The Astronomy of the Bible Part 16

and of Dan, "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."

These two last prophecies supply the "water" and the "serpent," which, added to the "man" and "eagle" of the cherubic forms, are needed to complete the traditional standards, and are needed also to make them conform more closely to the constellation figures.

No such correspondence can be traced between the eight remaining tribes and the eight remaining constellations. Different writers combine them in different ways, and the allusions to constellation figures in the blessings of those tribes are in most cases very doubtful and obscure, even if it can be supposed that any such allusions are present at all.

The connection cannot be pushed safely beyond the four chief tribes, and the four cherubic forms as represented in the constellations of the four quarters of the sky.

These four standards, or rather, three of them, meet us again in a very interesting connection. When Israel reached the borders of Moab, Balak, the king of Moab, sent for a seer of great reputation, Balaam, the son of Beor, to "Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel." Balaam came, but instead of cursing Jacob, blessed the people in four prophecies, wherein he made, what would appear to be, distinct references to the standards of Judah, Joseph and Reuben.

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

Then again--

"He couched, he lay down as a lion, And as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?"

And in two pa.s.sages--

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

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

"Water shall flow from his buckets,"

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: AQUARIUS AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]

It is surely something more than coincidence that Joseph, who by his father's favour and his own merit was made the leader of the twelve brethren, should be a.s.sociated with the bull or wild ox, seeing that Taurus was the leader of the zodiac in those ages. It may also well be more than coincidence, that when Moses was in the mount and "the people gathered themselves unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us G.o.ds, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him," Aaron fashioned the golden earrings given him into the form of a molten calf; into the similitude, that is to say, of Taurus, then Prince of the Zodiac. If we turn to St. Stephen's reference to this occurrence, we find that he says--

"And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.

Then G.o.d turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven."

In other words, their worship of the golden calf was star worship.

It has been often pointed out that this sin of the Israelites, deep as it was, was not in itself a breach of the first commandment--

"Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me."

It was a breach of the second--

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."

The Israelites did not conceive that they were abandoning the worship of Jehovah; they still considered themselves as worshipping the one true G.o.d. They were monotheists still, not polytheists. But they had taken the first false step that inevitably leads to polytheism; they had forgotten that they had seen "no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto" them "in h.o.r.eb out of the midst of the fire," and they had worshipped this golden calf as the similitude of G.o.d; they had "changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth gra.s.s."

And that was treason against Him; therefore St. Stephen said, "G.o.d turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven;" the one sin inevitably led to the other, indeed, involved it. In a later day, when Jeroboam, who had been appointed by Solomon ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph, led the rebellion of the ten tribes against Rehoboam, king of Judah, he set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel, and said unto his people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy G.o.ds, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." There can be little doubt that, in this case, Jeroboam was not so much recalling the transgression in the wilderness--it was not an encouraging precedent--as he was adopting the well-known cognizance of the tribe of Joseph, that is to say, of the two tribes of Ephraim and Mana.s.seh, which together made up the more important part of his kingdom, as the symbol of the presence of Jehovah.

The southern kingdom would naturally adopt the device of its predominant tribe, Judah, and it was as the undoubted cognizance of the kingdom of Judah that our Richard I., the Crusader, placed the Lion on his shield.

More definitely still, we find this one of the cherubic forms applied to set forth Christ Himself, as "The Root of David," Prince of the house of Judah--

"Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."

FOOTNOTES:

[187:1] Josephus, _Antiquities of the Jews_, III. vii. 5-7.

CHAPTER V

LEVIATHAN

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: HERCULES AND DRACO.]

None of these four figures was suggested by the natural grouping of the stars. Very few of the constellation-figures were so suggested, and these four in particular, as so high an authority as Prof. Schiaparelli expressly points out, were not amongst that few. Their positions show that they were designed some 4600 years ago, and that they have not been materially altered down to the present time. Though no forms or semblances of forms are there in the heavens, yet we still seem to see, as we look upwards, not merely the stars themselves, but the same snakes and dragons, first imagined so many ages ago as coiling amongst them.

The tradition of these serpentine forms and of their peculiar placing in the heavens was current among the Babylonians quite 1500 years after the constellations were devised. For the little "boundary stones" often display, amongst many other astronomical symbols, the coiled dragon round the top of the stone, the extended snake at its base (_see_ p.

318), and at one or other corner the serpent bent into a right angle like that borne by the Serpent-holder--that is to say, the three out of the four serpentine forms that hold astronomically important positions in the sky.

The positions held by these three serpents or dragons have given rise to a significant set of astronomical terms. The Dragon marked the poles of both ecliptic and equator; the Watersnake marked the equator almost from node to node; the Serpent marked the equator at one of the nodes. The "Dragon's Head" and the "Dragon's Tail" therefore have been taken as astronomical symbols of the ascending and descending nodes of the sun's apparent path--the points where he seems to ascend above the equator in the spring, and to descend below it again in the autumn.

The moon's...o...b..t likewise intersects the apparent path of the sun in two points, its two nodes; and the interval of time between its pa.s.sage through one of these nodes and its return to that same node again is called a Draconic month, a month of the Dragon. The same symbols are applied by a.n.a.logy to the moon's nodes.

Indeed the "Dragon's Head," ?, is the general sign for the ascending node of any orbit, whether of moon, planet or comet, and the "Dragon's Tail," ?, for the descending node. We not only use these signs in astronomical works to-day, but the latter sign frequently occurs, figured exactly as we figure it now, on Babylonian boundary stones 3000 years old.

But an eclipse either of the sun or of the moon can only take place when the latter is near one of its two nodes--is in the "Dragon's Head" or in the "Dragon's Tail." This relation might be briefly expressed by saying that the Dragon--that is of the nodes--causes the eclipse. Hence the numerous myths, found in so many nations, which relate how "a dragon devours the sun (or moon)" at the time of an eclipse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HYDRA AND THE NEIGHBOURING CONSTELLATIONS.]

The dragon of eclipse finds its way into Hindoo mythology in a form which shows clearly that the myth arose from a misunderstanding of the constellations. The equatorial Water-snake, stretching from one node nearly to the other, has resting upon it, _Crater_, the Cup. Combining this with the expression for the two nodes, the Hindu myth has taken the following form. The G.o.ds churned the surface of the sea to make the Amrita Cup, the cup of the water of life. "And while the G.o.ds were drinking that nectar after which they had so much hankered, a Danava, named Rahu, was drinking it in the guise of a G.o.d. And when the nectar had only reached Rahu's throat, the sun and the moon discovered him, and communicated the fact to the G.o.ds." Rahu's head was at once cut off, but, as the nectar had reached thus far, it was immortal, and rose to the sky. "From that time hath arisen a long-standing quarrel between Rahu's head and the sun and moon," and the head swallows them from time to time, causing eclipses. Rahu's head marks the ascending, Ketu, the tail, the descending node.

This myth is very instructive. Before it could have arisen, not only must the constellations have been mapped out, and the equator and ecliptic both recognized, but the inclination of the moon's...o...b..t to that of the sun must also have been recognized, together with the fact that it was only when the moon was near its node that the eclipses, either of the sun or moon, could take place. In other words, the cause of eclipses must have been at one time understood, but that knowledge must have been afterwards lost. We have seen already, in the chapter on "The Deep," that the Hebrew idea of _tehom_ could not possibly have been derived from the Babylonian myth of _Tiamat_, since the knowledge of the natural object must precede the myth founded upon it. If, therefore, Gen. i. and the Babylonian story of Creation be connected, the one as original, the other as derived from that original, it is the Babylonian story that has been borrowed from the Hebrew, and it has been degraded in the borrowing.

So in this case, the myth of the Dragon, whose head and tail cause eclipses, must have been derived from a corruption and misunderstanding of a very early astronomical achievement. The myth is evidence of knowledge lost, of science on the down-grade.

Some may object that the myth may have brought about the conception of the draconic constellations. A very little reflection will show that such a thing was impossible. If the superst.i.tion that an eclipse is caused by an invisible dragon swallowing the sun or moon had really been the origin of the constellational dragons, they would certainly have all been put in the zodiac, the only region of the sky where sun or moon can be found; not outside it, where neither can ever come, and in consequence where no eclipse can take place. Nor could such a superst.i.tion have led on to the discoveries above-mentioned: that the moon caused eclipses of the sun, the earth those of the moon; that the moon's...o...b..t was inclined to the ecliptic, and that eclipses took place only near the nodes. The idea of an unseen spiritual agent being at work would prevent any search for a physical explanation, since polytheism is necessarily opposed to science.

There is a word used in Scripture to denote a reptilian monster, which appears in one instance at least to refer to this dragon of eclipse, and so to be used in an astronomical sense. Job, in his first outburst of grief cursed the day in which he was born, and cried--

"Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready (_margin_, skilful) to rouse up Leviathan.

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

"_Leviathan_" denotes an animal wreathed, gathering itself in coils: hence a serpent, or some great reptile. The description in Job xli. is evidently that of a mighty crocodile, though in Psalm civ. leviathan is said to play in "the great and wide sea," which has raised a difficulty as to its identification in the minds of some commentators. In the present pa.s.sage it is supposed to mean one of the stellar dragons, and hence the mythical dragon of eclipse. Job desired that the day of his birth should have been cursed by the magicians, so that it had been a day of complete and entire eclipse, not even the stars that preceded its dawn being allowed to shine.

The astronomical use of the word _leviathan_ here renders it possible that there may be in Isa. xxvii. an allusion--quite secondary and indirect however--to the chief stellar dragons.