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Bible Encyclopedias
Astrology
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
I. The Desire to Forecast the Future
1. Methods of Soothsaying
2. Divination
3. Looking in the Liver
4. The Astrologers, or Dividers of the Heavens
5. The Stargazers, or Seers of the Constellations
6. The Monthly Prognosticators, or Men Who Knew the Omens of the New Moon
II. The Worship of the Heavenly Bodies: The Form of Idolatry to Which the Israelites were Most Prone
1. Chiun, Certainly the Planet Saturn
2. Saturn or Moloch Worship
3. Mazzaloth, or Planet Worship
4. Gadh and Meni or Star Worship
5. Lucifer, the Shining Star
III. Systems or Astrology
1. Names of the Week-Days, Due to an Astrological System
2. Origin of Modern Astrology
3. "Curious Arts" of Ephesus
Literature
I. The Desire to Forecast the Future
The desire to penetrate the future and influence its events has shown itself in all lands and ages. But it is clear that a knowledge of the future does not lie within the scope of man's natural powers; "divination" therefore has always been an attempt to gain the help of beings possessing knowledge and power transcending those of man. The answer of the Chaldeans to King Nebuchadnezzar when he demanded that they should tell his dream was a reasonable one: "There is not a man upon the earth that can show the king's matter:... there is no other that can show it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh" (Daniel 2:10 , Daniel 2:11 ). "Divination," therefore, in all its forms is but an aspect of polytheism.
It was for the twofold reason that the arts of divination were abominable in themselves, and gave to their votaries no knowledge of the will of God, that such arts were forbidden in the Law (Deuteronomy 18:9-15 ). Israel was to be perfect with God and He would reveal to them His will perfectly through that prophet like unto Moses whom He would send. Keil and Delitzsch in commenting on this passage well remark: "Moses groups together all the words which the language contained for the different modes of exploring the future and discovering the will of God, for the purpose of forbidding every description of soothsaying, and places the prohibition of Molochworship at the head, to show the inward connection between soothsaying and idolatry, possibly because februation, or passing children through the fire in the worship of Moloch, was more intimately connected with soothsaying and magic than any other description of idolatry" (Commentary on the Pentateuch , III, 393).
1. Methods of Soothsaying
The forms of soothsaying mentioned in this catalogue are as follows: "One that practiceth augury" (
It will be seen that these forms of soothsaying are allied to the arts which in modern times bear the names of hypnotism and mediumship. They are more briefly referred to in Isaiah 8:19 , "When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto the wizards, that chirp and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?" Here again mediumship and spiritism are connected with the ventriloquial whispers and mutterings, which are supposed to be characteristic of the utterances of the dead.
2. Divination
But the first term in the catalogue, "one that useth divination" (
3. "Looking in the Liver"
"Looking in the liver" is one of the most venerable forms of divination. Here again it was a question of "division." Each of the various parts of the liver, its lobes, the gall bladder, the ducts and so forth, had a special significance allotted to it, theory, apparently, being that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed revealed his will by the way in which he molded the organ which was supposed to be the seat of the victim's life.
It will be noted that no explicit mention is made of astrology in this catalogue of the modes of soothsaying. But astrology was, as will be shown, closely connected with Moloch-worship, and was most directly a form of "divination," that is of division. Morris Jastrow the Younger indeed considers that astrology rose from hepatoscopy, and points out that, the common designation for "planet" amongst the Babylonians is a compound ideograph, the two elements of which signify "sheep" and "dead." He considers that the sacrificial sheep was offered to the deity specially for the purpose of securing an omen. Hence, when the planets were used as omens, this name of "slain sheep" was naturally applied to them, even as "augury," divination by the flight of birds, came to represent amongst the Romans all kinds of divination. "On the famous bronze model of a liver found near Piacenza and which dating from about the 3rd century bc was used as an object-lesson for instruction in hepatoscopy, precisely as the clay model of a liver dating from the
Three well-marked classes of astrology, that is to say of divination by the heavenly bodies, are mentioned in Isaiah 47:13 , as being practiced in Babylon. "Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee."
4. The Astrologers, or Dividers of the Heavens
The astrologers are the "dividers of the heavens" (
The same principle of "division" was applied to the moon itself for the purpose of drawing omens from its eclipses. Thus in R. C. Thompson's Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon we read in No. 268, "The omens of all lands. The right of the moon is Akkad, the left Elam, the top Aharru, the bottom Subartu." The constellations of the zodiac also had omens allotted to them in a similar manner.
5. The Star-Gazers, or Seers of the Constellations
The astrologers mentioned in the Book of Daniel (
At a later date we find a complete system of astrology based upon the constellations of the zodiac which happen to be rising at the moment when the stars were consulted. Examples of this form of divination are found in the works of Zeuchros of Babylon, who flourished about the beginning of our era. By his day the system had received a considerable development. Twelve signs did not give much scope for prediction, so each sign had been divided into three equal portions or "decans"; each decan therefore corresponding nearly to the part of the ecliptic which the sun would pass through in a decade or "week" of 10 days of the Egyptians. A yet further complexity was brought about by associating each one of the 36 decans with one of the 36 extra-zodiacal constellations, and a further variety was obtained by associating each zodiacal constellation with its
6. The Monthly Prognosticators, or Men Who Knew the Omens of the New
Moon:
The monthly prognosticators were the men who knew the omens of the new moon (
II. The Worship of the Heavenly Bodies: The Form of Idolatry to Which The Israelites Were Most Prone
As we should naturally expect, the earliest astrological tablets relate chiefly to omens dependent upon the two great lights, the sun and moon. There is no evidence at present available to fix the date when the planets were first recognized as distinct from the fixed stars. Probably this discovery was intimately connected with the formation of the constellations; it cannot have been long delayed after it. Certainly planet-worship, and as connected with it, planetary divination, prevailed in the Euphrates valley at a very early period.
1. Chiun, Certainly the Planet Saturn
One planet is certainly mentioned in Old Testament, and we may safely infer that the other four were known, since this particular planet is the least conspicuous both in brightness and in motion, and was therefore probably the last to be discovered. The reference to Saturn occurs in Amos 5:25 , Amos 5:26 : "Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Yea, ye have borne the tabernacle of your king (the King James Version Moloch) and the shrine of (the King James Version Chiun) your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." This passage was quited from Septuagint by Stephen in his defense, "And they made a calf in those days, and brought a sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned, and gave them up to serve the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets,
"Did ye offer unto me slain beasts and sacrifices
Forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
And ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch,
And the star of the god Rephan,
The figures which ye made to worship them" (Acts 7:41-43 ).
The difference between the names Chiun and Rephan , is due either to Rephan being local Egyptian name for the planet Saturn, and therefore used by the Septuagint as its equivalent, or to an actual error of transcription in the text from which they were translating: the initial of the word being taken as
2. Saturn or Moloch Worship
The difficulty of the passage is that both Amos and Stephen appear to represent the worship of the golden calf as identical with the worship of Moloch and of the planet Saturn; yet though
And Moloch the king, the idol of the Ammonites and Phoenicians, was intimately connected both with the solar bull and the planet Saturn. According to the rabbins, his statue was of brass, with a human body but the head of an ox. On the Carthaginian worship of Moloch or Saturn, Diodorus (book xx, chapter i) writes: "Among the Carthaginians there was a brazen statue of Saturn putting forth the palms of his hands bending in such a manner toward the earth, as that the boy who was laid upon them, in order to be sacrificed, should slip off, and so fall down headlong into a deep fiery furnace. Hence it is probable that Euripides took what he fabulously relates concerning the sacrifice in Taurus, where he introduces Iphigenia asking Orestes this question: 'But what sepulchre will me dead receive, shall the gulf of sacred fire me have?' The ancient fable likewise that is common among all the Grecians, that Saturn devoured his own children, seems to be confirmed by this law among the Carthaginians." The parallelism of the text therefore is very complete. The Israelites professed to be carrying the tabernacle of Yahweh upon which rested the Shekinah glory; but in spirit they were carrying the tabernacle of the cruelest and most malignant of all the deities of the heathen, and the light in which they were rejoicing was the star of the planet assigned to that deity.
Moloch then was the sun as king, and especially the sun as he entered upon what might be considered his peculiar kingdom, the zodiac from Taurus to Serpens and Scorpio , the period of the six summer months. The connection of the sun with Saturn may seem to us somewhat forced, but we have the most direct testimony that such a connection was believed in by the Babylonians. In Thompson's Reports , obverse of No. 176 reads: "When the sun stands in the place of the moon, the king of the land will be secure on his throne. When the sun stands above or below the moon, the foundation of the throne will be secure." The "sun" in this inscription clearly cannot be the actual sun, and it is explained on the reverse as being "the star of the sun," the planet Saturn. No. 176 rev. reads: "Last night Saturn drew near to the moon. Saturn is the star of the sun. This is the interpretation: it is lucky for the king. The sun is the king's star." The connection between the sun and Saturn probably arose from both being taken as symbols of Time. The return of the sun to the beginning of the zodiac marked the completion of the year. Saturn, the slowest moving of all the heavenly bodies, accomplished its revolution through the signs of the zodiac in about 30 years, a complete generation of men. Saturn therefore was in a peculiar sense the symbol of Time, and because of Time, of Destiny.
3. Mazzaloth, or Planet Worship
The connection between the worship of the golden calves, of the heavenly host and of Moloch, and of these with divination and enchantments, is brought out very clearly in the judgment which the writer of the Book of Ki pronounces upon the apostate ten tribes: "They forsook all the commandments of Yahweh their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments" (2 Kings 17:16 , 2 Kings 17:17 ). The sin of apostate Judah was akin to the sin of apostate Israel. In the reformation of Josiah, he put down the idolatrous priests that "burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets (
The word translated "planets" in 2 Kings 23:5 is
4. Gadh and Meni or Star Worship
The references in Old Testament to the planets other than Saturn are not so clear. In Isaiah 65:11 two deities are apparently referred to: "Ye that forsake Yahweh, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for Fortune (Gad), and that fill up mingled wine unto Destiny (Meni); I will destine you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter." It is clear that Gad and Meni are the titles of two closely associated deities, and Gesenius identifies them with Jupiter and Venus, the Greater and Lesser Good Fortunes of the astrologers; But as I have suggested in the Astronomy of the Bible (133, 217), if any of the heavenly bodies are here intended (which cannot as yet be considered certain), it is more probable that they are the two beautiful starclusters that stand on the head and the shoulder of the Bull at the old commencement of the zodiac, as if they marked the gateway of the year - the Hyades and Pleiades. Both groups were considered traditionally as composed of seven stars; and the two names
5. Lucifer, the Shining Star
The planet Venus is more distinctly referred to in Isaiah 14:12 : "How art thou fallen from heaven,
Mars and Mercury, the two remaining planets, are not mentioned as such in Old Testament, but the deities connected with them, Nergal = Mars (2 Kings 17:30 ) and Nebo = Mercury (Isaiah 46:1 ), both occur.
III. Systems of Astrology
1. Names of the Week-Days, Due to an Astrological System
In astrology the planets were regarded as being 7 in number, but the idea that the number 7 derived its sacredness from this fact is an inversion of the true state of the case. It was that 7 being regarded as a sacred number, the number of the planets was artificially made to correspond by including in the same class as the five wandering stars, bodies that differed so widely from them in appearance as the sun and moon. So artificial a classification cannot have been primitive, and it is significant that in Genesis 1:14 the sun and moon are presented as being (as indeed they appear to be) of an altogether different order from the rest of the heavenly bodies. Yet there is one feature that they have in common with the five planets: all move among the stars within the band of the zodiac; each of the seven makes the circuit of the
We owe the names of the days of the week to this astrological conception of the planets as being 7 in number, and some writers (e.g. R. A. Proctor in his 7Myths and Marvels of Astronomy , 43-47) have supposed that the week of 7 days owed its origin to this astrological conception and that the 7th day
This form of astrology was readily adopted by the Jews in their degenerate days, as we find from references in Talmud. Thus, Rabbi Chanena said to his disciples, "Go and tell Ben Laive, the planetary influence does not depend upon days but hours. He that is born under the influence of the sun (no matter on what day) will have a beaming face"; and so the rabbi went through the whole list of the planets
2. Origin of Modern Astrology
It was from Alexandrian astrology that modern astrology immediately derived its form; but the original source of all astrology in the ancient world lay in the system of planetary idolatry prevalent in the Euphrates valley, and in the fact that this idolatry was practiced chiefly for the purpose of divination. At one time it was supposed that a real astronomy was cultivated at an early time in Babylonia, but Jastrow, Kugler and others have shown that this idea is without basis. The former writes, "The fact however is significant that, with perhaps some exceptions, we have in the library of Ashurbanipal representing to a large extent copies from older originals, no text that can properly be called astronomical ... It is certainly significant that the astronomical tablets so far found belong to the latest period, and in fact to the age following on the fall of the Babylonian empire. According to Kugler the oldest dated genuinely astronomical tablet belongs to the 7th year of Cambyses, i.e. 522 bc" ("Hepatoscopy and Astrology in Babylonia and Assyria," in Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc ., 667).
The conquests of Alexander the Great brought into close connection with each other the Babylonian and Greek systems of thought, and Babylonian astrology was introduced to the Greeks by Berosus the Chaldean priest. In Greek hands, astrology was changed from its character of an oriental religion into the appearance of a science. In Babylonia the stars had been consulted for the benefit of the king as representing the state; amongst the Greeks, with their strong individualistic tendency, the fortunes of the individual became the most frequent subject of inquiry, and the idea was originated of determining the character and fortune of a man from the position of the stars at his birth - genethlialogy - a phase of astrology which never existed in the Euphrates valley. This extension rendered it necessary to increase greatly the complexities of the omens, and the progress which the Greeks had made in mathematics supplied them with the means of doing so. Thus came into existence that complex and symmetrical system of divination of which we have the earliest complete exposition in the writings of Claudius Ptolemy about 130 ad; a system which, though modified in details, is in effect that in use today.
3. "Curious Arts" of Ephesus
Since this mathematical astrology did not come into existence until about the commencement of the Christian era, it is clear that there could not be any reference to its particular form in the Old Testament. We may probably see one reference in the New Testament (Acts 19:19 ). Of the converts at Ephesus it is written, "Not a few of them that practiced magical arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all; and they counted the price of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver." Books of magical incantations and prescriptions were certainly included, but it is also likely that the almanacs, tables and formulas, essential to the astrologer for the exercise of his art, were also in the number. It was of course impossible then, as now, for the convert to Christianity to consult astrologers or to practice astrological divination. Partly because it was an absurdity, for the divisions of the heavens upon which the predictions are based, are purely imaginary; the "signs" of the zodiac, and the "houses" have nothing whatsoever correspending to them in Nature; such division is exactly that denounced by the prophets of old as
Literature
Franz Boll, Sphaera: Neue griechische Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Sternbilder , 1903; Kugler, Kulturhistorische Bedeutung der babylonischen Astronomie , 1907; Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel; E. W. Maunder, Astronomy of the Bible , 1908; The Bible and Astronomy , Annual Address before the Victoria Institute, 1908; E. W. Maunder and A. S. D. Maunder, "Note on the Date of the Passage of the Vernal Equinox from Taurus into Aries," in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ,
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Orr, James, M.A., D.D. General Editor. Entry for 'Astrology'. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​isb/​a/astrology.html. 1915.