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He adds that the wicked line of Cain was at this
same pre flood time devising weights and measures.
As Christians we were warned
against astrology but theologians failed to distinguish between
astrology and the Zodiac. (The zodiac is permanent star
configurations, but astrology is the worship of the motion of the
planets.)
THE GLORY OF THE STARS
investigates the ancient star configurations. It then divulges a
shocking panorama of Christ and prophecy revealed in the stars.
Recommended reading on the subject
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I Heard An Old Old Story About A Savior Come From
Glory!
The
historian Flavius Josephus, living almost the time of Jesus, records
that the righteous descendants of Adam's son Seth were the inventors
of the zodiac.
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Thomas Mann
in Joseph and His Brothers takes the Blessing of
Jacob as attributing characteristics of a sign
of the zodiac to each tribe. The faces of the
cherubim, in both Ezekiel and Revelation, are
the middle signs of the four quarters of the
Zodiac: the Lion is Leo; the Bull is Taurus; the
Man is Aquarius; and the Eagle is Scorpio.
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A 17th-century Christian fresco from the
Cathedral of Living Pillar in Georgia
depicting Christ within the Zodiac
circle |
Hellenistic astrology was a syncretism of
Babylonian and Egyptian astrology, and it was in
Ptolemaic Egypt where horoscopic astrology first
appeared. The Dendera zodiac, a relief dating to
ca. 50 BC, is the first known depiction of the
classical zodiac of twelve signs.
Babylonia or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world
came to be so identified with astrology that
"Chaldean wisdom" became among Greeks and Romans
the synonym of divination through the planets
and stars.
The Hindu zodiac is a direct loan of the Greek
system, adopted during the period of intense
Indo-Greek cultural contact during the Seleucid
period (2nd to 1st centuries BC).
In Hindu astrology, the individual signs are
called 'rāshi. The transmission of the zodiac
system to Hindu astrology predated widespread
awareness of the precession of the equinoxes,
and the Hindu system ended up using a sidereal
coordinate system, which resulted in the
European and the Hindu zodiacs, even though
sharing the same origin in Hellenistic
astrology, gradually moving apart over two
millennia that have passed since. The Sanskrit
names of the signs are direct translations of
the Greek names (dhanus meaning "bow" rather
than "archer", and kumbha meaning
"water-pitcher" rather than "water-carrier").
Particularly important in the development of
horoscopic astrology was the astrologer and
astronomer Ptolemy, whose work, the Tetrabiblos
laid the basis of the Western astrological
tradition. Under the Greeks and Ptolemy in
particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of
the zodiac were rationalized and their function
set down in a way that has changed little to the
present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century
AD, three centuries after the discovery of the
precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around
130 BC, but he ignored the problem, apparently
by dropping the concept of a fixed celestial
sphere and adopting what is referred to as a
tropical coordinate system instead.
The zodiac signs as shown in a 16th century
woodcut
The High Middle Ages saw a revival of
Greco-Roman magic, first in Kabbalism and later
continued in Renaissance magic. This included
magical uses of the zodiac, as found e.g. in the
Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.
The zodiacal signs remain in use as the basis of
an ecliptic coordinate system, though modern
astronomers tend to use an equatorial coordinate
system since Early Modern times. One can see the
use of the sidereal coordinate remained in use
throughout the medieval period, e.g. in
Hermannus Contractus in his de mensura
astrolabii liber who gives the locations of
stars in stereographic projection for the
construction of an astrolabe, There he gives the
zodiac coordinate of Antares as 14. Scorpius,
equalling a J2000.0 ecliptic longitude of 224°
(the 14th degree from the beginning of Scorpius
at 210°). |
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In
astronomy, the zodiac is the ring of constellations that
lines the ecliptic, which is the apparent path of the
Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The Moon
and planets also lie within the ecliptic, and so are
also within the constellations of the zodiac. In
astrology, the zodiac denotes those signs which divide
the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial
longitude. As such, the zodiac is a celestial coordinate
system, more precisely an ecliptic coordinate system,
taking the ecliptic as the origin of latitude, and the
position of the sun at vernal equinox as the origin of
longitude.
It is known to have been in use by the Roman era, based
on concepts inherited by Hellenistic astronomy from
Babylonian astronomy of the Chaldean period (mid 1st
millennium BC), which in turn derived from an earlier
system of lists of stars along the ecliptic. The
construction of the zodiac is described in Ptolemy's
Almagest (2nd century AD).
The term zodiac may also refer to the region of the
celestial sphere encompassing the paths of the Moon and
the planets corresponding to the band of about eight arc
degrees above and below the ecliptic. The zodiac of a
given planet is the band which contains the path of that
particular body, e.g. the "zodiac of the Moon" is the
band of five degrees above and below the ecliptic. By
extension, the "zodiac of the comets" may refer to the
band encompassing most short-period comets
The term zodiac derives from Latin zōdiacus, in turn
from the Greek ζωδιακός κύκλος (zōdiakos kuklos),
meaning "circle of animals", derived from ζώδιον (zōdion),
the diminutive of ζῶον (zōon) "animal". The name is
motivated by the fact that many of the signs of the
classical Greek zodiac are represented as animals (six
out of twelve, plus two mythological hybrids).
Although the zodiac remains the basis of the ecliptic
coordinate system in use in astronomy besides the
equatorial one, the term and the names of the twelve
signs are today mostly associated with horoscopic
astrology.
History
The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs
originates in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy during
the first half of the 1st millennium BC, likely during
Median/"Neo-Babylonian" times (7th century BC),
continuing earlier (Bronze Age) systems of lists of
stars. Babylonian astronomers at some point during the
early 1st millennium BC divided the ecliptic into twelve
equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first
known celestial coordinate system: a coordinate system
that boasts some advantages over modern systems (such as
equatorial coordinate system or ecliptic coordinate
system). The Babylonian calendar as it stood in the 7th
century BC assigns each month a constellation, beginning
with the position of the Sun at vernal equinox, which at
the time was the Aries constellation ("Age of Aries"),
for which reason the first astrological sign is still
called "Aries" even after the vernal equinox has moved
away from the Aries constellation. However, a scientific
analysis of the location of the constellations suggest
their determination in this region in the Bronze Age
(~2700 BC), thereby suggesting an earlier establishment
of the constellations.
The
Babylonian zodiac also finds reflection in the Hebrew
Bible. The name of the twelve signs are equivalent to
the names in use today, except that the name of the
Eagle seems to have been usually substituted for
Scorpio.
The arrangement of the twelve tribes of Israel
around the Tabernacle (Numbers 2) corresponded to the
order of the Zodiac; and four of the tribes represented
the middle signs of each quarter: Judah was the Lion,
Reuben the Man, Ephraim the Bull, and Dan the Eagle.
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