The Astronomy of the Bible Part 18

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 a.s.sociated. 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, _Kimah_, _Kesil_, _'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 pa.s.sages in which the Hebrew word _Kimah_, is used are the following--

(G.o.d) "maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades (_Kimah_), and the chambers of the south" (Job ix. 9).

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades (_Kimah_), or loose the bands of Orion?" (Job x.x.xviii. 31).

"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars (_Kimah_) and Orion"

(Amos v. 8).

In our Revised Version, _Kimah_ 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 pa.s.sage from Amos. The word _kimah_ signifies "a heap," or "a cl.u.s.ter,"

and would seem to be related to the a.s.syrian 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 cl.u.s.ter 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_, _Kesil_, and _Kimah_ 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 a.s.syrians; 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, _kima_ 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 _kima_ retained throughout, but _kesil_ and _'ayish_ were reduced to their supposed Syriac equivalents.

Whatever uncertainty was felt as to the meaning of _kimah_ by the early translators, it is not now seriously disputed that the Pleiades is the group of stars in question.

The word _kimah_ means, as we have seen, "cl.u.s.ter" or "heap," so also the word _Pleiades_, which we use to-day, is probably derived from the Greek _Pleiones_, "many." Several Greek poets--Athenaeus, 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 a.s.sociated with bird-names, . . . and I am inclined to take the bird on the bull's back in coins of Eretria, Dicaea, and Thurii for the a.s.sociated 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 _'imina bi_, "the sevenfold one," and _Gut-dua_, "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 _Temennu_; and these groups of stars, worshipped as G.o.ds 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 a.s.syria, 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 a.s.sociated 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 cl.u.s.ter, 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 a.s.sociated.

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 cl.u.s.ter thus stand for the Church in its many diversities and its essential unity.

This beautiful little constellation has become a.s.sociated 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 s.p.a.ce, a German astronomer, Madler, 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 a.s.serted 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 G.o.d. 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 ma.s.s which draws our sun forward in its vast mysterious...o...b..t.

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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociation of the group with the rainy season, and with floods. Thus Statius called the cl.u.s.ter "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 Chaldaea," 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 a.s.sumed that two, not one, were lost.

Perhaps we may trace a reference to this supposed a.s.sociation of _Kimah_ with the Flood in the pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sociate 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--