ax

I'm having a debate on another forum with a general religious section. We are talking about the section in genisis that describes the making of the stars in creation. My view is:

In an apparent endorsement of astrology, God places the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament so that they can be used "for signs". This, of course, is exactly what astrologers do: read "the signs" in the Zodiac in an effort to predict what will happen on Earth.


What are your thoughts on the issue?
(I'd post the link to the direct thread, but I'm in fear of moderators beating me to a pulp).

Peter Kirby

This is possible, but surely we will find other passages to support astrology in Israel if it were very common? Maybe there are such, I've never studied it.

Also, it must be considered that both the story of "the six-day creation of the world in stages" and the story of "the creation of man and woman and why they aren't gods" are paralleled, though not found word-for-word, in Ancient Near Eastern texts (which someone else might want to detail). What these myths originally meant must be distinguished from what they meant when first written down by a Jew and then again from what they meant to later Jews and Christians. On the last point, does any ancient quote this verse as justification for astrology?

Note that one point of Genesis 1 is that God intended the Jewish religion from the beginning, seen from the fact that God rested on the seventh day and blessed it, foreshadowing the sabbath. Also, the Jews (at least eventually) had their own religious calendar and used the stars to determine festivals. So these could be used as signs for carrying out the harvest and religious festival cycle. Of course not just the Jews used the stars in this way--all the nations of the time and place did.

Reading Spieser's translation for his commentary on Genesis, this last interpretation comes to the fore:

God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky, to distinguish between day and night; let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years, and serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth. And it was so. God made the lesser one to dominate the night--and the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to distinguish between light and darkness. And God was pleased with what he saw. Thus evening came, and morning--fourth day. (Gen 1:14-19)

I generally distrust interpetations that depend on a particular translation, not knowing Hebrew. I think the harvest/holiday explanation works even if you have ahold of a translation with the word "signs." But not vice-versa.

Oh wait, there's a comment on this verse: "14. let them mark the fixed times. Heb. literally 'let them be for signs and for seasons (and for days and for years),' which has been reproduced mechanically in most translations (most recently RSV). Some of the moderns (e.g., von Rad, SB [was he in my biology class in high school?--Ed.]), realizing that signs do not belong in this list, take the first connective particle as explicative: they shall sevre as signs, that is, for seasons, and days, and years; but the sun and the moon cannot be said to determine the seasons proper; moreover, the order would then be unbalanced (one would expect: days, seasons, years). The problem solves itself once we take the first pair as a hendiadys [the expression of an idea by the use of usually two independent words connected by and (as nice and warm) instead of the usual combination of independent word and its modifier (as nicely warm)--Ed.] (cf. vs. 2); they shall serve as signs for the fixed time periods, or in other words, they shall mark the fixed times, that is, the days and the years. The use of the particle (Heb. we/u) [ZzzZzzzzz--Ed.] in each of those functions (hendiadys, explicative, connective) is amply attested elsewhere." (Spieser, Genesis, p. 6)

[Props to Doc X.-Ed.] I love those asides of yours!

Use a commentator's translation if you want to break free from hidebound "Bible English." They have more guts and give more interpretation--and not in a feel good "Bible truth for kiddies" way. They obviously have wrangled with the minutiae and not with a standards committee. Once again, "literal" is not "more accurate" unless you can back-translate into Greek or Hebrew.

best,
Peter Kirby

judge

The idea that the signs of the zodiac originally referred to the story of the coming redeemer is one that was the topic of this 1893 book

http://philologos.org/__eb-tws/default.htm

I haven't read it but am sure the idea has been tossed around quite a bit since then (and probably before).

It is interesting that recently whilst reading "The calendar" by David Ewing Duncan that I realised that calculating the exact length of a year was a very difficult task for the ancients. The Egyptians saw that it could be done by noting the appearance a the dog star.
Thus the stars gave the best way for them to calculate the passing of a year.

DrJim

There has been some discussion about the presence of zodiac mosaics in early CE synagogues, although I'm not really up to speed on what has been found etc.

As far the word "signs" goes, it can have a number of meanings:
the translations are all New American Standard:

Genesis 4:15 So the LORD said to
him, "Therefore whoever kills Cain,
vengeance will be taken on him
sevenfold." And the LORD appointed a
sign for Cain, so that no one finding him
would slay him.


Genesis 9:13 I set My bow in the
cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a
covenant between Me and the earth.

Psalm 65:8 They who dwell in the
ends of the earth stand in awe of Your
signs; You make the dawn and the
sunset shout for joy.

I think Gen 1 "signs" in the heaven may go a little beyond simply being markers for time, although that is their primary function for the writer (the most important heavenly lights for the times are, of course, the sun and moon). In a number of poetic and prophetic texts, the stars reveal the glory of God. Very possibly in Genesis the heavenly signs reflect this aspect too: signs of the creator.


Psalm 8:3 When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
Psalm 136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Psalm 148:3 Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all stars of light!

Isaiah 13:10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light.

Job 22:12 "Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are!



On the other hand, there seems very little to reflect a legitimate astrological use for the stars. There might be a few, but in a quick search I couldn't find one. Here are a few "negatives" about stars.

Deuteronomy 4:19 "And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.


Isaiah 47:13 "You are wearied with your many counsels; Let now the
astrologers, Those who prophesy by the stars, Those who predict by the new
moons, Stand up and save you from what will come upon you.

Stars appear in dreams:
Genesis 37:9 Now he had still another dream, and related it to his brothers, and said, "Lo, I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me."

I think the lack of pro-astrology passages should throw a damper on such interpretations of Genesis 1, although, of course, there is no stopping anyone from grounding their own practice of astrology in that chapter although the writer of Genesis may be rolling over in his grave. I think there has been a lot of astrology throughout the long history of Judaism and Christianity, and many of the passages I've quoted above may have fed the idea that divine purposes are imprinted on the heavens.

JRL.

bleubird

" Sir William Drummond has shown that the names of most of the places in Joshua are astological;and General Vallancey has shown that Jacob's prophecy is astrological also,and has a direct reference to the Constellations"

Higgins,Godfrey, Anacalypsis,A&B Books,1992

Is the bable not astrological?
SUN>SON
Christos?Christ?
Jezeus?

bluebird

DrJim

Bluebird:
That placenames like Beth Shemesh are named after the sun is not really indicative of the ideology of the writer of the Hebrew Bible. Some concern for the heavenly lights is to be expected, even in the strictest monotheisms, so older placenames can persist, as can such references in poetic and other symbolic texts.
What is lacking in the Hebrew Bible is a consistent theme that God has created the stars and sun etc. as a means of divination. That such practices existed is not to be doubted, it just means that it was something the writers of the biblical texts tended to disagree with or at least want to downplay (in some cases perhaps because astrology might have been a rival source of revealation to their own beloved books and themselves as authoritative interpreters of books).

In any case, Godfre Higgins' 1992 book, Anacalypsis is actually a reprint of a book that first saw light of day in 1863 (I found one source claiming 1833): hardly at the cutting edge of research now. From the excerpts I read online, it seems like a rather whimisical attempt to explain everything by appeal to an antediluvian super-culture.


If you mean the tower of Bable, it seems to my reading of Gen 11 that astrology has very little to do with the story. The people want to build a tower to the sky "or else we shall be scattered all over the world" (v. 5). God is threatened by what a unified people can do so scatters them by creating different languages. Little here about astrology.



Totally irrelevant unless you can prove the two words are related in the original languages, which I suspect they are not.


Star of Bethlehem???? Not mentioned in Genesis, actually.


See above.

bleubird

Sorry.i used that term in a derogatory way.I refer to the bible as a bable.Not the myth of the tower of bable .
Since, it is all myth it is only a matter of semantics.

bleubird