvious similes to use concerning a powerful
and warlike people. These two similes are, therefore, not sufficient by
themselves to prove that the tribal standards are being referred to. But
the otherwise enigmatical verse--
"Water shall flow from his buckets,"
appears more expressly as an allusion to the standard of Reuben, the
"man with the river," Aquarius pouring water from his pitcher; and if
one be a reference to a standard, the others may also well be.
[Illustration: AQUARIUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]
It is surely something more than coincidence that Joseph, who by his
father's favour and his own merit was made the leader of the twelve
brethren, should be associated with the bull or wild ox, seeing that
Taurus was the leader of the zodiac in those ages. It may also well be
more than coincidence, that when Moses was in the mount and "the people
gathered themselves unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods,
which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us
up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him," Aaron
fashioned the golden earrings given him into the form of a molten calf;
into the similitude, that is to say, of Taurus, then Prince of the
Zodiac. If we turn to St. Stephen's reference to this occurrence, we
find that he says--
"And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice
unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of
heaven."
In other words, their worship of the golden calf was star worship.
It has been often pointed out that this sin of the Israelites, deep as
it was, was not in itself a breach of the first commandment--
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
It was a breach of the second--
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in
the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."
The Israelites did not conceive that they were abandoning the worship of
Jehovah; they still considered themselves as worshipping the one true
God. They were monotheists still, not polytheists. But they had taken
the first false step that inevitably leads to polytheism; they had
forgotten that they had seen "no manner of similitude on the day that
the Lord spake unto" them "in Horeb out of the midst of the fire," and
they had worshipped this golden calf as the similitude of God; they had
"changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass."
And that was treason against Him; therefore St. Stephen said, "God
turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven;" the one sin
inevitably led to the other, indeed, involved it. In a later day, when
Jeroboam, who had been appointed by Solomon ruler over all the charge of
the house of Joseph, led the rebellion of the ten tribes against
Rehoboam, king of Judah, he set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and
said unto his people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem:
behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt." There can be little doubt that, in this case, Jeroboam was not
so much recalling the transgression in the wilderness--it was not an
encouraging precedent--as he was adopting the well-known cognizance of
the tribe of Joseph, that is to say, of the two tribes of Ephraim and
Manasseh, which together made up the more important part of his kingdom,
as the symbol of the presence of Jehovah.
The southern kingdom would naturally adopt the device of its predominant
tribe, Judah, and it was as the undoubted cognizance of the kingdom of
Judah that our Richard I., the Crusader, placed the Lion on his shield.
More definitely still, we find this one of the cherubic forms applied
to set forth Christ Himself, as "The Root of David," Prince of the house
of Judah--
"Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David,
hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals
thereof."
FOOTNOTES:
[187:1] Josephus, _Antiquities of the Jews_, III. vii. 5-7.
CHAPTER V
LEVIATHAN
There are amongst the constellations four great draconic or serpent-like
forms. Chief of these is the great dragon coiled round the pole of the
ecliptic and the pole of the equator as the latter was observed some
4600 years ago. This is the dragon with which the Kneeler, _Hercules_,
is fighting, and whose head he presses down with his foot. The second is
the great watersnake, _Hydra_, which 4600 years ago stretched for 105°
along the celestial equator of that day. Its head was directed towards
the ascending node, that is to say the point where the ecliptic, the
sun's apparent path, crosses the equator at the spring equinox; and its
tail stretched nearly to the descending node, the point where the
ecliptic again meets the equator at the autumn equinox. The third was
the Serpent, the one held in the grip of the Serpent-holder. Its head
erected itself just above the autumn equinox, and reached up as far as
the zenith; its tail lay along the equator. The fourth of these draconic
forms was the great Sea-monster, stretched out along the horizon, with a
double river--_Eridanus_--proceeding from it, just below the spring
equinox.
[Illustration: HERCULES AND DRACO.]
None of these four figures was suggested by the natural grouping of the
stars. Very few of the constellation-figures were so suggested, and
these four in particular, as so high an authority as Prof. Schiaparelli
expressly points out, were not amongst that few. Their positions show
that they were designed some 4600 years ago, and that they have not been
materially altered down to the present time. Though no forms or
semblances of forms are there in the heavens, yet we still seem to see,
as we look upwards, not merely the stars themselves, but the same snakes
and dragons, first imagined so many ages ago as coiling amongst them.
The tradition of these serpentine forms and of their peculiar placing in
the heavens was current among the Babylonians quite 1500 years after the
constellations were devised. For the little "boundary stones" often
display, amongst many other astronomical symbols, the coiled dragon
round the top of the stone, the extended snake at its base (_see_ p.
318), and at one or other corner the serpent bent into a right angle
like that borne by the Serpent-holder--that is to say, the three out of
the four serpentine forms that hold astronomically important positions
in the sky.
The positions held by these three serpents or dragons have given rise to
a significant set of astronomical terms. The Dragon marked the poles of
both ecliptic and equator; the Watersnake marked the equator almost from
node to node; the Serpent marked the equator at one of the nodes. The
"Dragon's Head" and the "Dragon's Tail" therefore have been taken as
astronomical symbols of the ascending and descending nodes of the sun's
apparent path--the points where he seems to ascend above the equator in
the spring, and to descend below it again in the autumn.
The moon's orbit likewise intersects the apparent path of the sun in two
points, its two nodes; and the interval of time between its passage
through one of these nodes and its return to that same node again is
called a Draconic month, a month of the Dragon. The same symbols are
applied by analogy to the moon's nodes.
Indeed the "Dragon's Head," [symbol], is the general sign for the
ascending node of any orbit, whether of moon, planet or comet, and the
"Dragon's Tail," [symbol], for the descending node. We not only use
these signs in astronomical works to-day, but the latter sign frequently
occurs, figured exactly as we figure it now, on Babylonian boundary
stones 3000 years old.
But an eclipse either of the sun or of the moon can only take place when
the latter is near one of its two nodes--is in the "Dragon's Head" or in
the "Dragon's Tail." This relation might be briefly expressed by saying
that the Dragon--that is of the nodes--causes the eclipse. Hence the
numerous myths, found in so many nations, which relate how "a dragon
devours the sun (or moon)" at the time of an eclipse.
[Illustration: HYDRA AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]
The dragon of eclipse finds its way into Hindoo mythology in a form
which shows clearly that the myth arose from a misunderstanding of the
constellations. The equatorial Water-snake, stretching from one node
nearly to the other, has resting upon it, _Crater_, the Cup. Combining
this with the expression for the two nodes, the Hindu myth has taken
the following form. The gods churned the surface of the sea to make the
Amrita Cup, the cup of the water of life. "And while the gods were
drinking that nectar after which they had so much hankered, a Danava,
named Rahu, was drinking it in the guise of a god. And when the nectar
had only reached Rahu's throat, the sun and the moon discovered him, and
communicated the fact to the gods." Rahu's head was at once cut off,
but, as the nectar had reached thus far, it was immortal, and rose to
the sky. "From that time hath arisen a long-standing quarrel between
Rahu's head and the sun and moon," and the head swallows them from time
to time, causing eclipses. Rahu's head marks the ascending, Ketu, the
tail, the descending node.
This myth is very instructive. Before it could have arisen, not only
must the constellations have been mapped out, and the equator and
ecliptic both recognized, but the inclination of the moon's orbit to
that of the sun must also have been recognized, together with the fact
that it was only when the moon was near its node that the eclipses,
either of the sun or moon, could take place. In other words, the cause
of eclipses must have been at one time understood, but that knowledge
must have been afterwards lost. We have seen already, in the chapter on
"The Deep," that the Hebrew idea of _teh[=o]m_ could not possibly have
been derived from the Babylonian myth of _Tiamat_, since the knowledge
of the natural object must precede the myth founded upon it. If,
therefore, Gen. i. and the Babylonian story of Creation be connected,
the one as original, the other as derived from that original, it is the
Babylonian story that has been borrowed from the Hebrew, and it has
been degraded in the borrowing.
So in this case, the myth of the Dragon, whose head and tail cause
eclipses, must have been derived from a corruption and misunderstanding
of a very early astronomical achievement. The myth is evidence of
knowledge lost, of science on the down-grade.
Some may object that the myth may have brought about the conception of
the draconic constellations. A very little reflection will show that
such a thing was impossible. If the superstition that an eclipse is
caused by an invisible dragon swallowing the sun or moon had really been
the origin of the constellational dragons, they would certainly have all
been put in the zodiac, the only region of the sky where sun or moon can
be found; not outside it, where neither can ever come, and in
consequence where no eclipse can take place. Nor could such a
superstition have led on to the discoveries above-mentioned: that the
moon caused eclipses of the sun, the earth those of the moon; that the
moon's orbit was inclined to the ecliptic, and that eclipses took place
only near the nodes. The idea of an unseen spiritual agent being at work
would prevent any search for a physical explanation, since polytheism is
necessarily opposed to science.
There is a word used in Scripture to denote a reptilian monster, which
appears in one instance at least to refer to this dragon of eclipse, and
so to be used in an astronomical sense. Job, in his first outburst of
grief cursed the day in which he was born, and cried--
"Let them curse it that curse the day,
Who are ready (_margin_, skilful) to rouse up Leviathan.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark
Let it look for light, but have none;
Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning."
"_Leviathan_" denotes an animal wreathed, gathering itself in coils:
hence a serpent, or some great reptile. The description in Job xli. is
evidently that of a mighty crocodile, though in Psalm civ. leviathan is
said to play in "the great and wide sea," which has raised a difficulty
as to its identification in the minds of some commentators. In the
present passage it is supposed to mean one of the stellar dragons, and
hence the mythical dragon of eclipse. Job desired that the day of his
birth should have been cursed by the magicians, so that it had been a
day of complete and entire eclipse, not even the stars that preceded its
dawn being allowed to shine.
The astronomical use of the word _leviathan_ here renders it possible
that there may be in Isa. xxvii. an allusion--quite secondary and
indirect however--to the chief stellar dragons.
"In that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword
shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan
that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in
the sea."
The marginal reading gives us instead of "piercing," "crossing like a
bar"; a most descriptive epithet for the long-drawn-out constellation of
_Hydra_, the Water-snake, which stretched itself for one hundred and
five degrees along the primitive equator, and "crossed" the meridian
"like a bar" for seven hours out of every twenty-four. "The crooked
serpent" would denote the dragon coiled around the poles, whilst "the
dragon which is in the sea" would naturally refer to _Cetus_, the
Sea-monster. The prophecy would mean then, that "in that day" the Lord
will destroy all the powers of evil which have, as it were, laid hold of
the chief places, even in the heavens.
In one passage "the crooked serpent," here used as a synonym of
_leviathan_, distinctly points to the dragon of the constellations. In
Job's last answer to Bildad the Shuhite, he says--
"He divideth the sea with His power,
And by His understanding He smiteth through the proud. (R.V.
_Rahab_.)
By His spirit He hath garnished the heavens;
His hand hath formed the crooked serpent."
The passage gives a good example of the parallelism of Hebrew poetry;
the repetition of the several terms of a statement, term by term, in a
slightly modified sense; a rhyme, if the expression may be used, not of
sound, but of signification.
Thus in the four verses just quoted, we have three terms in each--agent,
action, object;--each appears in the first statement, each appears
likewise in the second. The third statement, in like manner, has its
three terms repeated in a varied form in the fourth.
Thus--
His power = His understanding.
Divideth = Smiteth through.
The sea = _Rahab_ (the proud).
And--
His spirit = His hand.
Hath garnished = Hath formed.
The heavens = The crooked serpent.
There can be no doubt as to the significance of the two parallels. In
the first, dividing the sea, _i. e._ the Red Sea, is the correlative of
smiting through _Rahab_, "the proud one," the name often applied to
Egypt, as in Isa. xxx. 7: "For Egypt helpeth in vain, and to no purpose:
therefore have I called her Rahab that sitteth still." In the second,
"adorning the heavens" is the correlative of "forming the crooked
serpent." The great constellation of the writhing dragon, emphatically a
"crooked serpent," placed at the very crown of the heavens, is set for
all the constellations of the sky.
There are several references to _Rahab_, as "the dragon which is in the
sea," all clearly referring to the kingdom of Egypt, personified as one
of her own crocodiles lying-in-wait in her own river, the Nile, or
transferred, by a figure of speech, to the Red Sea, which formed her
eastern border. Thus in chapter li. Isaiah apostrophizes "the arm of the
Lord."
"Art Thou not It that cut Rahab in pieces,
That pierced the dragon?
Art Thou not It that dried up the sea,
The waters of the great deep;
That made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass
over?"
And in Psalm lxxxix. we have--
"Thou rulest the raging of the sea;
When the waves thereof arise Thou stillest them.
Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain,
Thou hast scattered Thine enemies with Thy strong arm."
So the prophet Ezekiel is directed--
"Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and say unto him, thou wast likened unto a young lion of the
nations: yet art thou as a dragon in the seas."
In all these passages it is only in an indirect and secondary sense that
we can see any constellational references in the various descriptions of
"the dragon that is in the sea." It is the crocodile of Egypt that is
intended; Egypt the great oppressor of Israel, and one of the great
powers of evil, standing as a representative of them all. The serpent or
dragon forms in the constellations also represented the powers of evil;
especially the great enemy of God and man, "the dragon, that old
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan." So there is some amount of
appropriateness to the watery dragons of the sky--_Hydra_ and
_Cetus_--in these descriptions of _Rahab_, the dragon of Egypt, without
there being any direct reference. Thus it is said of the Egyptian
"dragon in the seas," "I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the
earth, and to the fowls of the heaven;" and again, "I will cause all the
fowls of the heaven to settle upon thee," just as _Corvus_, the Raven,
is shown as having settled upon _Hydra_, the Water-snake, and is
devouring its flesh. Again, Pharaoh, the Egyptian dragon, says, "My
river is mine own, and I have made it for myself;" just as _Cetus_, the
Sea-monster, is represented as pouring forth _Eridanus_, the river, from
its mouth.
[Illustration: ANDROMEDA AND CETUS.]
But a clear and direct allusion to this last grouping of the
constellations occurs in the Apocalypse. In the twelfth chapter, the
proud oppressor dragon from the sea is shown us again with much fulness
of detail. There the Apostle describes his vision of a woman, who
evidently represents the people of God, being persecuted by a dragon.
There is still a reminiscence of the deliverance of Israel in the Exodus
from Egypt, for "the woman _fled into the wilderness_, where she hath a
place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two
hundred and threescore days." And the vision goes on:--
"And the serpent cast out of his mouth, after the woman water
as a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the
stream. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened
her mouth, and swallowed up the river which the dragon cast
out of his mouth."
This appears to be precisely the action which is presented to us in the
three constellations of _Andromeda_, _Cetus_, and _Eridanus_. Andromeda
is always shown as a woman in distress, and the Sea-monster, though
placed far from her in the sky, has always been understood to be her
persecutor. Thus Aratus writes--
"Andromeda, though far away she flies,
Dreads the Sea-monster, low in southern skies."
The latter, baffled in his pursuit of his victim, has cast the river,
_Eridanus_, out of his mouth, which, flowing down below the southern
horizon, is apparently swallowed up by the earth.
It need occasion no surprise that we should find imagery used by St.
John in his prophecy already set forth in the constellations nearly
3,000 years before he wrote. Just as, in this same book, St. John
repeated Daniel's vision of the fourth beast, and Ezekiel's vision of
the living creatures, as he used the well-known details of the Jewish
Temple, the candlesticks, the laver, the altar of incense, so he used a
group of stellar figures perfectly well known at the time when he wrote.
In so doing the beloved disciple only followed the example which his
Master had already set him. For the imagery in the parables of our Lord
is always drawn from scenes and objects known and familiar to all men.
In two instances in which _leviathan_ is mentioned, a further expression
is used which has a distinct astronomical bearing. In the passage
already quoted, where Job curses the day of his birth, he desires that
it may not "behold the eyelids of the morning." And in the grand
description of _leviathan_, the crocodile, in chapter xli., we have--
"His neesings flash forth light,
And his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning."
Canon Driver considers this as an "allusion, probably to the reddish
eyes of the crocodile, which are said to appear gleaming through the
water before the head comes to the surface." This is because of the
position of the eyes on the animal's head, not because they have any
peculiar brilliancy.
"It is an idea exclusively Egyptian, and is another link in
the chain of evidence which connects the author of the poem
with Egypt. The crocodile's head is so formed that its highest
points are the eyes; and when it rises obliquely to the
surface the eyes are the first part of the whole animal to
emerge. The Egyptians observing this, compared it to the sun
rising out of the sea, and made it the hieroglyphic
representative of the idea of sunrise. Thus Horus Apollo says:
When the Egyptians represent the sunrise, they paint the eye
of the crocodile, because it is first seen as that animal
emerges from the water."[209:1]