The Astronomy of the Bible Part 20

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 G.o.d, the Hebrews regarded as the "fool," the "impious rebel." Since Orion is Nimrod, that is Merodach, there is small wonder that _Kesil_ was not recognized as his name in Babylonia.[238:1]

The att.i.tude 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 G.o.d: 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 _kesil_--_kesilim_. 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 _kesil_ 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 _kesilim_, 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.ds (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 a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds.

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 x.x.xviii. 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 a.s.signs 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 _kimah_ and _kesil_ 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 a.s.syriologists 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 G.o.ddess, and as directly and immediately the ancestress of all the G.o.ds. Orion--Merodach--must have been likewise a G.o.d, 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.serting 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-gla.s.s.

[238:1] Dr. Cheyne says, in a note on p. 52 of _Job and Solomon_, "Heb.

_K'sil_, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The Chaldeo-a.s.syrian 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 Hitt.i.tes and their Language_, translates the name of the a.s.syrian 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 a.s.sistance from any cuneiform inscriptions as to the astronomical significance of _'Ayish_, _Kimah_, and _Kesil_, 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 G.o.ds; 2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac, he fixed.

3. He ordained the year, and into sections (_mizrata_) 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 Bel and Ea along with him."

In the third line _mizrata_, cognate with the Hebrew _Mazzaroth_, 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 x.x.xviii. 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 G.o.ds, 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociated 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.ses through all the signs in a month, whilst the sun pa.s.ses through only one sign in that time; so the sun pa.s.ses through all the signs in a year, whilst Jupiter pa.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 superst.i.tions 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 a.n.a.logous 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.