morning, we have the comparison of one natural object with another. Such
comparison, when used in one way and for one purpose, is the essence of
poetry; when used in another way and for another purpose, is the essence
of science. Both poetry and science are opposed to myth, which is the
confusion of natural with imaginary objects, the mistaking the one for
the other.
Thus it is poetry when the Psalmist speaks of the sun "as a bridegroom
coming out of his chamber"; for there is no confusion in his thought
between the two natural objects. The sun is like the bridegroom in the
glory of his appearance. The Psalmist does not ascribe to him a bride
and children.
It is science when the astronomer compares the spectrum of the sun with
the spectra of various metals in the laboratory. He is comparing natural
object with natural object, and is enabled to draw conclusions as to the
elements composing the sun, and the condition in which they there exist.
But it is myth when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the
solar deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is
confusion in the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar,
sometimes human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no
actuality in much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly
imaginary being associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the
priests of Baal were justified by the intellectual confusion of their
ideas, as well as by the spiritual degradation of their idolatry.
"Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is
pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth,
and must be awakened."
Such nature-myths are not indications of the healthy mental development
of a primitive people; they are the clear signs of a pathological
condition, the symptoms of intellectual disease.
It is well to bear in mind this distinction, this opposition between
poetry and myth, for ignoring it has led to not a little misconception
as to the occurrence of myth in Scripture, especially in connection with
the names associated with the crocodile. Thus it has been broadly
asserted that "the original mythical signification of the monsters
_tehôm_, _livy[=a]th[=a]n_, _tannim_, _rahâb_, is unmistakably evident."
Of these names the first signifies the world of waters; the second and
third real aquatic animals; and the last, "the proud one," is simply an
epithet of Egypt, applied to the crocodile as the representation of the
kingdom. There is no more myth in setting forth Egypt by the crocodile
or leviathan than in setting forth Great Britain by the lion, or Russia
by the bear.
The Hebrews in setting forth their enemies by crocodile and other
ferocious reptiles were not describing any imaginary monsters of the
primæval chaos, but real oppressors. The Egyptian, with his "house of
bondage," the Assyrian, "which smote with a rod," the Chaldean who made
havoc of Israel altogether, were not dreams. And in beseeching God to
deliver them from their latest oppressor the Hebrews naturally recalled,
not some idle tale of the fabulous achievements of Babylonian deities,
but the actual deliverance God had wrought for them at the Red Sea.
There the Egyptian crocodile had been made "meat to the people
inhabiting the wilderness" when the corpses of Pharaoh's bodyguard, cast
up on the shore, supplied the children of Israel with the weapons and
armour of which they stood in need. So in the day of their utter
distress they could still cry in faith and hope--
"Yet God is my King of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength:
Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,
And gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood:
Thou driedst up mighty rivers.
The day is Thine, the night also is Thine:
Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth:
Thou hast made summer and winter."
FOOTNOTES:
[209:1] P. H. Gosse, in the _Imperial Bible-Dictionary_.
CHAPTER VI
THE PLEIADES
The translators of the Bible, from time to time, find themselves in a
difficulty as to the correct rendering of certain words in the original.
This is especially the case with the names of plants and animals. Some
sort of clue may be given by the context, as, for instance, if the
region is mentioned in which a certain plant is found, or the use that
is made of it; or, in the case of an animal, whether it is "clean" or
"unclean," what are its habits, and with what other animals it is
associated. But in the case of the few Scripture references to special
groups of stars, we have no such help. We are in the position in which
Macaulay's New Zealander might be, if, long after the English nation had
been dispersed, and its language had ceased to be spoken amongst men, he
were to find a book in which the rivers "Thames," "Trent," "Tyne," and
"Tweed" were mentioned by name, but without the slightest indication of
their locality. His attempt to fit these names to particular rivers
would be little more than a guess--a guess the accuracy of which he
would have no means for testing.
This is somewhat our position with regard to the four Hebrew names,
_K[=i]mah_, _K[)e]s[=i]l_, _`Ayish_, and _Mazzaroth_; yet in each case
there are some slight indications which have given a clue to the
compilers of our Revised Version, and have, in all probability, guided
them correctly.
The constellations are not all equally attractive. A few have drawn the
attention of all men, however otherwise inattentive. North-American
Indians and Australian savages have equally noted the flashing
brilliancy of Orion, and the compact little swarm of the Pleiades. All
northern nations recognize the seven bright stars of the Great Bear, and
they are known by a score of familiar names. They are the "Plough," or
"Charles's Wain" of Northern Europe; the "Seven Plough Oxen" of ancient
Rome; the "Bier and Mourners" of the Arabs; the "Chariot," or "Waggon,"
of the old Chaldeans; the "Big Dipper" of the prosaic New England
farmer. These three groups are just the three which we find mentioned in
the earliest poetry of Greece. So Homer writes, in the Fifth Book of the
_Odyssey_, that Ulysses--
"There view'd the Pleiads, and the Northern Team,
And Great Orion's more refulgent beam,
To which, around the axle of the sky,
The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye."
It seems natural to conclude that these constellations, the most
striking, or at all events the most universally recognized, would be
those mentioned in the Bible.
The passages in which the Hebrew word _K[=i]mah_, is used are the
following--
(God) "maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (_K[=i]mah_), and
the chambers of the south" (Job ix. 9).
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades
(_K[=i]mah_), or loose the bands of Orion?" (Job xxxviii. 31).
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars (_K[=i]mah_) and Orion"
(Amos v. 8).
In our Revised Version, _K[=i]mah_ is rendered "Pleiades" in all three
instances, and of course the translators of the Authorized Version meant
the same group by the "seven stars" in their free rendering of the
passage from Amos. The word _k[=i]mah_ signifies "a heap," or "a
cluster," and would seem to be related to the Assyrian word _kimtu_,
"family," from a root meaning to "tie," or "bind"; a family being a
number of persons bound together by the very closest tie of
relationship. If this be so we can have no doubt that our translators
have rightly rendered the word. There is one cluster in the sky, and one
alone, which appeals to the unaided sight as being distinctly and
unmistakably a family of stars--the Pleiades.
The names _`Ash_, or _`Ayish_, _K[)e]s[=i]l_, and _K[=i]mah_ are
peculiar to the Hebrews, and are not, so far as we have any evidence at
present, allied to names in use for any constellation amongst the
Babylonians and Assyrians; they have, as yet, not been found on any
cuneiform inscription. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, living in the eighth
century B.C., two centuries before the Jews were carried into exile to
Babylon, evidently knew well what the terms signified, and the writer of
the Book of Job was no less aware of their signification. But the
"Seventy," who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, were not at
all clear as to the identification of these names of constellations;
though they made their translation only two or three centuries after the
Jews returned to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah, when oral tradition
should have still supplied the meaning of such astronomical terms. Had
these names been then known in Babylon, they could not have been unknown
to the learned men of Alexandria in the second century before our era,
since at that time there was a very direct scientific influence of the
one city upon the other. This Hebrew astronomy was so far from being due
to Babylonian influence and teaching, that, though known centuries
before the exile, after the exile we find the knowledge of its technical
terms was lost. On the other hand, _k[=i]ma_ was the term used in all
Syriac literature to denominate the Pleiades, and we accordingly find in
the Peschitta, the ancient Syriac version of the Bible, made about the
second century A.D., the term _k[=i]ma_ retained throughout, but _kesil_
and _`ayish_ were reduced to their supposed Syriac equivalents.
Whatever uncertainty was felt as to the meaning of _k[=i]mah_ by the
early translators, it is not now seriously disputed that the Pleiades is
the group of stars in question.
The word _k[=i]mah_ means, as we have seen, "cluster" or "heap," so also
the word _Pleiades_, which we use to-day, is probably derived from the
Greek _Pleiones_, "many." Several Greek poets--Athenæus, Hesiod, Pindar,
and Simonides--wrote the word _Peleiades_, i. e. "rock pigeons,"
considered as flying from the Hunter Orion; others made them the seven
doves who carried ambrosia to the infant Zeus. D'Arcy Thompson says,
"The Pleiad is in many languages associated with bird-names, . . . and I
am inclined to take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria,
Dicæa, and Thurii for the associated constellation of the
Pleiad"[217:1]--the Pleiades being situated on the shoulder of Taurus
the Bull.
The Hyades were situated on the head of the Bull, and in the Euphrates
region these two little groups of stars were termed together,
_Mas-tab-ba-gal-gal-la_, the Great Twins of the ecliptic, as Castor and
Pollux were the Twins of the zodiac. In one tablet _'Îmina bi_, "the
sevenfold one," and _Gut-dûa_, "the Bull-in-front," are mentioned side
by side, thus agreeing well with their interpretation of "Pleiades and
Hyades." The Semitic name for the Pleiades was also _Têmennu_; and these
groups of stars, worshipped as gods by the Babylonians, may possibly
have been the _Gad_ and _Meni_, "that troop," and "that number,"
referred to by the prophet Isaiah (lxv. 11).
On many Babylonian cylinder seals there are engraved seven small discs,
in addition to other astronomical symbols. These seven small stellar
discs are almost invariably arranged in the form :::' or:::· much as we
should now-a-days plot the cluster of the Pleiades when mapping on a
small scale the constellations round the Bull. It is evident that these
seven little stellar discs do not mean the "seven planets," for in many
cases the astronomical symbols which accompany them include both those
of the sun and moon. It is most probable that they signify the Pleiades,
or perhaps alternatively the Hyades.
Possibly, reference is made to the worship of the Pleiades when the
king of Assyria, in the seventh century B.C., brought men from Babylon
and other regions to inhabit the depopulated cities of Samaria, "and the
men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth." The Rabbis are said to have
rendered this by the "booths of the Maidens," or the "tents of the
Daughters,"--the Pleiades being the maidens in question.
Generally they are the Seven Sisters. Hesiod calls them the Seven
Virgins, and the Virgin Stars. The names given to the individual stars
are those of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione; thus Milton terms
them the Seven Atlantic Sisters.
As we have seen (p. 189), the device associated expressly with Joseph is
the Bull, and Jacob's blessing to his son has been sometimes rendered--
"Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well;
_the daughters walk upon the bull_."
That is, "the Seven Sisters," the Pleiades, are on the shoulder of
Taurus.
Aratus wrote of the number of the Pleiades--
"Seven paths aloft men say they take,
Yet six alone are viewed by mortal eyes.
From Zeus' abode no star unknown is lost,
Since first from birth we heard, but thus the tale is told."
[Illustration: STARS OF THE PLEIADES.]
Euripides speaks of these "seven paths," and Eratosthenes calls them
"the seven-starred Pleiad," although he describes one as
"All-Invisible." There is a surprisingly universal tradition that they
"were seven who now are six." We find it not only in ancient Greece and
Italy, but also among the black fellows of Australia, the Malays of
Borneo, and the negroes of the Gold Coast. There must be some reason to
account for this widespread tradition. Some of the stars are known to be
slightly variable, and one of the fainter stars in the cluster may have
shone more brightly in olden time;--the gaseous spectrum of Pleione
renders it credible that this star may once have had great brilliancy.
Alcyone, now the brightest star in the cluster, was not mentioned by
Ptolemy among the four brightest Pleiads of his day. The six now visible
to ordinary sight are Alcyone, Electra, Atlas, Maia, Merope and Taygeta.
Celoeno is the next in brightness, and the present candidate for the
seventh place. By good sight, several more may be made out: thus
Maestlin, the tutor of Kepler, mapped eleven before the invention of the
telescope, and in our own day Carrington and Denning have counted
fourteen with the naked eye.
In clear mountain atmosphere more than seven would be seen by any
keen-sighted observer. Usually six stars may be made out with the naked
eye in both the Pleiades and the Hyades, or, if more than six, then
several more; though with both groups the number of "seven" has always
been associated.
In the New Testament we find the "Seven Stars" also mentioned. In the
first chapter of the Revelation, the Apostle St. John says that he "saw
seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks
one like unto the Son of Man, . . . and He had in His right hand seven
stars." Later in the same chapter it is explained that "the seven stars
are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which
thou sawest are the seven churches." The seven stars in a single compact
cluster thus stand for the Church in its many diversities and its
essential unity.
This beautiful little constellation has become associated with a foolish
fable. When it was first found that not only did the planets move round
the sun in orbits, but that the sun itself also was travelling rapidly
through space, a German astronomer, Mädler, hazarded the suggestion that
the centre of the sun's motion lay in the Pleiades. It was soon evident
that there was no sufficient ground for this suggestion, and that many
clearly established facts were inconsistent with it. Nevertheless the
idea caught hold of the popular mind, and it has acquired an amazing
vogue. Non-astronomical writers have asserted that Alcyone, the
brightest Pleiad, is the centre of the entire universe; some have even
been sufficiently irreverent to declare that it is the seat of heaven,
the throne of God. A popular London divine, having noticed a bright ring
round Alcyone on a photograph of the group, took that halo, which every
photographer would at once recognize as a mere photographic defect, as a
confirmation of this baseless fancy. Foolishness of this kind has
nothing to support it in science or religion; it is an offence against
both. We have no reason to regard the Pleiades as the centre of the
universe, or as containing the attracting mass which draws our sun
forward in its vast mysterious orbit.
R. H. Allen, in his survey of the literature of the Pleiades, mentions
that "Drach surmised that their midnight culmination in the time of
Moses, ten days after the autumnal equinox, may have fixed the Day of
Atonement on the 10th of Tishri."[221:1] This is worth quoting as a
sample of the unhappy astronomical guesses of commentators. Drach
overlooked that his suggestion necessitated the assumption that in the
time of Moses astronomers had already learned, first, to determine the
actual equinox; next, to observe the culmination of stars on the
meridian rather than their risings and settings; and, third and more
important, to determine midnight by some artificial measurement of time.
None of these can have been primitive operations; we have no knowledge
that any of the three were in use in the time of Moses; certainly they
were not suitable for a people on the march, like the Israelites in the
wilderness. Above all, Drach ignored in this suggestion the fact that
the Jewish calendar was a lunar-solar one, and hence that the tenth day
of the seventh month could not bear any fixed relation either to the
autumnal equinox, or to the midnight culmination of the Pleiades; any
more than our Easter Sunday is fixed to the spring equinox on March 22.
The Pleiades were often associated with the late autumn, as Aratus
writes--
"Men mark them rising with Sol's setting light,
Forerunners of the winter's gloomy night."
This is what is technically known as the "acronical rising" of the
Pleiades, their rising at sunset; in contrast to their "heliacal
rising," their rising just before daybreak, which ushered in the spring
time. This acronical rising has led to the association of the group with
the rainy season, and with floods. Thus Statius called the cluster
"Pliadum nivosum sidus," and Valerius Flaccus distinctly used the word
"Pliada" for the showers. Josephus says that during the siege of
Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes in 170 B.C., the besieged wanted for
water until relieved "by a large shower of rain which fell at the
setting of the Pleiades." R. H. Allen, in his _Star-Names and their
Meanings_, states that the Pleiades "are intimately connected with
traditions of the flood found among so many and widely separated
nations, and especially in the Deluge-myth of Chaldæa," but he does not
cite authorities or instances.
The Talmud gives a curious legend connecting the Pleiades with the
Flood:--
"When the Holy One, blessed be He! wished to bring the Deluge
upon the world, He took two stars out of Pleiades, and thus
let the Deluge loose. And when He wished to arrest it, He took
two stars out of Arcturus and stopped it."[223:1]
It would seem from this that the Rabbis connected the number of visible
stars with the number of the family in the Ark--with the "few, that
is, eight souls . . . saved by water," of whom St. Peter speaks. Six
Pleiades only are usually seen by the naked eye; traditionally seven
were seen; but the Rabbis assumed that two, not one, were lost.
Perhaps we may trace a reference to this supposed association of
_K[=i]mah_ with the Flood in the passage from Amos already quoted:--
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, . . . that
calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon
the face of the earth: the Lord is His name."
Many ancient nations have set apart days in the late autumn in honour of
the dead, no doubt because the year was then considered as dead. This
season being marked by the acronical rising of the Pleiades, that group
has become associated with such observances. There is, however, no
reference to any custom of this kind in Scripture.
What is the meaning of the inquiry addressed to Job by the Almighty?
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?"
What was the meaning which it possessed in the thought of the writer of
the book? What was the meaning which we should now put on such an
inquiry, looking at the constellations from the standpoint which the
researches of modern astronomy have given us?
The first meaning of the text would appear to be connected with the
apparent movement of the sun amongst the stars in the course of the
year. We cannot see the stars by daylight, or see directly where the sun
is situated with respect to them; but, in very early times, men learnt
to associate the seasons of the year with the stars which were last seen
in the morning, above the place where the sun was about to rise; in the
technical term once in use, with the heliacal risings of stars. When the
constellations were first designed, the Pleiades rose heliacally at the
beginning of April, and were the sign of the return of spring. Thus
Aratus, in his constellation poem writes--
"Men mark them (_i. e._ the Pleiades) rising with the solar ray,
The harbinger of summer's brighter day."
They heralded, therefore, the revival of nature from her winter sleep,
the time of which the kingly poet sang so alluringly--
"For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs,
And the vines are in blossom,
They give forth their fragrance."
The constellation which thus heralded the return of this genial season
was poetically taken as representing the power and influence of spring.
Their "sweet influences" were those that had rolled away the gravestone
of snow and ice which had lain upon the winter tomb of nature. Theirs
was the power that brought the flowers up from under the turf; earth's
constellations of a million varied stars to shine upwards in answer to
the constellations of heaven above. Their influences filled copse and
wood with the songs of happy birds. Theirs stirred anew the sap in the
veins of the trees, and drew forth their reawakened strength in bud and
blossom. Theirs was the bleating of the new-born lambs; theirs the
murmur of the reviving bees.
Upon this view, then, the question to Job was, in effect, "What control
hast thou over the powers of nature? Canst thou hold back the sun from
shining in spring-time--from quickening flower, and herb, and tree with
its gracious warmth? This is God's work, year by year over a thousand
lands, on a million hills, in a million valleys. What canst thou do to
hinder it?"
The question was a striking one; one which must have appealed to the
patriarch, evidently a keen observer and lover of nature; and it was
entirely in line with the other inquiries addressed to him in the same
chapter.
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"
The Revised Version renders the question--
"Canst thou bind the _cluster_ of the Pleiades?"
reading the Hebrew word _Ma`anaddoth_, instead of _Ma'adannoth_,
following in this all the most ancient versions. On this view, Job is,
in effect, asked, "Canst thou gather together the stars in the family of
the Pleiades and keep them in their places?"
The expression of a chain or band is one suggested by the appearance of
the group to the eye, but it is no less appropriate in the knowledge
which photography and great telescopes have given us. To quote from Miss
Clerke's description of the nebula discovered round the brighter stars
of the Pleiades--Alcyone, Asterope, Celoeno, Electra, Maia, Merope and
Taygeta:--
"Besides the Maia vortex, the Paris photographs depicted a
series of nebulous bars on either side of Merope, and a
curious streak extending like a finger-post from Electra
towards Alcyone . . . Streamers and fleecy masses of cosmical
fog seem almost to fill the spaces between the stars, as
clouds choke a mountain valley. The chief points of its
concentration are the four stars Alcyone, Merope, Maia, and
Electra; but it includes as well Celoeno and Taygeta, and is
traceable southward from Asterope over an arc of 1° 10´. . . .
The greater part of the constellation is shown as veiled in
nebulous matter of most unequal densities. In some places it
lies in heavy folds and wreaths, in others it barely qualifies
the darkness of the sky-ground. The details of its
distribution come out with remarkable clearness, and are
evidently to a large extent prescribed by the relative
situations of the stars. Their lines of junction are
frequently marked by nebulous rays, establishing between them,
no doubt, relations of great physical importance; and masses
of nebula, in numerous instances, seem as if _pulled out of
shape_ and drawn into festoons by the attractions of
neighbouring stars. But the strangest exemplification of
this filamentous tendency is in a fine, thread-like process,
3´´ or 4´´ wide, but 35´ to 40´ long, issuing in an easterly
direction from the edge of the nebula about Maia, and
stringing together seven stars, met in its advance, like beads
on a rosary. The largest of these is apparently the occasion
of a slight deviation from its otherwise rectilinear course. A
second similar but shorter streak runs, likewise east and
west, through the midst of the formation."[229:1]
[Illustration: NEBULOSITIES OF THE PLEIADES.
Photographed by Dr. Max Wolf, Heidelberg.]
Later photographs have shown that not only are the several stars of the
Pleiades linked together by nebulous filaments, but the whole cluster is
embedded in a nebulous net that spreads its meshes far out into space.
Not only is the group thus tied or bound together by nebulous clouds, it
has other tokens of forming but a single family. The movements of the
several stars have been carefully measured, and for the most part the
entire cluster is drifting in the same direction; a few stars do not
share in the common motion, and are probably apparent members, seen in
perspective projected on the group, but in reality much nearer to us.
The members of the group also show a family likeness in constitution.
When the spectroscope is turned upon it, the chief stars are seen to
closely resemble each other; the principal lines in their spectra being
those of hydrogen, and these are seen as broad and diffused bands, so
that the spectrum we see resembles that of the brightest star of the
heavens, Sirius.
There can be little doubt but that the leaders of the group are actually
greater, brighter suns than Sirius itself. We do not know the exact
distance of the Pleiades, they are so far off that we can scarcely do
more than make a guess at it; but it is probable that they are so far
distant that our sun at like distance would prove much too faint to be
seen at all by the naked eye. The Pleiades then would seem to be a most
glorious star-system, not yet come to its full growth. From the
standpoint of modern science we may interpret the "chain" or "the sweet
influences" of the Pleiades as consisting in the enfolding wisps of
nebulosity which still, as it were, knit together those vast young suns;
or, and in all probability more truly, as that mysterious force of
gravitation which holds the mighty system together, and in obedience to
which the group has taken its present shape. The question, if asked us
to-day, would be, in effect, "Canst thou bind together by nebulous
chains scores of suns, far more glorious than thine own, and scattered
over many millions of millions of miles of space; or canst thou loosen
the attraction which those suns exercise upon each other, and move them
hither and thither at thy will?"
FOOTNOTES:
[217:1] _Glossary of Greek Birds_, pp. 28, 29.
[221:1] R. H. Allen, _Star Names and their Meanings_, p. 401.
[223:1] _Berachoth_, fol. 59, col. 1.
[229:1] _The System of the Stars_, 1st edit., pp. 230-232.
CHAPTER VII
ORION
_K[)e]s[=i]l_, the word rendered by our translators "Orion," occurs in
an astronomical sense four times in the Scriptures; twice in the Book of
Job, once in the prophecy of Amos, and once, in the plural, in the
prophecy of Isaiah. In the three first cases the word is used in
conjunction with _K[=i]mah_, "the Pleiades," as shown in the preceding
chapter. The fourth instance is rendered in the Authorized Version--
"For the stars of heaven and the constellations
(_K[)e]s[=i]lim_) thereof shall not give their light."
The Hebrew word _K[)e]s[=i]l_ signifies "a fool," and that in the
general sense of the term as used in Scripture; not merely a silly,
untaught, feckless person, but a godless and an impious one. Thus, in
the Book of Proverbs, Divine Wisdom is represented as appealing--
"How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? the
scorners delight in their scorning, and _fools_ hate
knowledge?"
[Illustration: THE STARS OF ORION.]
What constellation was known to the ancient Hebrews as "the fool"? The
Seventy who rendered the Old Testament into Greek confess themselves at
fault. Once, in Amos, both _K[=i]mah_ and _K[)e]s[=i]l_ are left
untranslated. Instead of "Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion," we
have the paraphrase, "That maketh and transformeth all things." Once, in
Job, it is rendered "Hesperus," the evening star; and in the other two
instances it is given as "Orion." The tradition of the real meaning of
the word as an astronomical term had been lost, or at least much
confused before the Septuagint Version was undertaken. The Jews had
not, so far as there is any present evidence, learned the term in
Babylon, for the word has not yet been found as a star-name on any
cuneiform inscription. It was well known before the Exile, for Amos and
Isaiah both use it, and the fact that the author of Job also uses it,
indicates that he did not gain his knowledge of the constellation during
the Babylonian captivity.
The majority of translators and commentators have, however, agreed in
believing that the brightest and most splendid constellation in the sky
is intended--the one which we know as Orion. This constellation is one
of the very few in which the natural grouping of the stars seems to
suggest the figure that has been connected with it. Four bright stars,
in a great trapezium, are taken to mark the two shoulders and the two
legs of a gigantic warrior; a row of three bright stars, midway between
the four first named, suggest his gemmed belt; another row of stars
straight down from the centre star of the belt, presents his sword; a
compact cluster of three stars marks his head. A gigantic warrior, armed
for the battle, seems thus to be outlined in the heavens. As Longfellow
describes him--
"Begirt with many a blazing star,
Stood the great giant, Algebar,
Orion, hunter of the beast!
His sword hung gleaming by his side,
And, on his arm, the lion's hide
Scattered across the midnight air
The golden radiance of its hair."
In accord with the form naturally suggested by the grouping of the
stars, the Syrians have called the constellation _Gabb[=a]r[=a]_; and
the Arabs, _Al Jabb[=a]r_; and the Jews, _Gibb[=o]r_. The brightest star
of the constellation, the one in the left knee, now generally known as
_Rigel_, is still occasionally called _Algebar_, a corruption of _Al
Jabb[=a]r_, though one of the fainter stars near it now bears that name.
The meaning in each case is "the giant," "the mighty one," "the great
warrior," and no doubt from the first formation of the constellations,
this, the most brilliant of all, was understood to set forth a warrior
armed for the battle. There were _gibb[=o]rim_ before the Flood; we are
told that after "the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and
they bare children to them, the same became mighty men (_gibb[=o]rim_)
which were of old, men of renown."
But according to Jewish tradition, this constellation was appropriated
to himself by a particular mighty man. We are told in Gen. x. that--
"Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one (_gibb[=o]r_)
in the earth."
and it is alleged that he, or his courtiers, in order to flatter him,
gave his name to this constellation, just as thousands of years later
the University of Leipzic proposed to call the belt stars of Orion,
_Stellæ Napoleonis_, "the Constellation of Napoleon."[234:1]
There was at one time surprise felt, that, deeply as the name of Nimrod
had impressed itself upon Eastern tradition, his name, as such, was
"nowhere found in the extensive literature which has come down to us"
from Babylon. It is now considered that the word, Nimrod, is simply a
Hebrew variant of Merodach, "the well-known head of the Babylonian
pantheon." He was probably "the first king of Babylonia or the first
really great ruler of the country." It is significant, as Mr. T. G.
Pinches points out, in his _Old Testament in the Light of the Records
from Assyria and Babylonia_, that just as in Genesis it is stated that
"the beginning of his (Nimrod's) kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and
Accad, and Calneh," so Merodach is stated, in the cuneiform records, to
have built Babel and Erech and Niffer, which last is probably Calneh.
The Hebrew scribes would seem to have altered the name of Merodach in
two particulars: they dropped the last syllable, thus suggesting that
the name was derived from _Marad_, "the rebellious one"; and they
prefixed the syllable "Ni," just as "Nisroch" was written for "Assur."
"From a linguistic point of view, therefore, the identification of
Nimrod as a changed form of Merodach is fully justified."
[Illustration: ORION AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]
The attitude of Orion in the sky is a striking one. The warrior is
represented as holding a club in the right hand, and a skin or shield in
the left. His left foot is raised high as if he were climbing a steep
ascent, he seems to be endeavouring to force his way up into the zodiac,
and--as Longfellow expresses it--to be beating the forehead of the
Bull. His right leg is not shown below the knee, for immediately
beneath him is the little constellation of the Hare, by the early Arabs
sometimes called, _Al Kursiyy al Jabb[=a]r_, "the Chair of the Giant,"
from its position. Behind Orion are the two Dogs, each constellation
distinguished by a very brilliant star; the Greater Dog, by _Sirius_,
the brightest star in the heavens; the Lesser Dog, by _Procyon_, i.e.
the "Dog's Forerunner." Not far above Orion, on the shoulder of the
Bull, is the little cluster of the Pleiades.
There are--as we have seen--only three passages where _K[=i]mah_,
literally "the cluster" or "company,"--the group we know as the
Pleiades,--is mentioned in Scripture; and in each case it is associated
with _K[)e]s[=i]l_, "the fool,"--Orion. Several Greek poets give us the
same association, likening the stars to "rock-pigeons, flying from the
Hunter Orion." And Hesiod in his _Works and Days_ writes--
"Do not to plough forget,
When the Seven Virgins, and Orion, set:
Thus an advantage always shall appear,
In ev'ry labour of the various year.
If o'er your mind prevails the love of gain,
And tempts you to the dangers of the main,
Yet in her harbour safe the vessel keep,
When strong Orion chases to the deep
The Virgin stars."
There is a suggestion of intense irony in this position of Orion amongst
the other constellations. He is trampling on the Hare--most timid of
creatures; he is climbing up into the zodiac to chase the little company
of the Pleiades--be they seven doves or seven maidens--and he is
thwarted even in this unheroic attempt by the determined attitude of the
guardian Bull.
A similar irony is seen in the Hebrew name for the constellation. The
"mighty Hunter," the great hero whom the Babylonians had deified and
made their supreme god, the Hebrews regarded as the "fool," the "impious
rebel." Since Orion is Nimrod, that is Merodach, there is small wonder
that _K[)e]s[=i]l_ was not recognized as his name in Babylonia.[238:1]
The attitude of Orion--attempting to force his way upward into the
zodiac--and the identification of Merodach with him, gives emphasis to
Isaiah's reproach, many centuries later, against the king of Babylon,
the successor of Merodach--
"Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also
upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like
the Most High."
In the sight of the Hebrew prophets and poets, Merodach, in taking to
himself this group of stars, published his shame and folly. He had
ascended into heaven, but his glittering belt was only his fetter; he
was bound and gibbeted in the sky like a captive, a rebel, and who could
loose his bands?
In the thirteenth chapter of Isaiah we have the plural of
_k[)e]s[=i]l_--_k[)e]s[=i]lim_. It is usually understood that we have
here Orion, as the most splendid constellation in the sky, put for the
constellations in general. But if we remember that _k[)e]s[=i]l_ stands
for "Nimrod" or "Merodach," the first proud tyrant mentioned by name in
Scripture, the particular significance of the allusion becomes evident--
"Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and
fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy
the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heavens and
the constellations"--(that is the _k[)e]s[=i]lim_, the Nimrods
or Merodachs of the sky)--"thereof shall not give their light:
the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon
shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the
world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I
will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay
low the haughtiness of the terrible."
The strictly astronomical relations of Orion and the Pleiades seem to be
hinted at in Amos and in Job--
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth
the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark
with night."
In this passage the parallelism seems to be between the seven stars, the
Pleiades, with sunrise, and Orion with sunset. Now at the time and place
when the constellations were mapped out, the Pleiades were the immediate
heralds of sunrise, shortly after the spring equinox, at the season
which would correspond to the early part of April in our present
calendar. The rising of Orion at sunset--his acronical rising--was early
in December, about the time when the coldest season of the year begins.
The astronomical meaning of the "bands of Orion" would therefore be the
rigour in which the earth is held during the cold of winter.
It is possible that the two great stars which follow Orion, _Sirius_ and
_Procyon_, known to the ancients generally and to us to-day as "the
Dogs," were by the Babylonians known as "the Bow-star" and "the
Lance-star"; the weapons, that is to say, of Orion or Merodach. Jensen
identifies Sirius with the Bow-star, but considers that the Lance-star
was Antares; Hommel, however, identifies the Lance-star with Procyon. In
the fifth tablet of the Babylonian Creation epic as translated by Dr. L.
W. King, there is an interesting account of the placing of the Bow-star
in the heavens. After Merodach had killed Tiamat--
75. "The gods (his fathers) beheld the net which he had made,
76. They beheld the bow and how (its work) was accomplished.
77. They praised the work which he had done [ . . . ]
78. Then Anu raised [the . . .] in the assembly of the gods.
79. He kissed the bow, (saying), 'It is [ . . . ]'!
80. And thus he named the names of the bow, (saying),
81. '_Long-wood_ shall be one name, and the second name [shall
be . . . ],
82. And its third name shall be the _Bow-star_, in heaven [shall
it . . . ]!'
83. Then he fixed a station for it."
Dr. Cheyne even considers that he has found a reference to these two
stars in Job xxxviii. 36--
"Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts (Lance-star),
Or who hath given understanding to the heart (Bow-star)."
But this interpretation does not appear to have been generally accepted.
The same high authority suggests that the astronomical allusions in Amos
may have been inserted by a post-exilic editor, thus accounting for the
occurrence of the same astronomical terms as are found in Job, which he
assigns to the exilic or post-exilic period. This seems a dangerous
expedient, as it might with equal reason be used in many other
directions. Further, it entirely fails to explain the real difficulty
that _k[=i]mah_ and _k[)e]s[=i]l_ have not been found as Babylonian
constellation names, and that their astronomical signification had been
lost by the time that the "Seventy" undertook their labours.
Quite apart from the fact that the Babylonians could not give the name
of "Fool" to the representation in the sky of their supreme deity, the
Hebrews and the Babylonians regarded the constellation in different
ways. Several Assyriologists consider that the constellations, _Orion_
and _Cetus_, represent the struggle between Merodach and Tiamat, and
this conjecture is probably correct, so far as Babylonian ideas of the
constellations are concerned, for Tiamat is expressly identified on a
Babylonian tablet with a constellation near the ecliptic.[241:1] But
this means that the myth originated in the star figures, and was the
Babylonian interpretation of them. In this case, Cetus--that is
Tiamat--must have been considered as a goddess, and as directly and
immediately the ancestress of all the gods. Orion--Merodach--must have
been likewise a god, the great-great-grandson of Tiamat, whom he
destroys.
The Hebrew conception was altogether different. Neither Merodach, nor
Tiamat, nor the constellations of Orion and Cetus, nor the actual stars
of which they are composed, are anything but creatures. Jehovah has made
Orion, as well as the "Seven Stars," as "His hand hath formed the
crooked serpent." By the mouth of Isaiah He says, "I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord, do all these
things." The Babylonian view was of two divinities pitted against each
other, and the evil divinity was the original and the originator of the
good. In the Hebrew view, even the powers of evil are created things;
they are not self-existent.
And the Hebrews took a different view from the Babylonians of the story
told by these constellations. The Hebrews always coupled Orion with the
Pleiades; the Babylonians coupled Orion with Cetus--that is, Merodach
with Tiamat.
The view that has come down to us through the Greeks agrees much better
with the association of the constellations as held amongst the Hebrews,
rather than amongst the Babylonians. The Hunter Orion, according to the
Greeks, chased the Pleiades--the little company of Seven Virgins, or
Seven Doves--and he was confronted by the Bull. In their view, too, the
Sea-monster was not warring against Orion, but against the chained
woman, Andromeda.
FOOTNOTES:
[234:1] But the fact that Napoleon's name was thus coupled with this
constellation does not warrant us in asserting that Napoleon had no
historical existence, and that his long contest with the great sea-power
(England), with its capital on the river Thames (? _tehom_), was only a
stellar myth, arising from the nearness of Orion to the Sea-monster in
the sky--a variant, in fact, of the great Babylonian myth of Marduk and
Tiamat, the dragon of the deep.
It seems necessary to make this remark, since the process of
astrologizing history, whether derived from the Bible or from secular
writers, has been carried very far. Thus Dr. H. Winckler writes down the
account of the first three Persian kings, given us by Herodotus, as
myths of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini; David and Goliath, too, are but
Marduk and Tiamat, or Orion and Cetus, but David has become the Giant,
and Goliath the Dragon, for "Goliath" is claimed as a word-play on the
Babylonian _galittu_, "ocean." Examining an Arabic globe of date 1279
A.D.--that is to say some 4,000 years after the constellations were
devised,--Dr. Winckler found that Orion was represented as left-handed.
He therefore used this left-handed Orion as the link of identification
between Ehud, the left-handed judge of Israel, and Tyr, the left-handed
Mars of the Scandinavian pantheon. Dr. Winckler seems to have been
unaware of the elementary fact that a celestial globe necessarily shows
its figures "inside out." We look up to the sky, to see the actual
constellations from within the sphere; we look down upon a celestial
globe from without, and hence see the designs upon it as in the
looking-glass.
[238:1] Dr. Cheyne says, in a note on p. 52 of _Job and Solomon_, "Heb.
_K's[=i]l_, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The
Chaldeo-Assyrian astrology gave the name _Kisiluv_ to the ninth month,
connecting it with the zodiacal sign Sagittarius. But there are valid
reasons for attaching the Hebrew popular myth to Orion." So Col. Conder,
in p. 179 of _The Hittites and their Language_, translates the name of
the Assyrian ninth month, _Cisleu_, as "giant." Now Sagittarius is in
the heavens just opposite to Orion, so when in the ninth month the sun
was in conjunction with Sagittarius, Orion was in opposition. In
_Cisleu_, therefore, the giant, Orion, was riding the heavens all night,
occupying the chamber of the south at midnight, so that the ninth month
might well be called the month of the giant.
[241:1] Dr. L. W. King, _Tablets of Creation_, appendix iii. p. 208.
CHAPTER VIII
MAZZAROTH
We have no assistance from any cuneiform inscriptions as to the
astronomical significance of _`Ayish_, _K[=i]mah_, and _K[)e]s[=i]l_,
but the case is different when we come to _Mazzaroth_. In the fifth
tablet of the Babylonian Creation epic we read--
"1. He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods;
2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac, he fixed.
3. He ordained the year, and into sections (_mizr[=a]ta_) he
divided it;
4. For the twelve months he fixed three stars.
5. After he had [. . .] the days of the year [. . .] images
6. He founded the station of Nibir to determine their bounds;
7. That none might err or go astray.
8. He set the station of B[=e]l and Ea along with him."
In the third line _mizr[=a]ta_, cognate with the Hebrew
_Mazz[=a]r[=o]th_, means the sections or divisions of the year,
corresponding to the signs of the zodiac mentioned in the second line.
There can therefore be little doubt that the translators who gave us our
English versions are practically correct in the rendering of Job
xxxviii. 32 which they give in the margin, "Canst thou bring forth
Mazzaroth (or the twelve signs) in his season?"
The foregoing extract from the fifth tablet of Creation has no small
astronomical interest. Merodach is represented as setting in order the
heavenly bodies. First of all he allots their stations to the great
gods, dividing to them the constellations of the zodiac, and the months
of the year; so that the arrangement by which every month had its
tutelary deity or deities, is here said to be his work. Next, he divides
up the constellations of the zodiac; not merely arranging the actual
stars, but appropriating to each constellation its special design or
"image." Third, he divides up the year to correspond with the zodiac,
making twelve months with three "stars" or constellations to each. In
other words, he carries the division of the zodiac a step further, and
divides each sign into three equal parts, the "decans" of the
astrologers, each containing 10° (_deka_) of the ecliptic.
The statement made in line 4 refers to an important development of
astronomy. The _constellations_ of the zodiac, that is, the groups made
up of the actual stars, are very unequal in size and irregular in shape.
The numerous theories, ancient or modern, in which the constellations
are supposed to owe their origin to the distinctive weather of the
successive months, each constellation figure being a sort of hieroglyph
for its particular month, are therefore all manifestly erroneous, for
there never could have been any real fixed or steady correlation between
the constellations and the months. Similarly, the theories which claim
that the ancient names for the months were derived from the
constellations are equally untenable. Some writers have even held both
classes of theory, overlooking the fact that they mutually contradict
each other.
But there came a time when the inconvenience of the unequal division of
the zodiac by the constellations was felt to be an evil, and it was
remedied by dividing the ecliptic into twelve equal parts, each part
being called after the constellation with which it corresponded most
nearly at the time such division was made. These equal divisions have
been called the _Signs_ of the zodiac. It must be clearly understood
that they have always and at all times been imaginary divisions of the
heavens, that they were never associated with real stars. They were
simply a picturesque mode of expressing celestial longitude; the
distance of a star from the place of the sun at the spring equinox, as
measured along the ecliptic,--the sun's apparent path during the year.
The Signs once arranged, the next step was an easy one. Each sign was
equivalent to 30 degrees of longitude. A third of a sign, a "decan," was
10 degrees of longitude, corresponding to the "week" of ten days used in
Egypt and in Greece.
This change from the constellations to the Signs cannot have taken place
very early. The place of the spring equinox travels backwards amongst
the stars at the rate of very little more than a degree in 72 years.
When the change was made the spring equinox was somewhere in the
constellation _Aries_, the Ram, and therefore Aries was then adopted as
the first Sign, and must always remain such, since the Signs move
amongst the stars with the equinox.
[Illustration: POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, B.C. 2700.]
We cannot fix when this change was made within a few years, but it
cannot have been _before_ the time when the sun at the spring equinox
was situated just below _Hamal_, the brightest star of the Ram. This was
about 700 B.C. The equal division of the zodiac must have taken place
not earlier than this, and with it, the Bull must have been deposed from
the position it had always held up to that time, of leader of the
zodiac. It is probable that some direct method of determining the
equinox itself was introduced much about the same time. This new system
involved nothing short of a revolution in astronomy, but the Babylonian
Creation story implies that this revolution had already taken place
when it was composed, and that the equal division of the zodiac was
already in force. It is possible that the sixth and seventh lines of the
poem indicate that the Babylonians had already noticed a peculiar fact,
viz. that just as the moon passes through all the signs in a month,
whilst the sun passes through only one sign in that time; so the sun
passes through all the signs in a year, whilst Jupiter passes through
but one sign. _Nibir_ was the special Babylonian name of the planet
Jupiter when on the meridian; and Merodach, as the deity of that planet,
is thus represented as pacing out the bounds of the zodiacal Signs by
his movement in the course of the year. The planet also marks out the
third part of a sign, _i. e._ ten degrees; for during one-third of each
year it appears to retrograde, moving from east to west amongst the
stars instead of from west to east. During this retrogression it covers
the breadth of one "decan" = ten degrees.
[Illustration: POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, A.D. 1900.]
The Babylonian Creation epic is therefore quite late, for it introduces
astronomical ideas not current earlier than 700 B.C. in Babylonia or
anywhere else. This new development of astronomy enables us also to
roughly date the origin of the different orders of systematic astrology.
Astrology, like astronomy, has passed through successive stages. It
began at zero. An unexpected event in the heavens was accounted
portentous, because it was unexpected, and it was interpreted in a good
or bad sense according to the state of mind of the beholder. There can
have been at first no system, no order, no linking up of one specific
kind of prediction with one kind of astronomical event. It can have been
originally nothing but a crude jumble of omens, just on a level with the
superstitions of some of our peasantry as to seeing hares, or cats, or
magpies; and the earliest astrological tablets from Mesopotamia are
precisely of this character.
But the official fortune-tellers at the courts of the kings of Nineveh
or Babylon must speedily have learned the necessity of arranging some
systems of prediction for their own protection--systems definite enough
to give the astrologer a groundwork for a prediction which he could
claim was dependent simply upon the heavenly bodies, and hence for which
the astrologer could not be held personally responsible, and at the same
time elastic enough to enable him to shape his prediction to fit in with
his patron's wishes. The astrology of to-day shows the same essential
features.
This necessity explains the early Babylonian tablets with catalogues of
eclipses on all days of the month, and in all quarters of the sky. The
great majority of the eclipses could never happen, but they could be,
none-the-less, made use of by a court magician. If an eclipse of the sun
took place on the 29th day and in the south, he could always point out
how exceedingly unpleasant things might have been for the king and the
country if he, the magician, had not by his diligence, prevented its
happening, say, on the 20th, and in the north. A Zulu witch-doctor is
quite equal to analogous subterfuges to-day, and no doubt his Babylonian
congeners were not less ingenious 3,000 years ago. Such subterfuges were
not always successful when a Chaka or a Nebuchadnezzar had to be dealt
with, but with kings of a more ordinary type either in Zululand or
Mesopotamia they would answer well enough.
Coming down to times when astronomy had so far advanced that a catalogue
of the stars had been drawn up, with their positions determined by
actual measurement, it became possible for astrologers to draw up
something like a definite system of prediction, based upon the
constellations or parts of a constellation that happened to be rising at
any given moment, and this was the system employed when Zeuchros of
Babylon wrote in the first century of our era. His system must have been
started later than 700 B.C., for in it Aries is considered as the leader
of the zodiac; the constellations are already disestablished in favour
of the Signs; and the Signs are each divided into three. A practical
drawback to this particular astrological system was that the aspect
presented by the heavens on one evening was precisely the same as that
presented on the next evening four minutes earlier. The field for
prediction therefore was very limited and repeated itself too much for
the purpose of fortune-tellers.
The introduction of the planets into astrology gave a greater diversity
to the material used by the fortune-tellers. An early phase of planetary
astrology consisted in the allotment of a planet to each hour of the day
and also to each day of the week. It has been already shown in the
chapter on "Saturn and Astrology," that this system arose from the
Ptolemaic idea of the solar system grafted on the Egyptian division of
the day into twenty-four hours, and applied to the week of seven days.
It probably originated in Alexandria, and arose not earlier than the
third century before our era. Mathematical astrology--the complex system
now in vogue--involves a considerable knowledge of the apparent
movements of the planets and a development of mathematics such as did
not exist until the days of Hipparchus. It also employs the purely
imaginary signs of the zodiac, not the constellations; and reckons the
first point of Aries as at the spring equinox. So far as we can
ascertain, the spring equinox marked the first point of the
constellation Aries about B.C. 110.
All these varied forms of astrology are therefore comparatively recent.
Before that it was of course reckoned ominous if an eclipse took place,
or a comet was seen, or a bright planet came near the moon, just as
spilling salt or crossing knives may be reckoned ominous to-day. The
omens had as little to do with observation, or with anything that could
be called scientific, in the one case as in the other.
It is important to realize that astrology, as anything more than the
crude observance of omens, is younger than astronomy by at least 2,000
years.
_Mazz[=a]r[=o]th_ occurs only once in the Bible, viz. in Job xxxviii.
32, already so often quoted, but a similar word _Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_ occurs
in 2 Kings xxiii. 5, where it is said that Josiah put down the
idolatrous priests, "them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the
sun, and to the moon, and to the planets (_Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_), and to all
the host of heaven." The context itself, as well as the parallel passage
in Deuteronomy--"When thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars,
even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them,"--shows
clearly that celestial luminaries of some kind are intended, probably
certain groups of stars, distinguished from the general "host of
heaven."
Comparing Job ix. 9, with Job xxxviii. 31, 32, we find _`Ash_, or
_`Ayish_, _K[=i]mah_ and _K[)e]sil_ common to the two passages; if we
take _`Ash_ and _`Ayish_ as identical, this leaves the "chambers of the
south" as the equivalent of _Mazzaroth_. The same expression occurs in
the singular in Job xxxvii. 9--"Out of the south (_marg._ chamber)
cometh the whirlwind." There need be but little question as to the
significance of these various passages. The correspondence of the word
_Mazz[=a]r[=o]th_ with the Babylonian _mizr[=a]t[=a]_, the "divisions"
of the year, answering to the twelve signs of the zodiac, points in
exactly the same direction as the correspondence in idea which is
evident between the "chambers of the south" and the Arabic _Al
man[=a]zil_, "the mansions" or "resting-places" of the moon in the lunar
zodiac.
Mazzaroth are therefore the "divisions" of the zodiac, the "chambers"
through which the sun successively passes in the course of the year, his
"resting-place" for a month. They are "the chambers of the south," since
that is their distinctive position. In Palestine, the sun, even at
rising or setting at midsummer, passes but little to the north of east
or west. Roughly speaking, the "south" is the sun's quarter, and
therefore it is necessarily the quarter of the constellation in which
the sun is placed.
It has been made an objection to this identification that the Israelites
are said to have worshipped _Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_, and we have no direct
evidence that the signs or constellations of the zodiac were worshipped
as such. But this is to make a distinction that is hardly warranted. The
Creation tablets, as we have seen, distinctly record the allocation of
the great gods to the various signs, Merodach himself being one of the
three deities associated with the month Adar, just as in Egypt a god
presided over each one of the thirty-six decades of the year.
Again, it is probable that the "golden calf," worshipped by the
Israelites in the wilderness, and, after the disruption, at Bethel and
at Dan, was none other than an attempt to worship Jehovah under the
symbol of Taurus, the leader of the zodiac and cognizance of the tribe
of Joseph; regarded as a type of Him Who had been the Leader of the
people out of Egypt, and the Giver of the blessings associated with the
return of the sun to Taurus, the revival of nature in spring-time. It
was intended as a worship of Jehovah; it was in reality dire rebellion
against Him, and a beginning of the worship of "_Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_ and
the heavenly host;" an idolatry that was bound to bring other idolatries
in its train.
A three-fold symbol found continually on Babylonian monuments, "the
triad of stars," undoubtedly at one time set forth Sin, the moon-god,
Samas, the sun-god, and I[vs]tar, in this connection possibly the planet
Venus. It has therefore been suggested by Prof. Schiaparelli that
_Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_ is the planet Venus; and, since the word is plural in
form, Venus in her double capacity;--sometimes an evening, sometimes a
morning star. The sun and the moon and _Mazz[=a]l[=o]th_ would then set
forth the three brightest luminaries, whilst the general congress of
stars would be represented by the "host of heaven." But though Venus is
sometimes the brightest of the planets, she is essentially of the same
order as Jupiter or Mars, and is not of the same order as the sun and
moon, with whom, on this supposition, she is singled out to be ranked.
Moreover, if I[vs]tar or Ashtoreth were intended in this passage, it
does not appear why she should not be expressly named as such;
especially as Baal, so often coupled with her, is named. The "triad of
stars," too, had originally quite a different meaning, as will be seen
later.
Moreover, the parallelism between Job ix. and Job xxxviii. is destroyed
by this rendering, since the planet Venus could not be described as "the
chambers of the south." These are therefore referred by Professor
Schiaparelli to the glorious mass of stars in the far south, shining in
the constellations that set forth the Deluge story,--the Ship, and the
Centaur, much the most brilliant region of the whole sky.
Another interpretation of _Mazzaroth_ is given by Dr. Cheyne, on grounds
that refute Professor Schiaparelli's suggestion, but it is itself open
to objection from an astronomical point of view. He writes--
"_Mazzaroth_ is probably not to be identified with _Mazzaloth_
(2 Kings xxiii. 5) in spite of the authority of the Sept. and
the Targum. . . . _Mazzaroth_ = Ass. _Mazarati_; _Mazzaloth_
(i.e. the zodiacal signs) seems to be the plural of
_Mazz[=a]la_ = Ass. _Manzaltu_, station."[254:1]
Dr. Cheyne therefore renders the passage thus--
"Dost thou bring forth the moon's watches at their season,
And the Bear and her offspring--dost thou guide them?
Knowest thou the laws of heaven?
Dost thou determine its influence upon the earth?"
_Mazzaloth_ are therefore "the zodiacal signs," but _Mazzaroth_ "the
watches or stations of the moon, which marked the progress of the
month;"[254:2] or, in other words, the lunar zodiac.
But the lunar and the solar zodiac are only different ways of dividing
the same belt of stars. Consequently when, as in the passage before us,
reference is made to the actual belt of stars as a whole, there is no
difference between the two. So that we are obliged, as before, to
consider _Mazzaroth_ and _Mazzaloth_ as identical, and both as setting
forth the stars of the zodiac.
So far as the two zodiacs differ, it is the solar and not the lunar
zodiac that is intended. This is evident when we consider the different
natures of the apparent motions of the sun and the moon. The sun passes
through a twelfth part of the zodiac each month, and month by month the
successive constellations of the zodiac are brought out, each in its own
season; each having a period during which it rises at sunset, is visible
the whole night, and sets at sunrise. The solar _Mazzaroth_ are
therefore emphatically brought out, each "in its season." Not so the
lunar _Mazzaroth_.
The expression, "the watches or stations of the moon which marked the
progress of the month," is unsuitable when astronomically considered.
"Watches" refer strictly to divisions of the day and night; the
"stations" of the moon refer to the twenty-seven or twenty-eight
divisions of the lunar zodiac; the "progress of the month" refers to the
complete sequence of the lunar phases. These are three entirely
different matters, and Dr. Cheyne has confused them. The progress of the
moon through its complete series of stations is accomplished in a
siderial month--that is, twenty-seven days eight hours, but from the
nature of the case it cannot be said that these "stations" are brought
out each in his season, in that time, as a month makes but a small
change in the aspect of the sky. The moon passes through the complete
succession of its phases in the course of a synodical month, which is in
the mean twenty-nine days, thirteen hours--that is to say from new to
new, or full to full--but no particular star, or constellation, or
"station" has any fixed relation to any one given phase of the moon. In
the course of some four or five years the moon will have been both new
and full in every one of the "lunar stations."
"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
He, who has lived out under the stars, in contact with the actual
workings of nature, knows what it is to watch "Mazzaroth" brought "out
in his season;" the silent return to the skies of the constellations,
month by month, simultaneous with the changes on the face of the earth.
Overhead, the glorious procession, so regular and unfaltering, of the
silent, unapproachable stars: below, in unfailing answer, the succession
of spring and summer, autumn and winter, seedtime and harvest, cold and
heat, rain and drought. If there be but eyes to see, this majestic
Order, so smooth in working, so magnificent in scale, will impress the
most stolid as the immediate acting of God; and the beholder will feel
at the same a reverent awe, and an uplifting of the spirit as he sees
the action of "the ordinances of heaven," and the evidence of "the
dominion thereof in the earth."
Dr. Cheyne, however, only sees in these beautiful and appropriate lines
the influence upon the sacred writer of "the physical theology of
Babylonia";[256:1] in other words, its idolatrous astrology, "the
influence of the sky upon the earth."
But what would Job understand by the question, "Canst thou bring forth
Mazz[=a]r[=o]th in his season?" Just this: "Canst thou so move the
great celestial sphere that the varied constellations of the zodiac
shall come into view, each in their turn, and with them the earth pass
through its proper successive seasons?" The question therefore embraced
and was an extension of the two that preceded it. "Canst thou bind the
sweet influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all
the forces of nature in the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands
of Orion; canst thou free the ground from the numbing frosts of winter?"
The question to us would not greatly differ in its meaning, except that
we should better understand the mechanism underlying the phenomena. The
question would mean, "Canst thou move this vast globe of the earth,
weighing six thousand million times a million million tons, continually
in its orbit, more than 580 millions of miles in circuit, with a speed
of nearly nineteen miles in every second of time, thus bringing into
view different constellations at different times of the year, and
presenting the various zones of the earth in different aspects to the
sun's light and heat?" To us, as to Job, the question would come as:
"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
It is going beyond astronomy, yet it may be permitted to an astronomer,
to refer for comparison to a parallel thought, not couched in the form
of a question, but in the form of a prayer:
"Thy will be done,
As in heaven, so in earth."
FOOTNOTES:
[254:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., _Job and Solomon_, p. 290.
[254:2] _Ibid._, p. 52.
[256:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., _Job and Solomon_, p. 52.
CHAPTER IX
ARCTURUS
In two passages of the Book of Job a word, _`Ash_ or _`Ayish_, is used,
by context evidently one of the constellations of the sky, but the
identification of which is doubtful. In our Authorized Version the first
passage is rendered thus:--
(God) "Which maketh Arcturus (_`Ash_), Orion, and Pleiades,
and the chambers of the south";
and the second:--
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
Or canst thou guide Arcturus (_`Ayish_) with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
The words (or word, for possibly _`Ayish_ is no more than a variant of
_`Ash_) here translated "Arcturus" were rendered by the "Seventy" as
"Arktouros" in the first passage; as "Hesperos" in the second passage;
and their rendering was followed by the Vulgate. The rendering Hesper or
Vesper is absurd, as "the sons" of Hesper has no meaning. "Arktouros"
is not improbably a misrendering of "Arktos," "the north," which would
give a free but not a literal translation of the meaning of the passage.
In another passage from Job (xxxvii. 9) where the south wind is
contrasted with the cold from another quarter of the sky, the
"Seventy"--again followed by the Vulgate--rendered it as "cold from
Arcturus." Now cold came to the Jews, as it does to us, from the north,
and the star which we know as Arcturus could not be described as
typifying that direction either now or when the Septuagint or Vulgate
versions were made. The Peschitta, the Syriac version of the Bible, made
about the second century after Christ, gives as the Syriac equivalent
for `Ash, or `Ayish, the word _`iy[=u]th[=a]_, but it also renders
_K[)e]s[=i]l_ by the same word in Amos v. 8, so that the translators
were evidently quite at sea as to the identity of these constellations.
We are also in doubt as to what star or constellation the Syrians meant
by _`Iy[=u]th[=a]_, and apparently they were in some doubt themselves,
for in the Talmud we are told that there was a disputation, held in the
presence of the great teacher Rabbi Jehuda, about 150 years after
Christ, whether _`Iy[=u]th[=a]_ was situated in the head of the Bull, or
in the tail of the Ram. Oriental scholars now assign it either to
Aldebaran in the head of the Bull, the "sons" being in this case the
other members of the Hyades group of which Aldebaran is the brightest
star; or else identifying it with the Arabic _el-`aiy[=u]q_, the name of
the star which the Greeks call _Aix_, and we call Capella, the "sons" on
this inference being the three small stars near, called by the Greeks
and by ourselves the "Kids." The word _`Ash_ is used several times in
Scripture, but without any astronomical signification, and is there
rendered "moth," as in Isaiah, where it says--
"Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth (_`Ash_)
shall eat them up."
This literal significance of the word does not help, as we know of no
constellation figured as a "moth" or bearing any resemblance to one.
But the word _`ash_, or _`ayish_ does not differ importantly from the
word _na`sh_, in Hebrew "assembly," in Arabic "bier," which has been the
word used by the Arabs from remote antiquity to denote the four bright
stars in the hind-quarters of the Great Bear; those which form the body
of the Plough. Moreover, the three stars which form the "tail" of the
Great Bear, or the "handle" of the Plough have been called by the Arabs
_ben[=a]t na`sh_, "the daughters of na`sh." The Bear is the great
northern constellation, which swings constantly round the pole, always
visible throughout the changing seasons of the year. There should be no
hesitation then in accepting the opinion of the Rabbi, Aben Ezra, who
saw in _`Ash_, or _`Ayish_ the quadrilateral of the great Bear, whose
four points are marked by the bright stars, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and
Delta, and in the "sons" of _`Ayish_, the three stars, Epsilon, Zeta,
and Eta. Our Revised Version therefore renders the word as "Bear."
In both passages of Job, then, we get the four quarters of the sky
marked out as being under the dominion of the Lord. In the ninth chapter
they are given in the order--
The Bear, which is in the North;
Orion, in its acronical rising, with the sun setting in the
West;
The Pleiades, in their heliacal rising, with the sun rising in
the East;
And the Chambers of the South.
In the later passage they are given with fuller illustration, and in the
order--
The Pleiades, whose "sweet influences" are given by their
heliacal rising in spring time, with the sun rising in the
East;
Orion, whose "bands" are those of winter, heralded by his
acronical rising with the sun setting in the West;
Mazzaroth, the constellations of the zodiac corresponding to
the Chambers of the South, which the sun occupies each in its
"season."
The Bear with its "sons," who, always visible, are unceasingly
guided round the pole in the North.
The parallelism in the two passages in Job gives us the right to argue
that _`Ash_ and _`Ayish_ refer to the same constellation, and are
variants of the same name; possibly their vocalization was the same, and
they are but two divergent ways of writing the word. We must therefore
reject Prof. Schiaparelli's suggestion made on the authority of the
Peschitta version of the Scriptures and of Rabbi Jehuda, who lived in
the second century A.D., that _`Ash_ is _`Iy[=u]th[=a]_ which is
Aldebaran, but that _`Ayish_ and his "sons" may be Capella and her
"Kids."
Equally we must reject Prof. Stern's argument that _K[=i]mah_ is Sirius,
_K[)e]s[=i]l_ is Orion, _Mazz[=a]r[=o]th_ is the Hyades and _`Ayish_ is
the Pleiades. He bases his argument on the order in which these names
are given in the second passage of Job, and on the contention of
Otfried Müller that there are only four out of the remarkable groups of
stars placed in the middle and southern regions of the sky which have
given rise to important legends in the primitive mythology of the
Greeks. These groups follow one after the other in a belt in the sky in
the order just given, and their risings and settings were important
factors in the old Greek meteorological and agricultural calendars.
Prof. Stern assumes that _k[)e]s[=i]l_ means Orion, and from this
identification deduces the others, neglecting all etymological or
traditional evidences to the contrary. He takes no notice of the
employment of the same names in passages of Scripture other than that in
the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Here he would interpret the "chain,"
or "sweet influences" of _K[=i]mah_ = "Sirius the dog," by assuming that
the Jews considered that the dog was mad, and hence was kept chained up.
More important still, he fails to recognize that the Jews had a
continental climate in a different latitude from the insular climate of
Greece, and that both their agricultural and their weather conditions
were different, and would be associated with different astronomical
indications.
In the 9th verse of the 37th chapter of Job we get an antithesis which
has already been referred to--
"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the
north."
The Hebrew word here translated "north" is _mezar[=i]m_, a plural word
which is taken literally to mean "the scatterings." For its
interpretation Prof. Schiaparelli makes a very plausible suggestion. He
says, "We may first observe that the five Hebrew letters with which this
name was written in the original unpointed text could equally well be
read, with a somewhat different pointing, as _mizrim_, or also as
_mizrayim_, of which the one is the plural, the other the dual, of
_mizreh_. Now _mizreh_ means a winnowing-fan, the instrument with which
grain is scattered in the air to sift it; and it has its root, like
_mezarim_, in the word _zarah_, . . . which, besides the sense
_dispersit_, bears also the sense _expandit_, _ventilavit_."[263:1]
[Illustration: STARS OF THE PLOUGH, AS THE WINNOWING FAN.]
If Prof. Schiaparelli is correct in his supposition, then the word
translated "north" in our versions is literally the "two winnowing
fans," names which from the form suggested by the stars we may suppose
that the Jews gave to the two Bears in the sky, just as the Chinese
called them the "Ladles," and the Americans call them the "Big Dipper"
and the "Little Dipper." The sense is still that of the north, but we
may recognize in the word employed another Jewish name of the
constellation, alternative with _`Ash_ or _`Ayish_, or perhaps used in
order to include in the region the Lesser as well as the Greater Bear.
We should not be surprised at finding an alternative name for this great
northern constellation, for we ourselves call it by several different
appellations, using them indiscriminately, perhaps even in the course of
a single paragraph.
What to Job did the question mean which the Lord addressed to him:
"Canst thou guide the Bear and his sons?" To Job it meant, "Canst thou
guide this great constellation of stars in the north, in their unceasing
round, as a charioteer guides his horses in a wide circle, each keeping
to his proper ring, none entangling himself with another, nor falling
out of his place?"
What would the same question mean to us, if addressed to us to-day? In
the first place we might put it shortly as "Canst thou turn the earth on
its axis regularly and continuously, so as to produce this motion of the
stars round the pole, and to make day and night?" But modern astronomy
can ask the question in a deeper and a wider sense.
It was an ancient idea that the stars were fixed in a crystal sphere,
and that they could not alter their relative positions; and indeed until
the last century or two, instruments were not delicate enough to measure
the small relative shift that stars make. It is within the last seventy
years that we have been able to measure the "annual parallax" of certain
stars,--that is, the difference in the position of a star when viewed by
the earth from the opposite ends of a diameter of the earth's orbit
round the sun. Besides their yearly shift due to "annual parallax," most
stars have a "proper" or "peculiar motion" of their own, which is in
most cases a very small amount indeed, but can be determined more easily
than "annual parallax" because its effect accumulates year after year.
If, therefore, we are able to observe a star over a period of fifty, or
a hundred or more years, it may seem to have moved quite an appreciable
amount when examined by the powerful and delicate instruments that we
have now at our disposal. Observations of the exact positions of stars
have been made ever since the founding of Greenwich Observatory, so that
now we have catalogues giving the "proper motions" of several hundreds
of stars. When these are examined it is seen that some groups of stars
move in fellowship together through space, having the same direction,
and moving at the same rate, and of these companies the most striking
are the stars of the Plough, that is _`Ayish_ and his sons. Not all the
stars move together; out of the seven, the first and the last have a
different direction, but the other five show a striking similarity in
their paths. And not only are their directions of movement, and the
amounts of it, the same for the five stars, but spectroscopic
observations of their motion in the line of sight show that they are all
approaching us with a speed of about eighteen miles a second, that is to
say with much the same speed as the earth moves in her orbit round the
sun. Another indication of their "family likeness" is that all their
spectra are similar. A German astronomer, Dr. Höffler, has found for
this system a distance from us so great that it would take light 192
years to travel from them to us. Yet so vast is this company of five
stars that it would take light seventy years, travelling at the rate of
186,000 miles in every second of time to go from the leading star,
_Merak_--Beta of the Bear--to _Mizar_--Zeta of the Bear--the final
brilliant of the five. So bright and great are these suns that they
shine to us as gems of the second magnitude, and yet if our sun were
placed amongst them at their distance from us he would be invisible to
the keenest sight.
Dr. Höffler's estimate may be an exaggerated one, but it still remains
true that whilst the cluster of the Pleiades forms a great and wonderful
family group, it is dwarfed into insignificance by the vast distances
between these five stars of the Great Bear. Yet these also form one
family, though they are united by no nebulous bands, and are at
distances so great from each other that the bonds of gravitation must
cease to show their influence; yet all are alike, all are marshalled
together in their march under some mysterious law. We cannot answer the
question, "By what means are _`Ayish_ and his sons guided?" much more
are we speechless when we are asked, "Canst thou guide them?"
FOOTNOTES:
[263:1] _Astronomy in the Old Testament_, p. 69.
[Illustration: "BLOW UP THE TRUMPET IN THE NEW MOON."]
BOOK III
TIMES AND SEASONS
CHAPTER I
THE DAY AND ITS DIVISIONS
There is a difference of opinion at the present day amongst astronomers
as to the time in which the planet Venus rotates upon her axis. This
difference arises through the difficulty of perceiving or identifying
any markings on her brilliantly lighted surface. She is probably
continually cloud-covered, and the movements of the very faint shadings
that are sometimes seen upon her have been differently interpreted. The
older observers concurred in giving her a rotation period of 23{h}
21{m}, which is not very different from that of the earth. Many
astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, assign a rotation period of 225
days, that is to say the same period as that in which she goes round the
sun in her orbit. The axis on which she rotates is almost certainly at
right angles to the plane in which she moves round the sun, and she has
no moon.
We do not know if the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, but
assuming the existence of such, it will be instructive to inquire as to
the conditions under which they must live if this view be correct, and
the rotation period of Venus, and her revolution period be the same.
Venus would then always turn the same face to the sun, just as our moon
always turns the same face to us and so never appears to turn round.
Venus would therefore have no "days," for on her one hemisphere there
would be eternal light, and on the other eternal darkness. Since she has
no moon, she has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle,
and the axis through her north and south poles lies at right angles to
her ecliptic, she has no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her
daylight side, the sun remains fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as
the observer does not leave his locality; it hangs overhead, or near
some horizon, north, south, east, or west, continually. There are no
"hours," therefore no divisions of time, it might be almost said no
"time" itself. There are no points of the compass even, no north, south,
east or west, no directions except towards the place where the sun is
overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the sense we know
it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time" must there be
artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.
On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for
cloud, they would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for
Venus turns continually to the heavens--though not to the sun.
_Mazzaroth_ would still be brought out in his season, but there would be
no answering change on Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of
heaven, but they could not know the dominion thereof set upon their
earth.
This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate
the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:--
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."
The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it
is the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most
natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:--
"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of
heaven, . . . the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations
under the whole heaven."
This is the legitimate use of the heavenly bodies, just as the worship
of them is their abuse, for the division of time--in other words, the
formation of a calendar--is a necessity. But as there are many heavenly
bodies and several natural divisions of time, the calendars in use by
different peoples differ considerably. One division, however, is common
to all calendars--the day.
The "day" is the first and shortest natural division of time. At present
we recognize three kinds of "days"--_the sidereal day_, which is the
interval of time between successive passages of a fixed star over a
given meridian; _the apparent solar day_, which is the interval between
two passages of the sun's centre over a given meridian, or the interval
between two successive noons on a sundial; and _the mean solar day_,
which is the interval between the successive passages of a fictitious
sun moving uniformly eastward in the celestial equator, and completing
its annual course in exactly the same time as that in which the actual
sun makes the circuit of the ecliptic. The mean solar days are all
exactly the same length; they are equal to the length of the average
apparent solar day; and they are each four minutes longer than a
sidereal day. We divide our days into 24 hours; each hour into 60
minutes; each minute into 60 seconds. This subdivision of the day
requires some mechanical means of continually registering time, and for
this purpose we use clocks and watches.
The sidereal day and the mean solar day necessitate some means of
registering time, such as clocks; therefore the original day in use must
have been the apparent solar day. It must then have been reckoned either
from sunset to sunset, or from sunrise to sunrise. Later it might have
been possible to reckon it from noon to noon, when some method of fixing
the moment of noon had been invented; some method, that is to say, of
fixing the true north and south, and of noting that the sun was due
south, or the shadow due north. Our own reckoning from midnight to
midnight is a late method. Midnight is not marked by the peculiar
position of any visible heavenly body; it has, in general, to be
registered by some mechanical time-measurer.
In the Old Testament Scriptures the ecclesiastical reckoning was always
from one setting of the sun to the next. In the first chapter of Genesis
the expressions for the days run, "The evening and the morning," as if
the evening took precedence of the morning. When the Passover was
instituted as a memorial feast, the command ran--
"In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at
even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and
twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be
no leaven."
And again, for the sabbath of rest in the seventh month--
"In the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even,
shall ye celebrate your sabbath."
The ecclesiastical "day" of the Jews, therefore, began in the evening,
with sunset. It does not by any means follow that their civil day began
at this time. It would be more natural for such business contracts as
the hiring of servants or labourers to date from morning to morning
rather than from evening to evening. Naturally any allusion in the
Scriptures to the civil calendar as apart from the ecclesiastical would
be indirect, but that common custom was not entirely in agreement with
the ecclesiastical formula we may perhaps gather from the fact that in
the Old Testament there are twenty-six cases in which the phrases "day
and night," "day or night" are employed, and only three where "night"
comes before "day." We have a similar divergence of usage in the case of
our civil and astronomical days; the first beginning at midnight, and
the second at the following noon, since the daylight is the time for
work in ordinary business life, but the night for the astronomers. The
Babylonians, at least at a late date in their history, had also a
twofold way of determining when the day began. Epping and Strassmaier
have translated and elucidated a series of Babylonian lunar calendars of
dates between the first and second centuries before our era. In one
column of these was given the interval of time which elapsed between the
true new moon and the first visible crescent.
"Curious to relate, at first all Father Epping's calculations
to establish this result were out by a mean interval of six
hours. The solution was found in the fact that the Babylonian
astronomers were not content with such a variable instant of
time as sunset for their calculations, as indeed they ought
not to have been, but used as the origin of the astronomical
day at Babylon the midnight which followed the setting of the
sun, marking the beginning of the civil day."
It may be mentioned that the days as reckoned from sunset to sunset,
sunrise to sunrise, and noon to noon, would give intervals of slightly
different lengths. This would, however, be imperceptible so long as
their lengths were not measured by some accurate mechanical
time-measurer such as a clepsydra, sandglass, pendulum, or spring clock.
The first obvious and natural division of the whole day-interval is into
the light part and the dark part. As we have seen in Genesis, the
evening and the morning are the day. Since Palestine is a sub-tropical
country, these would never differ very greatly in length, even at
midsummer or midwinter.
The next subdivision, of the light part of the day, is into morning,
noon and evening. As David says in the fifty-fifth Psalm--
"Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray."
None of these three subdivisions were marked out definitely in their
beginning or their ending, but each contained a definite epoch. Morning
contained the moment at which the sun rose; noon the moment at which he
was at his greatest height, and was at the same time due south; evening
contained the moment at which the sun set.
In the early Scriptures of the Old Testament, the further divisions of
the morning and the evening are still natural ones.
For the progress of the morning we have, first, the twilight, as in
Job--
"Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark;
Let it look for light but have none;
Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning."
Then, daybreak, as in the Song of Solomon--
"Until the day break (literally, breathe) and the shadows flee
away,"
where the reference is to the cool breezes of twilight. So too in
Genesis, in Joshua, in the Judges and in Samuel, we find references to
the "break of day" (literally, the rising of the morning, or when it
became light to them) and "the dawning of the day" or "about the spring
of the day."
The progress of the morning is marked by the increasing heat; thus as
"the sun waxed hot," the manna melted; whilst Saul promised to let the
men of Jabesh-Gilead have help "by that time the sun be hot," or, as we
should put it, about the middle of the morning.
Noon is often mentioned. Ish-bosheth was murdered as he "lay on a bed at
noon," and Jezebel's prophets "called on the name of Baal from morning
even unto noon."
We find the "afternoon" (lit. "till the day declined") mentioned in the
nineteenth chapter of the Judges, and in the same chapter this period is
further described in "The day draweth toward evening (lit. is weak),"
and "The day groweth to an end" (lit. "It is the pitching time of the
day," that is to say, the time for pitching tents, in preparation for
the nightly halt).
As there was no dividing line between the morning and noontide, neither
was there any between the afternoon and evening. The shadows of the
night were spoken of as chased away by the cool breezes of the morning,
so the lengthening shadows cast by the declining sun marked the progress
of the evening. Job speaks of the servant who "earnestly desireth the
shadow;" that is to say, the intimation, from the length of his own
shadow, that his day's work was done; and Jeremiah says, "The shadows of
the evening are stretched out." Then came sundown, and the remaining
part of the evening is described in Proverbs: "In the twilight, in the
evening, in the black and dark night."
In a country like Palestine, near the tropics, with the days not
differing extravagantly in length from one part of the year to another,
and the sun generally bright and shining, and throwing intense shadows,
it was easy, even for the uneducated, to learn to tell the time of day
from the length of the shadow. Here, in our northern latitude, the
problem is a more complex one, yet we learn from the _Canterbury Tales_,
that Englishmen in the time of the Plantagenets could read the position
of the sun with quite sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes. Thus
the host of the Tabard inn, though not a learned man--
"Saw wel, that the brighte sonne
The ark of his artificial day had ronne
The fourthe part, and half an houre and more;
And though he was not depe experte in lore,
He wiste it was the eighte and twenty day
Of April, that is messager to May;
And saw wel that the shadow of every tree
Was as in lengthe of the same quantitee
That was the body erect, that caused it;
And therfore by the shadow he toke his wit,
That Phebus, which that shone so clere and bright,
Degrees was five and fourty clombe on hight;
And for that day, as in that latitude,
It was ten of the clok, he gan conclude."[277:1]
In the latter part of the day there is an expression used several times
in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers "between the two evenings" which has
given rise to much controversy. The lamb of the Passover was killed in
this period; so also was the lamb of the first year offered daily at the
evening sacrifice; and day by day Aaron was then commanded to light the
seven lamps and burn incense. It is also mentioned once, in no
connection with the evening sacrifice, when the Lord sent quails to the
children of Israel saying, "At even (between the two evenings) ye shall
eat flesh." In Deuteronomy, where a command is again given concerning
the Passover, it is explained that it is "at even, at the going down of
the sun." The Samaritans, the Karaite Jews, and Aben Ezra held "the two
evenings" to be the interval between the sun's setting and the entrance
of total darkness; _i. e._ between about six o'clock and seven or
half-past seven. A graphic description of the commencement of the
sabbath is given in Disraeli's novel of _Alroy_, and may serve to
illustrate this, the original, idea of "between the two evenings."
"The dead were plundered, and thrown into the river, the
encampment of the Hebrews completed. Alroy, with his principal
officers, visited the wounded, and praised the valiant. The
bustle which always succeeds a victory was increased in the
present instance by the anxiety of the army to observe with
grateful strictness the impending sabbath.
"When the sun set the sabbath was to commence. The undulating
horizon rendered it difficult to ascertain the precise moment
of his fall. The crimson orb sunk below the purple mountains,
the sky was flushed with a rich and rosy glow. Then might be
perceived the zealots, proud in their Talmudical lore, holding
the skein of white silk in their hands, and announcing the
approach of the sabbath by their observation of its shifting
tints. While the skein was yet golden, the forge of the
armourers still sounded, the fire of the cook still blazed,
still the cavalry led their steeds to the river, and still the
busy footmen braced up their tents, and hammered at their
palisades. The skein of silk became rosy, the armourer worked
with renewed energy, the cook puffed with increased zeal, the
horsemen scampered from the river, the footmen cast an
anxious glance at the fading light.
"The skein of silk became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral,
leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the
bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from
all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The
forge was mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses
and the bustle of men in a moment ceased. A deep, a sudden, an
all-pervading stillness dropped over that mighty host. It was
night; the sacred lamps of the sabbath sparkled in every tent
of the camp, which vied in silence and in brilliancy with the
mute and glowing heavens."
In later times, on account of ritualistic necessities, a different
interpretation was held. So Josephus says: "So these high-priests, upon
the coming of their feast which is called the Passover, . . . slay their
sacrifices, from the ninth hour till the eleventh."[279:1] And the
Talmud made the first evening to begin with the visible decline of the
sun and the second with sunset, or "the two evenings" to last from three
till about six. Schiaparelli gives the first evening from sunset until
the time that the newly visible lunar crescent could be seen in the
twilight sky, or about half an hour after sunset, and the second evening
from that until darkness set in, basing his argument on the directions
to Aaron to light the lamps "between the two evenings," since, he
argues, these would not be made to burn in the daylight. Probably in the
days of Moses and Aaron the period could not be defined as accurately as
this would imply, as the opportunity of seeing the new moon could only
come once a month, and we have no evidence of any mechanical
time-measurer being then in use with them.
For shorter spaces of time we have the word "moment" or "instant" many
times mentioned. The words may mean, the opening or winking of the eye,
"the twinkling of an eye," spoken of by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the
Corinthians, and do not describe any actual duration of time, or
division of the day.
The only time-measurer mentioned in the Bible is the dial of Ahaz, which
will form the subject of a later chapter. It need only be noted here
that, as it depended upon the fall of the shadow, it was of use only
whilst the sun was shining; not during cloudy weather, or at night.
As the day had three main divisions, so had also the night. There were
three "watches," each, like the watches on ship-board, about four hours
in length. So in the Psalms, "the watches" are twice put as an
equivalent for the night.
The ancient Hebrews would have no difficulty in roughly dividing the
night into three equal parts, whenever the stars could be seen. Whether
they watched "Arcturus and his sons,"--the circumpolar constellations
moving round like a vast dial in the north--or the bringing forth of
Mazzaroth, the zodiacal constellations, in the south, they would soon
learn to interpret the signs of night with sufficient accuracy for their
purpose.
The first watch of night is mentioned in the book of Lamentations.
"Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches
pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord."
It was "in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly
set the watch," that Gideon and his gallant three hundred made their
onslaught on the host of the Midianites.
It was in the third, the morning watch, that "the Lord looked unto the
host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and
troubled the host of the Egyptians" as they pursued Israel into the
midst of the Red Sea. In this watch also, Saul surprised the Ammonites
as they besieged Jabesh-Gilead, and scattered them, "so that two of them
were not left together."
In the New Testament, the Roman method of dividing the night is adopted;
viz. into four watches. When the disciples were crossing the Sea of
Galilee in their little boat, and they had toiled all night in rowing
because the wind was contrary, it was in "the fourth watch of the night"
that Jesus came unto them.
There is no mention of any mechanical time-measurer in the Old
Testament, and in only one book is there mention in the English version
of the word "hour." Five times it is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as
the rendering of the Chaldean word _sha`ah_, which literally means "the
instant of time."
No mention either is made of the differing lengths of the days or nights
throughout the year--at midsummer the day is 14-1/4 hours long, and the
night 9-3/4. Job speaks, however, of causing "the day-spring to know its
place," which may well refer to the varying places along the eastern
horizon at which the sun rose during the course of the year. Thus in
mid-winter the sun rose 28° south of the east point, or half a point
south of E.S.E. Similarly in midsummer it rose 28° north of east, or
half a point north of E.N.E.[282:1]
The Babylonians divided the whole day interval into twelve _kasbu_, or
"double hours." Those again were divided into sixty parts, each equal to
two of our minutes; this being about the time that is required for the
disc of the sun to rise or set wholly. The Babylonian _kasbu_ was not
only a division of time, but a division of space, signifying the space
that might be marched in a _kasbu_ of time. Similarly we find, in the
Old Testament, the expression "a day's journey," or "three days'
journey," to express distance, and in the New Testament we find the same
idea applied to a shorter distance in the "sabbath-day's journey," which
was about two miles. But the Jews in New Testament times adopted, not
the Babylonian day of twelve hours, but the Egyptian of twenty-four. So
we find, in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, mention made
of hiring early in the morning, and at the third, sixth, ninth, and
eleventh hours; and since those hired latest worked for but one hour, it
is evident that there were twelve hours in the daylight. Our Lord
alludes to this expressly in the Gospel according to St. John, where he
says--
"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the
day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this
world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because
there is no light in him."
FOOTNOTES:
[277:1] _The Man of Lawe's Prologue_, lines 4421-4434.
[279:1] Josephus, _Wars_, VI. ix. 3.
[282:1] See the diagram on p. 363.
CHAPTER II
THE SABBATH AND THE WEEK
The present chapter has little, if anything, to do with astronomy, for
the week, as such, is not an astronomical period. But the sabbath and
the week of seven days are so intimately connected with the laws and
customs of Israel that it is impossible to leave them out of
consideration in dealing with the "times and seasons" referred to in the
Bible.
The day, the month and the year are each defined by some specific
revolution of one of the great cosmical bodies; there is in each case a
return of the earth, or of the earth and moon together, to the same
position, relative to the sun, as that held at the beginning of the
period.
The week stands in a different category. It is not defined by any
astronomical revolution; it is defined by the return of the sabbath, the
consecrated day.
A need for the division of time into short periods, less than a month,
has been generally felt amongst civilized men. Business of state,
commercial arrangements, social intercourse, are all more easily carried
out, when some such period is universally recognized. And so, what we
may loosely term a "week," has been employed in many ancient nations.
The Aztecs, using a short month of 20 days, divided it into four
quarters of 5 days each. The Egyptians, using a conventional month of 30
days, divided it into 3 decades; and decades were also used by the
Athenians, whose months were alternately of 29 and of 30 days.
Hesiod tells us that the days regarded as sacred in his day were the
fourth, fourteenth and twenty-fourth of each month.
"The fourth and twenty-fourth, no grief should prey
Within thy breast, for holy either day.
* * * * *
Pierce on the fourth thy cask; the fourteenth prize
As holy; and, when morning paints the skies,
The twenty-fourth is best."
The Babylonians divided the month somewhat differently; the seventh,
fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth days being
regarded as "sabbaths."[284:1]
The sabbath enjoined upon the Hebrews was every seventh day. The week as
defined by it was a "free" week; it was tied neither to month nor year,
but ran its course uninterruptedly, quite irrespective of the longer
divisions of time. It was, therefore, a different conception from that
underlying the usages of the Greeks or Babylonians, and, it may be
added, a more reasonable and practical one.
Four origins have been assigned for the week. There are those who
assert that it is simply the closest possible approximation to the
quarter-month; the mean month being 29-1/2 days in length, a
quarter-month would be 7-3/8 days, and since fractions of a day cannot
be recognized in any practical division of time for general use, the
week of seven days forms the nearest approach to the quarter-month that
could be adopted. This is undeniably true, but it is far more likely
that such an origin would give rise to the Babylonian system than to the
Jewish one, for the Babylonian system corrected the inequality of
quarter-month and week every month, and so kept the two in harmony;
whilst the Hebrew disregarded the month altogether in the succession of
his weeks.
Next, it is asserted that the Hebrew sabbath was derived from the
Babylonian, and that "it is scarcely possible for us to doubt that we
owe the blessings decreed in the sabbath or Sunday day of rest in the
last resort to that ancient and civilized race on the Euphrates and
Tigris."[285:1]
There are two points to be considered here. Did the Babylonians observe
their "sabbaths" as days of rest; and, were they or the Hebrews the more
likely to hand on their observances to another nation?
We can answer both these questions. As to the first, a large number of
Babylonian documents on tablets, preserved in the British Museum, have
been published by Father Strassmaier, and discussed by Prof.
Schiaparelli. In all there were 2,764 dated documents available for
examination, nearly all of them commercial and civil deeds, and
covering practically the whole period from the accession of
Nebuchadnezzar to the twenty-third year of Darius Hystaspes. This number
would give an average of 94 deeds for each day of the month; the number
actually found for the four "sabbaths," _i. e._ for the 7th, 14th, 21st
and 28th days, were 100, 98, 121 and 91 respectively. The Babylonians
evidently did not keep these days as days of rest, or of abstinence from
business, as the Jews keep their sabbath, or Christian countries their
Sunday. They cannot even have regarded it as an unlucky day, since we
find the average of contracts is rather higher for a "sabbath" than for
a common day.
The case is a little different with the 19th day of the month. This, as
the 49th day from the beginning of the previous month, was a sabbath of
sabbaths, at the end of a "week of weeks." In this case only 89
contracts are found, which is slightly below the average, though twelve
common days show a lower record still. But in most cases the date is
written, not as 19, but as 20-1; as if there were a superstition about
the number 19. On the other hand, this method of indicating the number
may be nothing more than a mode of writing; just as in our Roman
numerals, XIX., one less than XX., is written for 19.
The Babylonians, therefore, did not observe these days as days of rest,
though they seem to have marked them in the ritual of temple and court.
Nor did they make every seventh or every fifth a rest-day, for Prof.
Schiaparelli has specially examined these documents to see if they gave
any evidence of abstention from business either on one day in seven or
on one day in five, and in both cases with a purely negative result.