The Hebrew Book of Creation and the Syriac Treatise of Shem (original) (raw)
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David Clive Rubin, 2019
The Jewish Bible emerged against a backdrop of paganism and astrolatry, surrounded by the greatest civilizations of the ancient world. A millennium later, in enclaves of the Sasanian Empire of pre-Islamic Iran, a melting-pot of heterogeneous religious and ethnic communities dominated by Zoroastrian culture, the Babylonian Talmud, the culmination of generations of Rabbinic oral discussion of Torah law, was born. Divinatory practices prevalent in the pagan cultures of Classical Antiquity were seemingly reviled in both the Bible and the Talmud. Yet, beneath that apparent veneer, there was evidence of an attitude towards celestial phenomena that paralleled that of contemporaneous culture, the cognition of a relationship between the stars and the Earth that belied a wholesale rejection of astrological belief. Whilst spurning astral religion, both the Jewish Bible and the Talmud incorporated a cosmology and attitude that recognised the significance of the celestial bodies beyond the physical. This paper seeks to analyse the nature and extent of that attitude, comparing and contrasting the Bible and the Talmud’s conception of the heavenly bodies’ significance. It will also seek to clarify the relationship of the conceptual worlds of the Tanach’s authors and classical Rabbinic Judaism [Talmudic] to astrology (and its various categories), to determine whether or not the rabbis’ theological stance vis-à-vis astrology differs substantially from that of the Bible.
Thesis for Master of Arts in Science and Relgion, 2018
In the study of literature from the Ancient Near East (ANE), many scholars, both secular and religious, argue that the creation story of Genesis is mythology akin to, and shaped by, the cultural milieu of the ancient world. The mythology of Genesis, they argue, represents the theory of creation as the Hebrews saw it, but which readers today see as incompatible with a modern worldview. As mythology, the creation account of Genesis has no revelatory insight or authority in regard to scientific understanding for how the Universe came into being. Walton, for example, asserts that to properly interpret Genesis, one must recognize that it “pertains to functional origins rather than material origins and that temple ideology underlies the Genesis cosmology.” In other words, Genesis was written as a late document to validate Israel’s temple worship and has no insight into the material origins of the universe. These two arguments; Genesis is culturally conditioned literature and functionally unscientific mythology, are interconnected in the reasoning of scholars represented by John H. Walton and Kyle Greenwood. This paper addresses both arguments and demonstrate the uniqueness of Hebrew cosmology among ANE literature and its compatibility with modern scientific exploration.
The connections between astronomy and timekeeping are longstanding. One approach to the teaching of Astronomy is it can serve as a unique platform to illustrate the advancement of science from ancient times along with the strong interrelation between science and religion. Here we chose to describe the influence of astronomical measurements that led to the determination of calendars with emphasis on the Islamic epoch: During the second century the Ethiopian Church placed the world's year of creation (YOC) at exactly 5500 years before the Incarnation, thus expressing the view that it is related to the first day of the second half of the sixth millennium since their believed to be the YOC. The Ethiopian Church also believed that the astronomical visualization of the sky in the YOC which placed the vernal equinox and the newmoon in the same day, repeated itself in the year 5500. In a previous work we showed that "Astronomical coincidence" is a notion originated from Jews who believed that the YOC, Exodus, and the building of the Temple were mystically connected by similar rare newmoon events relative to the vernal equinox. Here we show that the founders of Islam believed in a similar mystical coincidence, explicitly that the 16th of July, 622 AD,-the epoch of the Islamic calendar-, is exactly the day in which the 6000th lunar year started after the biblical creation based on the number of solar years from creation as determined by Eusebius. We show that our astronomical calculations are in accordance with a tradition mentioned by Abu al-Fadl and Badauni. Downloads Download data is not yet available. Abstract 0 | PDF Downloads 0 PDF
Judaism and Evolutionary Astrology: Insights from a Jewish Astrologer
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2020
PREVIEW ONLY - READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2020.vol2.no1.10 While the Torah instructs Jews not to practice soothsaying or divination, the Talmud includes several discussions about the power of astrology with many Rabbis even arguing that the use of astrology is both permitted and meaningful. Add to this discrepancy the numerous astrological mosaics on the floors of ancient synagogues, as well as certain Kabbalistic practices, and it becomes clear why there is confusion within the Jewish community. This article examines Jewish perspectives on evolutionary astrology throughout Jewish history and its link to current mystical applications.
"From Babylon to Jerusalem: The Roots of Jewish Astrological Symbolism"
Campion, Nicholas, and Liz Greene, Eds. Sky and Symbol. Sophia Centre Press., 2013
The history of astrology in early Judaism is complex, and is inextricably connected with the astrological traditions of Greece and Mesopotamia. Indeed, this history is one that is rife with ambivalence, and even outright suspicion, toward both astrology and Hellenism on the part of Jewish rabbinical authorities, particularly during the Late Antique period. However, at the same time, we note the usage-and later, the Jewish transformation-of the Greek zodiacal signs in literary, interpretive, and artistic works alike.
The “Meteorological” Interpretation of the Creation Narrative from John Philoponus to Saadia Gaon
Aleph, 2021
Some of the key elements of the so-called meteorological interpretation of the biblical creation narrative that we encounter in the works of medieval Jewish philosophers can be traced back to Syriac sources and ultimately to John Philoponus’ treatise on the creation of the world. Philoponus argued that the words “water,” “firmament,” and “heavens” were used equivocally in the biblical text and that the creation narrative can be understood in terms of meteorological processes. Philoponus’ tract was utilized by Jacob of Edessa, whose Syriac work on creation was probably one of the sources of Da’ūd al-Muqammaṣ’s Judeo-Arabic commentary on the creation narrative. Saadia Gaon and Jacob al-Qirqisānī drew Philoponian ideas from al-Muqammaṣ’s work and transmitted them to later generations of Jewish exegetes.