George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909), declares:
“It is the general testimony of History during many hundreds of years, one might even say during fully 2,000 years, that Comets were always considered to be peculiarly ‘ominous of the wrath of Heaven and as harbingers of wars and famines, of the dethronement of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”
Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights in the Heavens.
The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire, and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.
The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets. Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a Comet.
The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a moving star was seen in the East.
Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him. Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.
GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH
HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY
The earliest Comet of which there is any historic record was a Comet mentioned in the oldest cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several thousand years before our Christian era, recently found on the north bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to have been visible to the naked eye for 29 nights.
At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year 2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the beginning of the deluge.