[234:1] But the fact that Napoleon's name was thus coupled with this constellation does not warrant us in asserting 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-glass.
[238:1] Dr. Cheyne says, in a note on p. 52 of Job and Solomon, "Heb. K’sīl, the name of the foolhardy giant who strove with Jehovah. The Chaldeo-Assyrian 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 Hittites and their Language, translates the name of the Assyrian 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 assistance from any cuneiform inscriptions as to the astronomical significance of ‘Ayish, Kīmah, and Kĕsīl, but the case is different when we come to Mazzaroth. In the fifth tablet of the Babylonian Creation epic we read—
2. The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac, he fixed.
3. He ordained the year, and into sections (mizrāta) 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 Bēl and Ea along with him."
In the third line mizrāta, cognate with the Hebrew Mazzārōth, 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 xxxviii. 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 gods, 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 classes 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 associated 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.
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 passes through all the signs in a month, whilst the sun passes through only one sign in that time; so the sun passes through all the signs in a year, whilst Jupiter passes 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.
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 passed 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 superstitions 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 analogous 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.
Coming down to times when astronomy had so far advanced that a catalogue of the stars had been drawn up, with their positions determined by actual measurement, it became possible for astrologers to draw up something like a definite system of prediction, based upon the constellations or parts of a constellation that happened to be rising at any given moment, and this was the system employed when Zeuchros of Babylon wrote in the first century of our era. His system must have been started later than 700 b.c., for in it Aries is considered as the leader of the zodiac; the constellations are already disestablished in favour of the Signs; and the Signs are each divided into three. A practical drawback to this particular astrological system was that the aspect presented by the heavens on one evening was precisely the same as that presented on the next evening four minutes earlier. The field for prediction therefore was very limited and repeated itself too much for the purpose of fortune-tellers.
The introduction of the planets into astrology gave a greater diversity to the material used by the fortune-tellers. An early phase of planetary astrology consisted in the allotment of a planet to each hour of the day and also to each day of the week. It has been already shown in the chapter on "Saturn and Astrology," that this system arose from the Ptolemaic idea of the solar system grafted on the Egyptian division of the day into twenty-four hours, and applied to the week of seven days. It probably originated in Alexandria, and arose not earlier than the third century before our era. Mathematical astrology—the complex system now in vogue—involves a considerable knowledge of the apparent movements of the planets and a development of mathematics such as did not exist until the days of Hipparchus. It also employs the purely imaginary signs of the zodiac, not the constellations; and reckons the first point of Aries as at the spring equinox. So far as we can ascertain, the spring equinox marked the first point of the constellation Aries about b.c. 110.
All these varied forms of astrology are therefore comparatively recent. Before that it was of course reckoned ominous if an eclipse took place, or a comet was seen, or a bright planet came near the moon, just as spilling salt or crossing knives may be reckoned ominous to-day. The omens had as little to do with observation, or with anything that could be called scientific, in the one case as in the other.
It is important to realize that astrology, as anything more than the crude observance of omens, is younger than astronomy by at least 2,000 years.
Mazzārōth occurs only once in the Bible, viz. in Job xxxviii. 32, already so often quoted, but a similar word Mazzālōth occurs in 2 Kings xxiii. 5, where it is said that Josiah put down the idolatrous priests, "them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets (Mazzālōth), and to all the host of heaven." The context itself, as well as the parallel passage in Deuteronomy—"When thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them,"—shows clearly that celestial luminaries of some kind are intended, probably certain groups of stars, distinguished from the general "host of heaven."
Comparing Job ix. 9, with Job xxxviii. 31, 32, we find ‘Ash, or ‘Ayish, Kīmah and Kĕsil common to the two passages; if we take ‘Ash and ‘Ayish as identical, this leaves the "chambers of the south" as the equivalent of Mazzaroth. The same expression occurs in the singular in Job xxxvii. 9—"Out of the south (marg. chamber) cometh the whirlwind." There need be but little question as to the significance of these various passages. The correspondence of the word Mazzārōth with the Babylonian mizrātā, the "divisions" of the year, answering to the twelve signs of the zodiac, points in exactly the same direction as the correspondence in idea which is evident between the "chambers of the south" and the Arabic Al manāzil, "the mansions" or "resting-places" of the moon in the lunar zodiac.
Mazzaroth are therefore the "divisions" of the zodiac, the "chambers" through which the sun successively passes in the course of the year, his "resting-place" for a month. They are "the chambers of the south," since that is their distinctive position. In Palestine, the sun, even at rising or setting at midsummer, passes but little to the north of east or west. Roughly speaking, the "south" is the sun's quarter, and therefore it is necessarily the quarter of the constellation in which the sun is placed.
It has been made an objection to this identification that the Israelites are said to have worshipped Mazzālōth, and we have no direct evidence that the signs or constellations of the zodiac were worshipped as such. But this is to make a distinction that is hardly warranted. The Creation tablets, as we have seen, distinctly record the allocation of the great gods to the various signs, Merodach himself being one of the three deities associated with the month Adar, just as in Egypt a god presided over each one of the thirty-six decades of the year.
Again, it is probable that the "golden calf," worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness, and, after the disruption, at Bethel and at Dan, was none other than an attempt to worship Jehovah under the symbol of Taurus, the leader of the zodiac and cognizance of the tribe of Joseph; regarded as a type of Him Who had been the Leader of the people out of Egypt, and the Giver of the blessings associated with the return of the sun to Taurus, the revival of nature in spring-time. It was intended as a worship of Jehovah; it was in reality dire rebellion against Him, and a beginning of the worship of "Mazzālōth and the heavenly host;" an idolatry that was bound to bring other idolatries in its train.
A three-fold symbol found continually on Babylonian monuments, "the triad of stars," undoubtedly at one time set forth Sin, the moon-god, Samas, the sun-god, and Ištar, in this connection possibly the planet Venus. It has therefore been suggested by Prof. Schiaparelli that Mazzālōth is the planet Venus; and, since the word is plural in form, Venus in her double capacity;—sometimes an evening, sometimes a morning star. The sun and the moon and Mazzālōth would then set forth the three brightest luminaries, whilst the general congress of stars would be represented by the "host of heaven." But though Venus is sometimes the brightest of the planets, she is essentially of the same order as Jupiter or Mars, and is not of the same order as the sun and moon, with whom, on this supposition, she is singled out to be ranked. Moreover, if Ištar or Ashtoreth were intended in this passage, it does not appear why she should not be expressly named as such; especially as Baal, so often coupled with her, is named. The "triad of stars," too, had originally quite a different meaning, as will be seen later.
Moreover, the parallelism between Job ix. and Job xxxviii. is destroyed by this rendering, since the planet Venus could not be described as "the chambers of the south." These are therefore referred by Professor Schiaparelli to the glorious mass of stars in the far south, shining in the constellations that set forth the Deluge story,—the Ship, and the Centaur, much the most brilliant region of the whole sky.
Another interpretation of Mazzaroth is given by Dr. Cheyne, on grounds that refute Professor Schiaparelli's suggestion, but it is itself open to objection from an astronomical point of view. He writes—
"Mazzaroth is probably not to be identified with Mazzaloth (2 Kings xxiii. 5) in spite of the authority of the Sept. and the Targum. . . . Mazzaroth = Ass. Mazarati; Mazzaloth (i.e. the zodiacal signs) seems to be the plural of Mazzāla = Ass. Manzaltu, station."[254:1]
Dr. Cheyne therefore renders the passage thus—
And the Bear and her offspring—dost thou guide them?
Knowest thou the laws of heaven?
Dost thou determine its influence upon the earth?"
Mazzaloth are therefore "the zodiacal signs," but Mazzaroth "the watches or stations of the moon, which marked the progress of the month;"[254:2] or, in other words, the lunar zodiac.
But the lunar and the solar zodiac are only different ways of dividing the same belt of stars. Consequently when, as in the passage before us, reference is made to the actual belt of stars as a whole, there is no difference between the two. So that we are obliged, as before, to consider Mazzaroth and Mazzaloth as identical, and both as setting forth the stars of the zodiac.
So far as the two zodiacs differ, it is the solar and not the lunar zodiac that is intended. This is evident when we consider the different natures of the apparent motions of the sun and the moon. The sun passes through a twelfth part of the zodiac each month, and month by month the successive constellations of the zodiac are brought out, each in its own season; each having a period during which it rises at sunset, is visible the whole night, and sets at sunrise. The solar Mazzaroth are therefore emphatically brought out, each "in its season." Not so the lunar Mazzaroth.
The expression, "the watches or stations of the moon which marked the progress of the month," is unsuitable when astronomically considered. "Watches" refer strictly to divisions of the day and night; the "stations" of the moon refer to the twenty-seven or twenty-eight divisions of the lunar zodiac; the "progress of the month" refers to the complete sequence of the lunar phases. These are three entirely different matters, and Dr. Cheyne has confused them. The progress of the moon through its complete series of stations is accomplished in a siderial month—that is, twenty-seven days eight hours, but from the nature of the case it cannot be said that these "stations" are brought out each in his season, in that time, as a month makes but a small change in the aspect of the sky. The moon passes through the complete succession of its phases in the course of a synodical month, which is in the mean twenty-nine days, thirteen hours—that is to say from new to new, or full to full—but no particular star, or constellation, or "station" has any fixed relation to any one given phase of the moon. In the course of some four or five years the moon will have been both new and full in every one of the "lunar stations."
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"
He, who has lived out under the stars, in contact with the actual workings of nature, knows what it is to watch "Mazzaroth" brought "out in his season;" the silent return to the skies of the constellations, month by month, simultaneous with the changes on the face of the earth. Overhead, the glorious procession, so regular and unfaltering, of the silent, unapproachable stars: below, in unfailing answer, the succession of spring and summer, autumn and winter, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, rain and drought. If there be but eyes to see, this majestic Order, so smooth in working, so magnificent in scale, will impress the most stolid as the immediate acting of God; and the beholder will feel at the same a reverent awe, and an uplifting of the spirit as he sees the action of "the ordinances of heaven," and the evidence of "the dominion thereof in the earth."
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
ARCTURUS
In 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]
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 order to include in the region the Lesser as well as the Greater Bear. We should not be surprised at finding an alternative name for this great northern constellation, for we ourselves call it by several different appellations, using them indiscriminately, perhaps even in the course of a single paragraph.
What to Job did the question mean which the Lord addressed to him: "Canst thou guide the Bear and his sons?" To Job it meant, "Canst thou guide this great constellation of stars in the north, in their unceasing round, as a charioteer guides his horses in a wide circle, each keeping to his proper ring, none entangling himself with another, nor falling out of his place?"
What would the same question mean to us, if addressed to us to-day? In the first place we might put it shortly as "Canst thou turn the earth on its axis regularly and continuously, so as to produce this motion of the stars round the pole, and to make day and night?" But modern astronomy can ask the question in a deeper and a wider sense.
It was an ancient idea that the stars were fixed in a crystal sphere, and that they could not alter their relative positions; and indeed until the last century or two, instruments were not delicate enough to measure the small relative shift that stars make. It is within the last seventy years that we have been able to measure the "annual parallax" of certain stars,—that is, the difference in the position of a star when viewed by the earth from the opposite ends of a diameter of the earth's orbit round the sun. Besides their yearly shift due to "annual parallax," most stars have a "proper" or "peculiar motion" of their own, which is in most cases a very small amount indeed, but can be determined more easily than "annual parallax" because its effect accumulates year after year. If, therefore, we are able to observe a star over a period of fifty, or a hundred or more years, it may seem to have moved quite an appreciable amount when examined by the powerful and delicate instruments that we have now at our disposal. Observations of the exact positions of stars have been made ever since the founding of Greenwich Observatory, so that now we have catalogues giving the "proper motions" of several hundreds of stars. When these are examined it is seen that some groups of stars move in fellowship together through space, having the same direction, and moving at the same rate, and of these companies the most striking are the stars of the Plough, that is ‘Ayish and his sons. Not all the stars move together; out of the seven, the first and the last have a different direction, but the other five show a striking similarity in their paths. And not only are their directions of movement, and the amounts of it, the same for the five stars, but spectroscopic observations of their motion in the line of sight show that they are all approaching us with a speed of about eighteen miles a second, that is to say with much the same speed as the earth moves in her orbit round the sun. Another indication of their "family likeness" is that all their spectra are similar. A German astronomer, Dr. Höffler, has found for this system a distance from us so great that it would take light 192 years to travel from them to us. Yet so vast is this company of five stars that it would take light seventy years, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles in every second of time to go from the leading star, Merak—Beta of the Bear—to Mizar—Zeta of the Bear—the final brilliant of the five. So bright and great are these suns that they shine to us as gems of the second magnitude, and yet if our sun were placed amongst them at their distance from us he would be invisible to the keenest sight.
Dr. Höffler's estimate may be an exaggerated one, but it still remains true that whilst the cluster of the Pleiades forms a great and wonderful family group, it is dwarfed into insignificance by the vast distances between these five stars of the Great Bear. Yet these also form one family, though they are united by no nebulous bands, and are at distances so great from each other that the bonds of gravitation must cease to show their influence; yet all are alike, all are marshalled together in their march under some mysterious law. We cannot answer the question, "By what means are ‘Ayish and his sons guided?" much more are we speechless when we are asked, "Canst thou guide them?"
FOOTNOTES:
[263:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 69.
BOOK III
TIMES AND SEASONS
CHAPTER I
THE DAY AND ITS DIVISIONS
There is a difference of opinion at the present day amongst astronomers as to the time in which the planet Venus rotates upon her axis. This difference arises through the difficulty of perceiving or identifying any markings on her brilliantly lighted surface. She is probably continually cloud-covered, and the movements of the very faint shadings that are sometimes seen upon her have been differently interpreted. The older observers concurred in giving her a rotation period of 23h 21m, which is not very different from that of the earth. Many astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, assign a rotation period of 225 days, that is to say the same period as that in which she goes round the sun in her orbit. The axis on which she rotates is almost certainly at right angles to the plane in which she moves round the sun, and she has no moon.
We do not know if the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, but assuming the existence of such, it will be instructive to inquire as to the conditions under which they must live if this view be correct, and the rotation period of Venus, and her revolution period be the same.
Venus would then always turn the same face to the sun, just as our moon always turns the same face to us and so never appears to turn round. Venus would therefore have no "days," for on her one hemisphere there would be eternal light, and on the other eternal darkness. Since she has no moon, she has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle, and the axis through her north and south poles lies at right angles to her ecliptic, she has no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her daylight side, the sun remains fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as the observer does not leave his locality; it hangs overhead, or near some horizon, north, south, east, or west, continually. There are no "hours," therefore no divisions of time, it might be almost said no "time" itself. There are no points of the compass even, no north, south, east or west, no directions except towards the place where the sun is overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the sense we know it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time" must there be artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.
On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for cloud, they would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for Venus turns continually to the heavens—though not to the sun. Mazzaroth would still be brought out in his season, but there would be no answering change on Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of heaven, but they could not know the dominion thereof set upon their earth.
This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:—