The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (best fiction books to read .txt) 📖
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Dr. Cheyne, however, only sees in these beautiful and appropriate lines the influence upon the sacred writer of "the physical theology of Babylonia";[256:1] in other words, its idolatrous astrology, "the influence of the sky upon the earth."
But what would Job understand by the question, "Canst thou bring forth Mazzārōth in his season?" Just this: "Canst thou so move the great celestial sphere that the varied constellations of the zodiac shall come into view, each in their turn, and with them the earth pass through its proper successive seasons?" The question therefore embraced and was an extension of the two that preceded it. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou prevent the revival of all the forces of nature in the springtime?" and "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion; canst thou free the ground from the numbing frosts of winter?"
The question to us would not greatly differ in its meaning, except that we should better understand the mechanism underlying the phenomena. The question would mean, "Canst thou move this vast globe of the earth, weighing six thousand million times a million million tons, continually in its orbit, more than 580 millions of miles in circuit, with a speed of nearly nineteen miles in every second of time, thus bringing into view different constellations at different times of the year, and presenting the various zones of the earth in different aspects to the sun's light and heat?" To us, as to Job, the question would come as:
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
It is going beyond astronomy, yet it may be permitted to an astronomer, to refer for comparison to a parallel thought, not couched in the form of a question, but in the form of a prayer:
As in heaven, so in earth."
FOOTNOTES:
[254:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 290.
[254:2] Ibid., p. 52.
[256:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 52.
CHAPTER IX ARCTURUSIn two passages of the Book of Job a word, ‘Ash or ‘Ayish, is used, by context evidently one of the constellations of the sky, but the identification of which is doubtful. In our Authorized Version the first passage is rendered thus:—
(God) "Which maketh Arcturus (‘Ash), Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south";
and the second:—
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?
Or canst thou guide Arcturus (‘Ayish) with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
The words (or word, for possibly ‘Ayish is no more than a variant of ‘Ash) here translated "Arcturus" were rendered by the "Seventy" as "Arktouros" in the first passage; as "Hesperos" in the second passage; and their rendering was followed by the Vulgate. The rendering Hesper or Vesper is absurd, as "the sons" of Hesper has no meaning. "Arktouros" is not improbably a misrendering of "Arktos," "the north," which would give a free but not a literal translation of the meaning of the passage. In another passage from Job (xxxvii. 9) where the south wind is contrasted with the cold from another quarter of the sky, the "Seventy"—again followed by the Vulgate—rendered it as "cold from Arcturus." Now cold came to the Jews, as it does to us, from the north, and the star which we know as Arcturus could not be described as typifying that direction either now or when the Septuagint or Vulgate versions were made. The Peschitta, the Syriac version of the Bible, made about the second century after Christ, gives as the Syriac equivalent for ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish, the word ‘iyūthā, but it also renders Kĕsīl by the same word in Amos v. 8, so that the translators were evidently quite at sea as to the identity of these constellations. We are also in doubt as to what star or constellation the Syrians meant by ‘Iyūthā, and apparently they were in some doubt themselves, for in the Talmud we are told that there was a disputation, held in the presence of the great teacher Rabbi Jehuda, about 150 years after Christ, whether ‘Iyūthā was situated in the head of the Bull, or in the tail of the Ram. Oriental scholars now assign it either to Aldebaran in the head of the Bull, the "sons" being in this case the other members of the Hyades group of which Aldebaran is the brightest star; or else identifying it with the Arabic el-‘aiyūq, the name of the star which the Greeks call Aix, and we call Capella, the "sons" on this inference being the three small stars near, called by the Greeks and by ourselves the "Kids." The word ‘Ash is used several times in Scripture, but without any astronomical signification, and is there rendered "moth," as in Isaiah, where it says—
"Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth (‘Ash) shall eat them up."
This literal significance of the word does not help, as we know of no constellation figured as a "moth" or bearing any resemblance to one.
But the word ‘ash, or ‘ayish does not differ importantly from the word na‘sh, in Hebrew "assembly," in Arabic "bier," which has been the word used by the Arabs from remote antiquity to denote the four bright stars in the hind-quarters of the Great Bear; those which form the body of the Plough. Moreover, the three stars which form the "tail" of the Great Bear, or the "handle" of the Plough have been called by the Arabs benāt na‘sh, "the daughters of na‘sh." The Bear is the great northern constellation, which swings constantly round the pole, always visible throughout the changing seasons of the year. There should be no hesitation then in accepting the opinion of the Rabbi, Aben Ezra, who saw in ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish the quadrilateral of the great Bear, whose four points are marked by the bright stars, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, and in the "sons" of ‘Ayish, the three stars, Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta. Our Revised Version therefore renders the word as "Bear."
In both passages of Job, then, we get the four quarters of the sky marked out as being under the dominion of the Lord. In the ninth chapter they are given in the order—
The Bear, which is in the North;
Orion, in its acronical rising, with the sun setting in the West;
The Pleiades, in their heliacal rising, with the sun rising in the East;
And the Chambers of the South.
In the later passage they are given with fuller illustration, and in the order—
The Pleiades, whose "sweet influences" are given by their heliacal rising in spring time, with the sun rising in the East;
Orion, whose "bands" are those of winter, heralded by his acronical rising with the sun setting in the West;
Mazzaroth, the constellations of the zodiac corresponding to the Chambers of the South, which the sun occupies each in its "season."
The Bear with its "sons," who, always visible, are unceasingly guided round the pole in the North.
The parallelism in the two passages in Job gives us the right to argue that ‘Ash and ‘Ayish refer to the same constellation, and are variants of the same name; possibly their vocalization was the same, and they are but two divergent ways of writing the word. We must therefore reject Prof. Schiaparelli's suggestion made on the authority of the Peschitta version of the Scriptures and of Rabbi Jehuda, who lived in the second century a.d., that ‘Ash is ‘Iyūthā which is Aldebaran, but that ‘Ayish and his "sons" may be Capella and her "Kids."
Equally we must reject Prof. Stern's argument that Kīmah is Sirius, Kĕsīl is Orion, Mazzārōth is the Hyades and ‘Ayish is the Pleiades. He bases his argument on the order in which these names are given in the second passage of Job, and on the contention of Otfried Müller that there are only four out of the remarkable groups of stars placed in the middle and southern regions of the sky which have given rise to important legends in the primitive mythology of the Greeks. These groups follow one after the other in a belt in the sky in the order just given, and their risings and settings were important factors in the old Greek meteorological and agricultural calendars. Prof. Stern assumes that kĕsīl means Orion, and from this identification deduces the others, neglecting all etymological or traditional evidences to the contrary. He takes no notice of the employment of the same names in passages of Scripture other than that in the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Here he would interpret the "chain," or "sweet influences" of Kīmah = "Sirius the dog," by assuming that the Jews considered that the dog was mad, and hence was kept chained up. More important still, he fails to recognize that the Jews had a continental climate in a different latitude from the insular climate of Greece, and that both their agricultural and their weather conditions were different, and would be associated with different astronomical indications.
In the 9th verse of the 37th chapter of Job we get an antithesis which has already been referred to—
"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north."
The Hebrew word here translated "north" is mezarīm, a plural word which is taken literally to mean "the scatterings." For its interpretation Prof. Schiaparelli makes a very plausible suggestion. He says, "We may first observe that the five Hebrew letters with which this name was written in the original unpointed text could equally well be read, with a somewhat different pointing, as mizrim, or also as mizrayim, of which the one is the plural, the other the dual, of mizreh. Now mizreh means a winnowing-fan, the instrument with which grain is scattered in the air to sift it; and it has its root, like mezarim, in the word zarah, . . . which, besides the sense dispersit, bears also the sense expandit, ventilavit."[263:1]
STARS OF THE PLOUGH, AS THE WINNOWING FAN.ToList
If Prof. Schiaparelli is correct in his supposition, then the word translated "north" in our versions is literally the "two winnowing fans," names which from the form suggested by the stars we may suppose that the Jews gave to the two Bears in the sky, just as the Chinese called them the "Ladles," and the Americans call them the "Big Dipper" and the "Little Dipper." The sense is still that of the north, but we may recognize in the word employed another Jewish name of the constellation, alternative with ‘Ash or ‘Ayish, or perhaps used in
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