The Astronomy of the Bible Part 22

"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 "a.s.sembly," 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 _benat 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage they are given with fuller ill.u.s.tration, 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 pa.s.sages 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 _'Iyutha_ which is Aldebaran, but that _'Ayish_ and his "sons" may be Capella and her "Kids."

Equally we must reject Prof. Stern's argument that _Kimah_ is Sirius, _Kesil_ is Orion, _Mazzaroth_ is the Hyades and _'Ayish_ is the Pleiades. He bases his argument on the order in which these names are given in the second pa.s.sage of Job, and on the contention of Otfried Muller 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 a.s.sumes that _kesil_ 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 pa.s.sages of Scripture other than that in the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Here he would interpret the "chain," or "sweet influences" of _Kimah_ = "Sirius the dog," by a.s.suming 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 lat.i.tude from the insular climate of Greece, and that both their agricultural and their weather conditions were different, and would be a.s.sociated with different astronomical indications.

In the 9th verse of the 37th chapter of Job we get an ant.i.thesis 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 _mezarim_, 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STARS OF THE PLOUGH, AS THE WINNOWING FAN.]

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 s.h.i.+ft 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...o...b..t round the sun. Besides their yearly s.h.i.+ft 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 acc.u.mulates 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 fellows.h.i.+p together through s.p.a.ce, 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. Hoffler, 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 s.h.i.+ne 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. Hoffler's estimate may be an exaggerated one, but it still remains true that whilst the cl.u.s.ter 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BLOW UP THE TRUMPET IN THE NEW MOON."]

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 23{h} 21{m}, which is not very different from that of the earth. Many astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, a.s.sign 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 a.s.suming 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 compa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trate the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:--

"And G.o.d said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."

The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it is the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:--

"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, . . . the Lord thy G.o.d hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven."

This is the legitimate use of the heavenly bodies, just as the wors.h.i.+p of them is their abuse, for the division of time--in other words, the formation of a calendar--is a necessity. But as there are many heavenly bodies and several natural divisions of time, the calendars in use by different peoples differ considerably. One division, however, is common to all calendars--the day.

The "day" is the first and shortest natural division of time. At present we recognize three kinds of "days"--_the sidereal day_, which is the interval of time between successive pa.s.sages of a fixed star over a given meridian; _the apparent solar day_, which is the interval between two pa.s.sages of the sun's centre over a given meridian, or the interval between two successive noons on a sundial; and _the mean solar day_, which is the interval between the successive pa.s.sages of a fict.i.tious sun moving uniformly eastward in the celestial equator, and completing its annual course in exactly the same time as that in which the actual sun makes the circuit of the ecliptic. The mean solar days are all exactly the same length; they are equal to the length of the average apparent solar day; and they are each four minutes longer than a sidereal day. We divide our days into 24 hours; each hour into 60 minutes; each minute into 60 seconds. This subdivision of the day requires some mechanical means of continually registering time, and for this purpose we use clocks and watches.

The sidereal day and the mean solar day necessitate some means of registering time, such as clocks; therefore the original day in use must have been the apparent solar day. It must then have been reckoned either from sunset to sunset, or from sunrise to sunrise. Later it might have been possible to reckon it from noon to noon, when some method of fixing the moment of noon had been invented; some method, that is to say, of fixing the true north and south, and of noting that the sun was due south, or the shadow due north. Our own reckoning from midnight to midnight is a late method. Midnight is not marked by the peculiar position of any visible heavenly body; it has, in general, to be registered by some mechanical time-measurer.

In the Old Testament Scriptures the ecclesiastical reckoning was always from one setting of the sun to the next. In the first chapter of Genesis the expressions for the days run, "The evening and the morning," as if the evening took precedence of the morning. When the Pa.s.sover was inst.i.tuted as a memorial feast, the command ran--