The Astronomy of the Bible - E. Walter Maunder (first e reader .TXT) 📗
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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The names ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish, Kĕsīl, and Kīmah are peculiar to the Hebrews, and are not, so far as we have any evidence at present, allied to names in use for any constellation amongst the Babylonians and Assyrians; they have, as yet, not been found on any cuneiform inscription. Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, living in the eighth century b.c., two centuries before the Jews were carried into exile to Babylon, evidently knew well what the terms signified, and the writer of the Book of Job was no less aware of their signification. But the "Seventy," who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, were not at all clear as to the identification of these names of constellations; though they made their translation only two or three centuries after the Jews returned to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah, when oral tradition should have still supplied the meaning of such astronomical terms. Had these names been then known in Babylon, they could not have been unknown to the learned men of Alexandria in the second century before our era, since at that time there was a very direct scientific influence of the one city upon the other. This Hebrew astronomy was so far from being due to Babylonian influence and teaching, that, though known centuries before the exile, after the exile we find the knowledge of its technical terms was lost. On the other hand, kīma was the term used in all Syriac literature to denominate the Pleiades, and we accordingly find in the Peschitta, the ancient Syriac version of the Bible, made about the second century a.d., the term kīma retained throughout, but kesil and ‘ayish were reduced to their supposed Syriac equivalents.
Whatever uncertainty was felt as to the meaning of kīmah by the early translators, it is not now seriously disputed that the Pleiades is the group of stars in question.
The word kīmah means, as we have seen, "cluster" or "heap," so also the word Pleiades, which we use to-day, is probably derived from the Greek Pleiones, "many." Several Greek poets—Athenæus, Hesiod, Pindar, and Simonides—wrote the word Peleiades, i. e. "rock pigeons," considered as flying from the Hunter Orion; others made them the seven doves who carried ambrosia to the infant Zeus. D'Arcy Thompson says, "The Pleiad is in many languages associated with bird-names, . . . and I am inclined to take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria, Dicæa, and Thurii for the associated constellation of the Pleiad"[217:1]—the Pleiades being situated on the shoulder of Taurus the Bull.
The Hyades were situated on the head of the Bull, and in the Euphrates region these two little groups of stars were termed together, Mas-tab-ba-gal-gal-la, the Great Twins of the ecliptic, as Castor and Pollux were the Twins of the zodiac. In one tablet ’Îmina bi, "the sevenfold one," and Gut-dûa, "the Bull-in-front," are mentioned side by side, thus agreeing well with their interpretation of "Pleiades and Hyades." The Semitic name for the Pleiades was also Têmennu; and these groups of stars, worshipped as gods by the Babylonians, may possibly have been the Gad and Meni, "that troop," and "that number," referred to by the prophet Isaiah (lxv. 11).
On many Babylonian cylinder seals there are engraved seven small discs, in addition to other astronomical symbols. These seven small stellar discs are almost invariably arranged in the form :::' or :::· much as we should now-a-days plot the cluster of the Pleiades when mapping on a small scale the constellations round the Bull. It is evident that these seven little stellar discs do not mean the "seven planets," for in many cases the astronomical symbols which accompany them include both those of the sun and moon. It is most probable that they signify the Pleiades, or perhaps alternatively the Hyades.
Possibly, reference is made to the worship of the Pleiades when the king of Assyria, in the seventh century b.c., brought men from Babylon and other regions to inhabit the depopulated cities of Samaria, "and the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth." The Rabbis are said to have rendered this by the "booths of the Maidens," or the "tents of the Daughters,"—the Pleiades being the maidens in question.
Generally they are the Seven Sisters. Hesiod calls them the Seven Virgins, and the Virgin Stars. The names given to the individual stars are those of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione; thus Milton terms them the Seven Atlantic Sisters.
As we have seen (p. 189), the device associated expressly with Joseph is the Bull, and Jacob's blessing to his son has been sometimes rendered—
"Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; the daughters walk upon the bull."
That is, "the Seven Sisters," the Pleiades, are on the shoulder of Taurus.
Aratus wrote of the number of the Pleiades—
Yet six alone are viewed by mortal eyes.
From Zeus' abode no star unknown is lost,
Since first from birth we heard, but thus the tale is told."
STARS OF THE PLEIADES.ToList
Euripides speaks of these "seven paths," and Eratosthenes calls them "the seven-starred Pleiad," although he describes one as "All-Invisible." There is a surprisingly universal tradition that they "were seven who now are six." We find it not only in ancient Greece and Italy, but also among the black fellows of Australia, the Malays of Borneo, and the negroes of the Gold Coast. There must be some reason to account for this widespread tradition. Some of the stars are known to be slightly variable, and one of the fainter stars in the cluster may have shone more brightly in olden time;—the gaseous spectrum of Pleione renders it credible that this star may once have had great brilliancy. Alcyone, now the brightest star in the cluster, was not mentioned by Ptolemy among the four brightest Pleiads of his day. The six now visible to ordinary sight are Alcyone, Electra, Atlas, Maia, Merope and Taygeta. Celoeno is the next in brightness, and the present candidate for the seventh place. By good sight, several more may be made out: thus Maestlin, the tutor of Kepler, mapped eleven before the invention of the telescope, and in our own day Carrington and Denning have counted fourteen with the naked eye.
In clear mountain atmosphere more than seven would be seen by any keen-sighted observer. Usually six stars may be made out with the naked eye in both the Pleiades and the Hyades, or, if more than six, then several more; though with both groups the number of "seven" has always been associated.
In the New Testament we find the "Seven Stars" also mentioned. In the first chapter of the Revelation, the Apostle St. John says that he "saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man, . . . and He had in His right hand seven stars." Later in the same chapter it is explained that "the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." The seven stars in a single compact cluster thus stand for the Church in its many diversities and its essential unity.
This beautiful little constellation has become associated with a foolish fable. When it was first found that not only did the planets move round the sun in orbits, but that the sun itself also was travelling rapidly through space, a German astronomer, Mädler, hazarded the suggestion that the centre of the sun's motion lay in the Pleiades. It was soon evident that there was no sufficient ground for this suggestion, and that many clearly established facts were inconsistent with it. Nevertheless the idea caught hold of the popular mind, and it has acquired an amazing vogue. Non-astronomical writers have asserted that Alcyone, the brightest Pleiad, is the centre of the entire universe; some have even been sufficiently irreverent to declare that it is the seat of heaven, the throne of God. A popular London divine, having noticed a bright ring round Alcyone on a photograph of the group, took that halo, which every photographer would at once recognize as a mere photographic defect, as a confirmation of this baseless fancy. Foolishness of this kind has nothing to support it in science or religion; it is an offence against both. We have no reason to regard the Pleiades as the centre of the universe, or as containing the attracting mass which draws our sun forward in its vast mysterious orbit.
R. H. Allen, in his survey of the literature of the Pleiades, mentions that "Drach surmised that their midnight culmination in the time of Moses, ten days after the autumnal equinox, may have fixed the Day of Atonement on the 10th of Tishri."[221:1] This is worth quoting as a sample of the unhappy astronomical guesses of commentators. Drach overlooked that his suggestion necessitated the assumption that in the time of Moses astronomers had already learned, first, to determine the actual equinox; next, to observe the culmination of stars on the meridian rather than their risings and settings; and, third and more important, to determine midnight by some artificial measurement of time. None of these can have been primitive operations; we have no knowledge that any of the three were in use in the time of Moses; certainly they were not suitable for a people on the march, like the Israelites in the wilderness. Above all, Drach ignored in this suggestion the fact that the Jewish calendar was a lunar-solar one, and hence that the tenth day of the seventh month could not bear any fixed relation either to the autumnal equinox, or to the midnight culmination of the Pleiades; any more than our Easter Sunday is fixed to the spring equinox on March 22.
The Pleiades were often associated with the late autumn, as Aratus writes—
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
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