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Stars Station THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG

ticipation of the heavenly bodies in the events of great world crises is also poetic diction or expressions which deal with fateful appearances in the heavens (e.g., Joel ii. 10). With the significance of the constellations men did not so concern themselves that there resulted a science of the stare in Israel; the references in the Old Testament to an art or science of this sort imply such among the Babylonians, however (Isa. xlvii. 13; Dan. v. 11), though in the last passage Daniel appears as leader among readers of the stars, and this shown that among the Jews of the author's times some had taken up a profession which they plied till the Middle Ages. This art of astrology flourished in Babylon,- Egypt, Rome, during the Middle Ages in Christian circles, and especially among the Arabs. It was denounced by Cicero, Tacitus, and the Christian Fathers, yet flourished not only among the ignorant but even among the better informed. An event in the heavens contemporary with some mundane happening was related to the latter as cause, in the general ignorance of the course of nature. Hence astrology was by pious people not regarded as opposed to true faith in God, while it was considered also that the signs read in the heavens were given by God himself and so astrology was discriminated from Sorcery (q.v.).

The star of the Magi (Matt. ii.) was probably a conjunction, in the sign of the fish, of Jupiter and Saturn in the year of Rome 747, a coincidence which Abarbanel states was regarded by Jewish astrologers as an indication of the Messiah. Cal-

culations of the appearance of definite 4. Hebrew constellations for certain countries

Star- were made by the Babylonians. In an Worship. assumed significance of the stars is one

root of star-worship, though the two developed very differently. Even in Babylonia there was great difference between the mythological and the astrological significance of the stars. But starworship is an old heirloom of the Semites, found among all branches. Especially was this developed in Babylonia, where the entire pantheon had relation to the stars; and this suggests that the Sumerian religion, adopted by the Semites, was largely astral, though perhaps the Semites had already developed it. It does not follow that with the Semites star-worship was the original form of their religion; even the Babylonians, whose deities were so closely related with the stars, knew that the gods and the stars were different beings. Nothing proves that the Yahweh religion of Israel had anything to do with worship of the stars. The Astarte and-Baal worship apart, star-worship comes in during the late regal period. The cults which Amos denounced were idolatries of his period, not Mosaic in derivation. Before him there is no trace of this worship in Israel, and to this refer such passages as II Kings xxi. 3, 5, and the prohibition of Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 2-3. In Judah Manasseh probably introduced the cult, and Josiah attempted to destroy it (II Kings xxiii. 4-5) though it arose again (Jer. vii. 18, six. 13). (W. LOTZ.)

II. Star-Deities: Actual adoration of the stars as such is not so easily established as common opinion would lead one to suppose, though that it took place

is hardly open to question. The basis of this cult was primarily the animistic conception of stars as living beings due to the fact of their ap-

r. General parent motion, combined later with the Aspects of assumption that they influenced the af- Star- fairs of earth. Thus Cicero (De naturd Worship. deorum) testifies to the existence of a belief in the divinity of the con stellations. The accounts in classical mythology and poetry of the origin of constellations and stars, such as the story of the Pleiades or of Cassiopeia, are not to be mistaken for worship; they are merely the exercise of a rude philosophy attempting to account for origins or of the pleasing fancy of the poetic im agination. The comparative insignificance of star worship is easily accounted for by the vast number of the stars, which made individualization (one of the first steps to worship) difficult except in the case of the planets which, by their motion, seemed to em phasize their several degrees of importance, and of a few fixed stars whose superior brilliance marked them out or whose position made them remarkable, such as Sirius and the North Star.

What closely resembled star-worship and perhaps involved it existed in Babylonia. Indeed the ideograph for star is the sign of deity thrice repeated (cf. P. Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp. 4344, Strasburg, 1890). In the Marduk a. In Baby- cycle of myths that deity is said to have

lonia. set the courses of the planets and to have assigned, guardianship of them to certain deities (cf. translation of part of a tablet accessible in DB, i. 191). Thus he himself assumed as his charge Jupiter, gave Venus to Ishtar (Ishtar was also associated with Sirius), Saturn to Ninib, Mars to Nergal, and Mercury to Nebo. These deities, possibly as representative of the planets, are charac teristically pictured as riding on certain animals, some of them mythological, and in this form received homage (such a representation is easily accessible in A. Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alien Orients, fig. 5, p. 11, Leipsic, 1906). This order of assignment was not universal in Babylonia, since both Nergal and Kaiwan are known to have been associated with Saturn, and Ninib and Nergal with Mars, while a deity Gud-bir had Jupiter. Marduk, Ninib, and Nergal, with Shamash, are in another re lation regarded as representing the sun and con trolling it at critical points of its diurnal and annual motions. Similarly, and perhaps consequently, Jupi ter, Mars, Mercury, and Saturn took the same prom inence in their nightly places as the sun in its corre sponding positions, and were compared with that body in its relative importance. The Pleiades (Si bitti, "the Seven") were worshiped in Babylonia, and the name occurs in incantation texts as that of a group of demons (Schrader, KAT, pp. 413, 459), possibly represented in Canaan by Beer sheba; in this case the word is wrongly etymolo gized as " well of swearing " (Gee. xxi. 30, xxxi. 33). The sun, moon, and Venus were thought of as in control of the zodiacal signs, and so of all the influences that effect on the earth increase and decay, light and darkness, cold and heat, life and death. In Egypt star-worship was, in historical times,