Gary Pollard
When I started this series, I didn’t expect to write more than one or two articles on astronomical references in the Bible. We’re just getting started on this series, so before it goes any further I should offer some explanation (maybe also justification) for why I’m pursuing this line of inquiry in the Bible.
For the last several years, my personal study focus has been on the New Testament. Greek feels more natural than Hebrew to my limited brain, so I haven’t spent much time in the writings of the Jews. For personal research projects, I’ve spent most of my time in ancient Semitic and Near Eastern texts (other than the relatively late Jewish texts), Chinese, Greek and Latin, and Mesoamerican texts (with very few exceptions, not in their original or ancient translation languages…but I understand now why the gift of tongues was so coveted in the early church). After gaining some familiarity with the contents of these old texts, I started to notice that some of the most bizarre aspects of a myth or history or religious belief would show up in texts written by people who couldn’t have had any contact with each other. Most of it seemed to be celestial in nature (i.e., planets and stars), most of it had to do with great catastrophes. Up to this point, I’d had no interest in astronomy, cosmology, or cosmogony.
Two things later happened: I wanted to check my work against other commentators’ writings to confirm or invalidate these observations; and I wanted to see if these same themes were present to any degree in the Bible. To my great chagrin, the only people who seemed to notice some of the same things were almost universally labeled with the prefix “pseudo-“. So I studied the consensus opinions and found them to be too heavily built on modern prejudices and arrogance. These observations (in consensus view) couldn’t be correct because they strongly disagree with our modern, superior understanding of origins and history.
To the pseudo-crowd, then. Their writings, while seemingly more intellectually honest, were problematic for their own reasons. They were built on late mysticism or alternative sciences (which still sought to displace God), or were used to justify pet worldviews. Both consensus and “pseudo” writings are far from monolithic, they exist on something of a spectrum. But no group I’ve yet encountered — wherever they exist in their respective spectrums — fully account for all observations in these texts.
To the Old Testament, then. These global themes absolutely exist in the ancient Jewish texts! Some things became more clear. One was why Moses kept repeating, “Don’t worship the planets and stars. Fear YHWH alone.” That’s hard to wrap my brain around, honestly. One has to be interested in astronomy or astrophotography to reliably identify the same celestial object night after night. And planets are virtually indistinguishable from stars for the overwhelming majority of people.
Yet, every culture in the ancient world worshiped deities associated with a single celestial body. With free time, dark skies, and patient observation, single celestial objects can be tracked night after night (while visible). The ancients certainly had those prerequisites. But the explanations for idolatrous worship and fear of false gods seemed inadequate and weak, both in secular and Christian circles. Unless our atmosphere was composed primarily of LSD in the ancient world, the global fear and mourning and other universally-experienced extreme emotions and behaviors over these “gods” didn’t seem to be adequately explained.
Mass deception, hysteria, or psychosis? Maybe. But why do the most prominent gods share many of the same specific, often-bizarre characteristics, no matter where they are on earth? What compelled the ancients to track certain celestial movements (especially planets) so meticulously? What is it about celestial bodies that would drive so many disparate cultures to worship them, study them, and create stories about them that had to be repeated through the generations? Maybe they were just dumb. But the architecture these cultures left behind invalidates that assumption immediately! We would be hard pressed today to replicate some of the great structures of the ancient past — if we could do it at all.
As of right now, my conclusion is that the past is shrouded in too much uncertainty to be dogmatic. Many texts are incomplete and written in languages we still don’t fully understand. It’s impossible to completely rid ourselves of bias while studying texts written long ago by people whose world was, in many ways, different from our own. Ancient and modern commentators all read the same texts and came away with sometimes radically different interpretations because the texts were filtered through a worldview. Translation is interpretation and far from immune to the worldview problem. It’s a problem we may not ever be able to solve!
As for astronomical interpretations, I’ve studied cosmology enough to know that it (whether ΛCDM, MOND, String Theory, EU/Plasma, or any other system) is based heavily on educated guesswork and assumption and theoretical math. It’s almost as if the human mind is incapable of grasping the Creator and the full magnitude of creation. However, some things are clearer than others. In my limited and fallible opinion, it could not be more clear that the ancient stories ultimately have something to do with the skies. There seems to be an inseparable connection between the universal memory of global catastrophe (after an age of paradise) and a celestial cause of some kind. By studying the Old Testament (sometimes other Jewish texts if relevant) to see how and where these themes overlap, maybe we’ll come to a better understanding of these events. Since the same language is sometimes used in passages that might be eschatological, this study should at least be interesting.
In summary, the assumption I will carry throughout this study is that scripture is more reliable than other ancient sources. I do believe there was divine guidance in what was preserved, but do not dispute that much older material was sometimes adapted. In those cases, the older material was probably accurate but needed revision and/or was a convenient medium due to its familiarity. Where the pagan deified whatever caused both Paradise and Destruction, those who worshiped YHWH — led by someone who had had unlimited access to ancient data I would do almost anything to be able to study (c.f. Acts 7.22) and personal conversations with God — knew that these were sent by the Creator and were not themselves divine. Well, that was sometimes true. From their beginning, Israel worshiped false deities that have been identified since at least Classical Antiquity with the planets we call Venus, Mars, and Saturn. Moses and the Prophets perpetually struggled to keep God’s Chosen (at that time) from worshiping the hosts of heaven. This study is essentially my research on this topic as it develops. I will sometimes cite secular works (often by authors rejected by mainstream science and history). Their works have been useful for pointing me at primary sources and offering alternative explanations for obscure passages. I reject their worldviews almost entirely, disagree strongly with some of their conclusions (especially concerning God), and do not blindly accept any alternative explanation. However, their work can be quite valuable and they deserve credit when their writings are consulted. No citations should be construed as endorsement, unless otherwise stated.
