The Astronomy of the Bible / An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References of Holy Scripture

by E. Walter Maunder

POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, B.C. 2700.[ToList]

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.

POSITION OF SPRING EQUINOX, A.D. 1900.[ToList]

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.