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

by E. Walter Maunder

"Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female . . . . And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven."

We know what the "similitude" of the sun and the moon were like among the surrounding nations. We see their "hieroglyphs" on numberless seals and images from the ruins of Nineveh or Babylon. That of the sun was first a rayed star or disc, later a figure, rayed and winged. That of the moon was a crescent, one lying on its back, like a bowl or cup, the actual attitude of the new moon at the beginning of the new year. Just such moon similitudes did the soldiers of Gideon take from off the camels of Zebah and Zalmunna; just such were the "round tires like the moon" that Isaiah condemns among the bravery of the daughters of Zion.

The similitude or token of Ashtoreth, the paramount goddess of the Zidonians, was the ashera, the "grove" of the Authorized Version, probably in most cases merely a wooden pillar. This goddess, "the abomination of the Zidonians," was a moon-goddess, concerning whom Eusebius preserves a statement by the Phœnician historian, Sanchoniathon, that her images had the head of an ox. In the wars in the days of Abraham we find Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, smiting the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, that is, in the Ashtoreths "of the horns." It is impossible to decide at this date whether the horns which gave the distinctive title to this shrine of Ashtoreth owed their origin to the horns of the animal merged in the goddess, or to the horns of the crescent moon, with which she was to some extent identified. Possibly there was always a confusion between the two in the minds of her worshippers. The cult of Ashtoreth was spread not only among the Hebrews, but throughout the whole plain of Mesopotamia. In the times of the Judges, and in the days of Samuel, we find continually the statement that the people "served Baalim and Ashtaroth"—the plurals of Baal and Ashtoreth—these representing the sun and moon, and reigning as king and queen in heaven. When the Philistines fought with Saul at Mount Gilboa, and he was slain, they stripped off his armour and put it "in the house of Ashtaroth." Yet later we find that Solomon loved strange women of the Zidonians, who turned his heart after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and he built a high place for her on the right hand of the Mount of Olives, which remained for some three and a half centuries, until Josiah, the king, defiled it. Nevertheless, the worship of Ashtoreth continued, and the prophet Jeremiah describes her cult:—

"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven."

This was done in the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem, but the Jews carried the cult with them even when they fled into Egypt, and whilst there they answered Jeremiah—

"We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine."

Ashtoreth, according to Pinches[90:1] is evidently a lengthening of the name of the Assyrio-Babylonian goddess Ištar, and the Babylonian legend of the Descent of Ištar may well have been a myth founded on the varying phases of the moon. But it must be remembered that, though Ashtoreth or Ištar might be the queen of heaven, the moon was not necessarily the only aspect in which her worshippers recognized her. In others, the planet Venus may have been chosen as her representative; in others the constellation Taurus, at one time the leader of the Zodiac; in others, yet again, the actual form of a material bull or cow.

The Hebrews recognized the great superiority in brightness of the sun over the moon, as testified in their names of the "greater" and "lesser" lights, and in such passages as that already quoted from Isaiah (xxx. 26). The word here used for moon is the poetic one, lebanah. Of course no argument can be founded on the parallelism employed so as to lead to the conclusion that the Hebrews considered that the solar light exceeded the lunar by only seven times, instead of the 600,000 times indicated by modern photometric measurement.

In only one instance in Scripture—that already quoted of the moon withdrawing itself—is there even an allusion to the changing phases of the moon, other than that implied in the frequent references to the new moons. The appointment of certain feasts to be held on the fifteenth day of the month is a confirmation of the supposition that their months were truly lunar, for then the moon is fully lighted, and rides the sky the whole night long from sunset to sunrise. It is clear, therefore, that the Hebrews, not only noticed the phases of the moon, but made regular use of them. Yet, if we adopted the argument from silence, we should suppose that they had never observed its changes of shape, for there is no direct allusion to them in Scripture. We cannot, therefore, argue from silence as to whether or no they had divined the cause of those changes, namely that the moon shines by reflecting the light of the sun.

Nor are there any references to the markings on the moon. It is quite obvious to the naked eye that there are grey stains upon her silver surface, that these grey stains are always there, most of them forming a chain which curves through the upper hemisphere. Of the bright parts of the moon, some shine out with greater lustre than others, particularly one spot in the lower left-hand quadrant, not far from the edge of the full disc. The edges of the moon gleam more brightly as a rule than the central parts. All this was apparent to the Hebrews of old, as it is to our unassisted sight to-day.