The Biot Catalogue, which begins with this description of the year —687, subsequently notes only solitary meteors falling from the sky during all the following centuries up to the beginning of this era; the prodigy of the year —687 was not a pageant such as we may find again in the Chinese annals of later centuries.
The rare phenomenon occurred in that year and in that part of the year—23rd of March, —687—
when, as explained above, according to modern calculations and the Talmudic data, the destruction of Sennacherib's army took place. In the Chinese record we have a short but precise account of the night, which we have recognized as the night of annihilation.
We also expect to find in Chinese sources a record of the disturbance in the movement of the sun. China is forty-five to ninety degrees longitude east of Palestine, the difference in time being three to six hours.
4 Abel Remusat, Catalogue des bolides et des aerolithes observes a la Chine, et dans les pays voisins (1819): "On a beaucoup discute sur ce texte de Confucius" (p. 7).
¦ The Chinese Classics (transl. and annot. by J. Legge, Hong Kong ed.), III, Pt. 1, 125.
6 Joel 2 : 10; 3 : 15.
236
WORLDS IN COLLISION
Huai-nan-tse,7 who lived in the second century before the present era, tells us that "when the Duke of Lu-yang was at war against Han, during the battle the sun went down. The Duke, swinging his spear, beckoned to the sun, whereupon the sun, for his sake, came back and passed through three solar mansions."
The subjective-mythological part reminds us of the primitive-subjective approach of the author of the Book of Joshua, and probably also of the contemporaries of Joshua; it is the primitive way of interpreting natural phenomena. However, it differs from what is described in the Book of Joshua in that it was not a phenomenon of a long pause by the sun, but of a short retrograde motion; in this the Chinese description corresponds with the twentieth chapter of II Kings.
The exact date of the reign of Han is not known; it is sometimes supposed, on the basis of astronomical computation, to have been in the fifth century before this era, or even later.8 If this is true, then the event described refers to a period before the dynasty of Han became dominant in China.
robin-bobin
The land of China is large; it was divided into many princedoms. Probably the story of Prince Tau of Yin is another description of the same event in a different part of China. Lu-Heng9
records that Prince Tau of Yin was an involuntary guest of the king of China when the sun returned to the meridian; it was interpreted as a sign to allow the prince to return home.
The story of the Argive tyrants tells of the sun going speedily to its setting and the evening coming before its proper time; and we recognized in this the phenomenon described in the rabbinical sources as having occurred on the day of the burial of Ahaz, father of Hezekiah. The prodigy of the day of Hezekiah or of the Duke of
7 Huai-nan-tse VI. iv. See Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, p. 86.
8 Moyriac de Mailla (1679-1748), Histoire general de la Chine: T' ong-Kien-Kang-Mou (1877), Vol. I, has the Han Dynasty coming to power in the last quarter of the fifth century; Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, thinks that the war of the Duke of Lu-yang against Han took place in the fifth century. But these calculations are based upon an astronomical computation which may be erroneous.
8 Lu-Heng II, 176. See Forke, The World Conception of the Chinese, p. 87.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 237
Lu-yang and Prince Tau of Yin took place at the time of the same tyrants, or was so ascribed.
"Atreus," says Apollodorus,10 "stipulated with Thyestes that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backward; and when Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east."
Ovid describes this phenomenon of the days of the Argive tyrants: Phoebus broke off "in mid-career, and wresting his car about turned round his steeds to face the dawn." u Also in Tristia Ovid refers to this literary tradition12 about "the horses of the sun turning aside."13
A Mayan inscription says that a planet brushed close to the earth.14
Three solar mansions of the Chinese must have been equal to ten degrees on the dial at the palace in Jerusalem.
According to Talmudic sources,15 an equal perturbation, but in the opposite direction, occurred on the day Ahaz was carried to his grave: at that time the day was quickened. A case of two consecutive perturbations of a celestial body, where the second perturbation corrected the effect of the first, is recorded in the annals of modern observations. In 1875 Wolfs comet passed near the large planet Jupiter and was disturbed on its way. In 1922, when it again passed near Jupiter, it was once more disturbed, but with an effect which corrected that of the first disturbance. No perturbation was noticed in the revolution of Jupiter; its rotation probably proceeded normally, too—there was a great difference in the masses of these two bodies.
10 Apollodorus, The Library, Epitome II.
" Ovid, The Art of Love (transl. J. H. Mosley, 1929), i. 328 ff.
12 Ovid, Tristia (transl. A. L. Wheeler, 1924), ii. 391 ff.
13 More about the movement of the sun toward the east instead of the west in the time of the Argive tyrants was said in the Section "East and West," and several Greek authors were quoted.
More will be said when we examine oral traditions of primitive peoples in a later section on folklore.
14 Published by Ronald Strath. I could not locate the publication. It is referred to in Bellamy's Moons, Myths and Man (1938), p. 258. The only other reference to the work by Strath I found in Jean Gattefosse and Claudius Roux, Bibliographie de I'Atlantide et des questions connexes (Lyon, 1926), under No. 1184, but these authors also were unable to trace the publication. Cf. P.
Jensen, Kosmologie, III, R561, 5a: "A great star fell." Jupiter was known to the Babylonians as the "great star." How large was the star? Jensen asked.
is Tractate Sanhedrin 96a.
238
WORLDS IN COLLISION
The Worship of Mars
The body which periodically—once in fourteen to sixteen years—approached the orbit of the earth must have been of considerable mass, for it was able to influence the rotation of the earth.
robin-bobin
Apparently, however, it was much smaller than Venus, or it did not approach so closely, because the catastrophes of the days of the Exodus and the Conquest were greater than those of the time of Uzziah, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Nevertheless, for the peoples who lived at that time, they must have been impressive experiences and must have been incorporated in their cosmogonic mythologies.
Shall we be able, when inquiring into this matter, to find guiding hints to help us obtain some data about the body which periodically approached the earth?
It would probably be the Latin people, at that time very young, just appearing on the historical scene and not loaded down with science, who would give the prodigy a prominent place in their mythology. Roman mythology was appropriated from the Greeks. Only one god of Roman mythology plays a role not comparable to that attributed to him on the Greek Olympus. It is the god Mars, whose counterpart is Ares of the Greeks.1 Mars, the lord of war, was second to Jupiter-Zeus. He personified the planet Mars, to him was dedicated the month of March (Mars), and as a god he was supposed to be the father of Romulus, the founder of Rome. He was the national god of the Romans. Livy wrote in the preface to his history of Rome, "the mightiest of empires, next after that of Heaven": "The Roman people . . . profess that their Father and the Father of their Empire was none other than Mars."
Placing the time of Mars' activity as late as the foundation of Rome indicates that the Romans had a tradition that the city on the Tiber came into existence during a generation which witnessed some great exploit of their god-planet.
1 Besides Ares, Hercules also represents the planet Mars. Eratosthenes (Era-tosthenis catasterismorum reliquiae, ed. C. Robert, 1878): "Tertia est Stella Martis quam alii Herculis dixerunt" (Mars is the third star, which others say is Hercules). Similarly, Macrobius (Saturnalia iii. 12. 5-6), whose authority is Varro.