12 See Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 74.
13 Cambridge Bible, Book of Job, by A. B. Davidson and H. C. Lanchester.
14 J. S. Suschken, Unvorgreifliche Kometen-Gedanken: Ob der Kometen in der heiligen Schrift gedacht werde? (1744).
l Isaiah 14 : 12-13. See also infra, p. 259.
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Septuagint and Vulgate both translate Morning Star or Lucifer. What does it mean, that the Morning Star was assailing the heavens and rising high, and that it was cut down low to the horizon, and would weaken no more the nations?
More than a hundred generations of commentators have occupied themselves with this passage, but have met with failure.
Why, it is also asked, should the beautiful Morning Star, called Lucifer, the Light Bearer, live in the imagination of peoples as an evil power, a fallen star? What is in this lovely planet that makes her name an equivalent of Satan, or Seth of the Egyptians, the dark power? In his confusion, Origen wrote this question to the quoted verses of Isaiah: "Most evidently by these words is he shown to have fallen from heaven, who formerly was Lucifer, and who used to arise in the morning. For if, as some think, he was a nature of darkness, how is Lucifer said to have robin-bobin
existed before? Or how could he arise in the morning, who had in himself nothing of the light?"
2
Lucifer was a feared prodigy in the sky, and its origin, as illuminated in this book, explains how it came to be regarded as a dark power and a fallen star.
After a great struggle, Venus achieved a circular orbit and a permanent place in the family of planets. During the perturbations which brought about this metamorphosis, Venus also lost its cometary tail.
In the valley of the Euphrates, "Venus then gives up her position as a great stellar divinity, equal with sun and moon, and joins the ranks of the other planets." 3
A comet became a planet.
Venus was born as a comet in the second millennium before the present era. In the middle of that millennium it twice made contact with the earth and changed its cometary orbit. In the tenth to eighth centuries of the first millennium, it was still a comet. What caused such further changes in the motion of Venus in the first millennium that it became a planet on a circular orbit?
2 The Writings of Origen, "De principiis" (transl. F. Crombie, 1869), p. 51. * A. Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East (1911), I, 18.
PART II
Mars
•-¦
CHAPTER 1
Amos
ABOUT seven hundred fifty years passed after the great catastrophe of the days of the Exodus, or seven centuries after the cosmic disturbance in the days of Joshua. During all this time the world was afraid of the recurrence of the catastrophe at the end of every jubilee period. Then, starting about the middle of the eighth century before the present era, a new series of cosmic upheavals took place at intervals of short duration.
It was the time of the Hebrew prophets whose books are preserved in writing, of Assyrian kings whose annals are excavated and deciphered, and of Egyptian pharaohs of the Libyan and Ethiopian dynasties; in short, the catastrophes which we are now about to describe did not take place in a mist-shrouded past: the period is part of the well authenticated history of the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. The eighth century also saw the beginning of the nations of Greece and Rome.
The seers who prophesied in Judea were versed in the lore of heavenly motion; they observed the ways of the planetary and comet-ary bodies and, like the stargazers of Assyria and Babylonia, they were aware of future changes.
In the eighth century, in the days of Uzziah, king of Jerusalem, there occurred a devastating catastrophe called raash or "commotion." 1 Amos, who lived at the time of Uzziah, began to predict a
1 Raash is translated "earthquake," which is incorrect here; cf. Jeremiah 10 : 22: "a great commotion [raash] out of the north." "Earthquake" is rendered in the Scriptures by words derived from the roots road, hul, regoz, hared, palez, ruf, and raash (commotion).
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cosmic upheaval before the raash took place, and after the catastrophe, Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, and Micah insisted unanimously and with great emphasis on the inevitability of another encounter of the earth with some cosmic body.
The prophecy of Amos was made two years before the raash (1:1). He declared that fire sent by the Lord would devour Syria, Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia, as well as the far-off countries, "with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind" (1:14). The land of Israel would not be robin-bobin
exempted; "great tumult" would be on its mountains, and "great houses shall have an end" (3 : 15). "He will smite the great house with breaches, and the little house with clefts" (6 : ll).2
Amos warned those who invited the day of the Lord and waited for it: "Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light . . .
even very dark, and no brightness in it" (5 : 18-20).
Amos, the earliest among the prophets of Judah and Israel whose speeches are preserved in writing,3 reveals the concept of Yahweh in that remote period of history. Yahweh orders the planets. "He who maketh [ordains] Khima and Khesil,4 and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night, and calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth, the Lord [Yahweh] is his name: He strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong" (5 : 8-9).
Amos prophesied: The land "shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day" (8:8-9).
The "flood of Egypt" mentioned by Amos may be a reference to the catastrophe of the day of the Passage of the Sea; but more proba-2 Rsisim, translated as "breaches," is not strong enough; it would be better to say, "smite great houses into pieces." Hebrew words translated as "breach" in the King James Version are bedek, bkia, peretz, shever.
3 Some rabbinical authorities regard Hosea as the oldest among the prophets of that time (Hosea, Amos, Isaiah).
4 The material for the identification of Khima as Saturn and Khesil as Mars will be presented in a subsequent part of this work.
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bly it refers to an event within the memory of the generation to which Amos spoke.
In the reign of Osorkon II of the Libyan Dynasty in Egypt, in the third year, the first month of the second season, on the twelfth day, according to a damaged inscription," the flood came on, in this whole land . . . this land was in its power like the sea; there was no dyke of the people to withstand its fury. All the people were like birds upon it . . . the tempest . . . suspended . . . like the heavens. All the temples of Thebes were like marshes." 5
That it was not a seasonal inundation of the Nile is clear from the date. "This calendar date for the high level of inundation does not at all correspond to the place of the calendar in the seasons." 8
On the day of the approaching catastrophe, Amos says, there will be no place of escape, not even on Mount Carmel, rich in caves. "Though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence" (9 : 2-3).
Earth will melt and the sea will be heaped up and thrown upon inhabited land. "And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt. . . . He that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth" (9 : 5-6).