Stars  

The way the Bible recounts human history, the earliest humans knew God and talked with Him. They were, presumably, monotheists, at least until Satan promised they could be as gods. Yet at some point polytheism became quite common. How did polytheism as a theological system get started? What sort of entities were proposed as gods, and on what grounds? Stars are one ever-popular entrant in the deity sweepstakes. What do devotees mean when they say that stars are gods?:

Anaxagoras

The Athenian philosopher Anaxagoras was obliged to get out of town in a hurry. He had discovered, or so he thought, that the sun and other stars were fiery stones. Some folks saw that as impiety:

Anaxagoras' theory has a lot to recommend it, though fiery rocks isn't quite right. Maybe incandescent plasma or hot fusioning gas ball would fit the bill a bit better. One can understand the indignation of the Athenians at the demotion of one of the major gods of their pantheon. If the sun is an inert material object, of whatever composition, why worship it at all? To be aware of worship and to respond to it with benevolence implies at a bare minimum consciousness, which the stars do not seem to have. Whether it is heresy on its face for a Christian such as Origen to teach that the stars are animate and ensouled,— quoting Origen, Jerome says, "The sun also and the moon and the rest of the constellations are alive," (Jerome, Letter 124.4), it is certainly ill-considered.

The more you get to know them, the less divinity the stars seem to have. The stars' claim to deity is very, very old; the ancient cuneiform sign for 'god' is based on a pictograph of a star: "A drawing of an ox's face meant an ox while an image of a bevelled-rim bowl referred to food. The image did not have to be of the object itself: a god was represented by a star, a temple by what might have been intended to represent a ground-plan." (Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek, p. 61). However, stars are one of those things that tend to shrink and diminish as you get to know them better, not to magnify themselves. These resplendent shining sentinels in the night-time sky turn out, on further acquaintance, not to have much personality and even less power over earthly events. They are nuclear furnaces, not mighty rulers.

Which makes Thomas' position of 'on the one hand this, on the other, that,' difficult to decode. At the height of the Middle Ages, he still felt he had to hedge his bets? Certainly to say that the stars are sentient and ensouled is not quite the same as to say they are divine, though sentience is presumably a necessary condition for deification. Origen had thought the stars are intelligent. The persistence of this belief is not easy to explain, though as late as Johannes Kepler, astronomy made use of pusher angels. Gravity didn't come into its own as a motive force to make the whole system go around until Isaac Newton.

Powerful Rulers

The idea that the stars and planets are powerful rulers who govern our destiny here below is a very ancient and surprising robust idea that not only informs much of pagan theology, but even governs the lives of some of our contemporaries here in America today, such as Nancy Reagan. Not like she is alone; even popes have consulted astrologers: "Pope Julius II allowed an astrologer to determine the date for his coronation." (Roland Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, Kindle edition, location 1763). The system is premised on the idea that the stars wield influence:

"[Porphyry] 'For as to Chaeremon and the rest, they do not believe in anything else prior to the visible worlds, since they account as a ruling power the gods of the Egyptians, and no others except the so-called planets, and those stars which fill up the zodiac, and as many as rise near them: also the divisions into the "decani," and the horoscopes, and the so-called "mighty Rulers," the names of which are contained in the almanacks, and their powers to heal diseases, and their risings and settings, and indications of future events. . .And most of them made even our own free will depend upon the motion of the stars, binding all things down by indissoluble bonds, I know not how, to a necessity which they call fate, and making all things depend closely on these gods, whom, as the sole deliverers from the bonds of fate, they worship with temples, and statues, and the like.'" (Porphyry's Epistle to Anebo the Egyptian, quoted in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, Book III, Chapter IV).

Many newspapers still carry horoscopes today, living down the skeptics of antiquity, such as Augustine, who pointed out that twins, born at the same time and place and thus with almost identical horoscopes, often have very different destinies. This brings us to one of the odder entrants in the Watchtower pantheon: 'stars,' reputed by some amongst the Gentiles to be gods: "And beware, lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven." (Deuteronomy 4:19). In times of apostasy, the faithless of Israel have adopted this Gentile spirituality:

"Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." (Amos 5:25-26).

It turns out that Thomas, who is squishy-soft on the question whether the stars are intelligent beings, is also rather more open than he ought to be on the question whether the stars are in any sense rulers and governors of what happens here below:

After the Black Death destroyed one-third to one-half of the population of Europe, the Pope wondered what would have caused such a thing to happen. So he asked the learned scholastics of his day. The faculty explained it was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. Hmm...:

Fighting Stars

The polytheists' proof-text for 'star-gods' is Deborah's Song:

"The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money. They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength. " (Judges 5:19-21).

"The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." But why should anyone seek such a proof-text? Many of the New Religious Movements see something to be achieved by whittling monotheism down to size. For example, from the perspective of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus' claim to be God does not sting quite as much if we reflect, after all, there are lots of gods. Which gods? Why, Zeus, Hera, and that crew. Or so they used to say. Hmmm...

That is their proof-text; does it fit the bill? One wonders whether the brook 'Kishon' must be a god as well, as it bravely did its bit in the battle, too: "The torrent of Kishon swept them away, the ancient torrent, the torrent Kishon." (Judges 5:21). A god Kishon is not, though a combatant it is, because if you pick a fight with the master, you must contend against the servants as well, and all of creation is God's handiwork and serves His will. As theocrat Rousas J. Rushdoony put it, "'The Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil' (Prov. 16:4). As a result, all things, including ourselves, are at war with us when we are at war with God, at odds with His law, or unwilling to serve Him with our whole heart, mind, and being." (Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume 2, Kindle location 6519). Again, "God's righteousness is so basic to all things that to war against God's people is to war against the sun, moon, and stars also." (Rousas J.. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, Volume 2, Kindle location 11728).

The best way of watching the stars fight is to realize that the whole world is a harmony which moves in obedience to one will. Just as no sparrow falls without the Father, no star leaves its place; every element of the whole fills its role exactly as planned:

"An ancient Hebrew view is expressed in the Song of Deborah: 'the stars in their courses fought against Sisera'. . . The will of God has imposed a certain harmony on His world. Those who resist His will find that His whole world fights against them." (W. M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, Chapter XXII, p. 301).

On other occasions, God has used the mighty voice of the storm to scatter the faithless: "But the LORD thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel." (1 Samuel 7:10). It is His storm; all of nature is His. Nature answers to His voice, the storm is under His control. It's His storm, His thunder, His earth, His stars, all of it, up to and including the cattle on a thousand hills. So we know that the stars fought. But how did they fight? How do stars fight?

But what could it possibly mean, for stars to fight earthly battles? Are there indeed star-gods, as the Jehovah's Witnesses explain? Was this text spoken in mockery of the pagan combatants, who numbered the stars in the pantheon? Manifestly they were abandoned by their champions in the conflict: their star-gods did not save them. Why not? Loyal to their Creator, they fought on the other side. Whose are the stars? The living God's; they are not autonomous beings, gods in their own right, with whom the pagans had a special understanding, as they imagined. They stand at attention, ready to fight in their Lord's cause, as do all other obedient created things, gifted with consciousness or not so gifted. But how, exactly, do stars fight?

All of nature is in God's hands, the sun, moon, stars, rolling tide, even the sparrow that falls from heaven. He may deploy these, His creatures, as He chooses to work His will. If He had wished to annihilate Sisera's armies with a Tunguska-magnitude asteroid crash from the heavens, who could stand in His way? For purposes of ancient astronomy, 'stars' include 'wandering stars', our planets, 'fixed stars', who now lay exclusive claim to the title 'star', plus meteorites, etc. The title 'fixed', in the Ptolemaic system, means those stars whose positions relative one to another is constant, which is not true of the 'wandering' planets. When in Egypt in 1911 a falling meteorite killed a dog, 'the stars' could accurately be identified as the cause of the dog's demise.

It is doubtful anything of Siberian magnitude happened on the battle-field, because if it had, witnesses would not have come away telling stories about somebody bashing somebody's brains out with a tent-peg. The military victory was won, by the LORD, in the usual fashion, by the "edge of the sword": "And the LORD discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet." (Judges 4:15). So however the stars did their bit, it was in a quieter, less obtrusive fashion. Could it have been by alarming the enemy hosts with a comet or 'nova,' a new thing in the heavens? If Sisera's people were students of the widespread ancient pagan study of astrology, the stars had already found their voice by doing no more than entering into conjunctions and oppositions in the normal pursuit of their courses. They had already voted, yea or nay.

It seems that, objectively, what happened is this: it rained. The brook overflowed. The enemy's iron chariots, which had seemed formidable, got bogged down, and proved a hindrance rather than a help:

"As we gather from Jdg. 5:20-22, a fearful storm swept down from heaven in face of the advancing army. . .Presently the war-chariots were thrown into confusion, and instead of being a help became a source of danger. The affrighted horses carried destruction into the ranks of the host. Soon all were involved in a common panic. . .And now the waters of Kishon had swollen into a wild torrent which swept away the fugitives!" (Alfred Edersheim, Bible History: Old Testament, Books One through Four, Kindle location 8007).

So this is how the stars fought, make of it what you will. It rained.

Portents

Whenever snow is predicted before a football game, the pundits sit down to ponder which side the snow storm will benefit. It will inevitably be pointed out, while the conditions will no doubt be uncomfortable, both sides must struggle under the same disadvantages. Likewise, both sides in this battle experienced the downpour, though it could be that the resultant flood was more precisely targeted. Was it necessarily, or could the unexpected rain be received as more of a blow by one side than the other for psychological reasons? Were the stars' efforts successful because the unseasonable rain was taken as a portent? This seems to be one possibility.

Rain is all well and good, but what have the stars, or if you're a Jehovah's Witness, the star-gods, got to do with it? The Jehovah's Witnesses seem to be visualizing a scene out of the Saturday cartoons, in which mighty astral beings wielding swords, the star-gods, step down from the heavens and fight alongside Israel. Is that what happened? Stars mean different things to different people. The idea that stars are powerful gods who control our lives remains popular among neo-Pagans of the present day. Like the pagans of old, these people believe that everything stars do, and refrain from doing, is of paramount significance, although their feeble light and faint gravitational force cannot realistically impact us here on earth:

"And evidently, again, the planets are not merely spheres, twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, but the domains of various beings with whom the profane are so far unacquainted; nevertheless, having a mysterious, unbroken, and powerful connection with men and globes. Every heavenly body is the temple of a god, and these gods themselves are the temples of GOD, the Unknown 'Not Spirit.'" (Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled and the Secret Doctrine, Kindle location 45098, SD p. 578).

As to how they fought, the text offers no blow-by-blow account of their battle. To take the materialist tack: was it something along the lines of a meteor shower? No, because they fought "from their courses" — no 'sky-gods' descended. The stars remained at their stations. While this may be poetic language, it is also possible there was some objective event in the heavens that impacted events on the field. The sun and moon have done their bit for Israel's military success: "O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon." (Joshua 10:12). But the planets and the stars do not actually have to do anything that dramatic, or indeed to do much at all, to impact the outcome of the battle, if one of the combatant armies are pagan star-worshippers. Their unremarkable, non-miraculous apparent conjunctions and divergences as seen from earth's perspective are already programmed into the battle space as significant variables.

Ancient armies were easily spooked by portents in the heavens or on earth: "An ancient Greek military strategist, Onasander, writing 300 years after Hannibal, made the following observation: 'Soldiers are far more courageous when they believe that they are facing dangers with the good will of the gods; for they themselves are watchful, each man, and they look out keenly for omens of sight or sound and an auspicious sacrifice for the whole army encourages even those who have private doubt.'" (Carthage Must be Destroyed, Richard Miles, p. 251.) The prophets had noticed the tendency:

"Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them." (Jeremiah 10:1-2).

This skittishness is characteristic of undeniably brave pagan warriors; the pagans who met the settlers on the American plains were of a similar mind-set: "Comanches were extremely predictable. They never changed their methods. They were deeply custom-bound and equally deeply mired in their notions of medicine and magic. They reacted to a given situation — such as the killing of their war chief or medicine man — in exactly the same way, every time. In white man's terms, they were easily spooked." (Empire of the Summer Moon, S. C. Gwynne, pp. 142-143). 

Here a brave soldier counsels retreat...because an bird suffered a mishap struggling with its prey:

"While they were busy stripping the armor from these heroes, the youths who were led on by Polydamas and Hector (and these were the greater part and the most valiant of those that were trying to break through the wall and fire the ships) were still standing by the trench, uncertain what they should do; for they had seen a sign from heaven when they had essayed to cross it — a soaring eagle that flew skirting the left wing of their host, with a monstrous blood-red snake in its talons still alive and struggling to escape. The snake was still bent on revenge, wriggling and twisting itself backwards till it struck the bird that held it, on the neck and breast; whereon the bird being in pain, let it fall, dropping it into the middle of the host, and then flew down the wind with a sharp cry. The Trojans were struck with terror when they saw the snake, portent of aegis-bearing Jove, writhing in the midst of them, and Polydamas went up to Hector and said, 'Hector, at our councils of war you are ever given to rebuke me, even when I speak wisely, as though it were not well, forsooth, that one of the people should cross your will either in the field or at the council board; you would have them support you always: nevertheless I will say what I think will be best; let us not now go on to fight the Danaans at their ships, for I know what will happen if this soaring eagle which skirted the left wing of our with a monstrous blood-red snake in its talons (the snake being still alive) was really sent as an omen to the Trojans on their essaying to cross the trench. The eagle let go her hold; she did not succeed in taking it home to her little ones, and so will it be — with ourselves; even though by a mighty effort we break through the gates and wall of the Achaeans, and they give way before us, still we shall not return in good order by the way we came, but shall leave many a man behind us whom the Achaeans will do to death in defense of their ships. Thus would any seer who was expert in these matters, and was trusted by the people, read the portent.'" (Homer, Iliad, Book XII).

As can be seen from this episode, the heavenly bodies do not actually have to do much of anything to produce a striking impact on the behavior of a pagan military force. If some astral state or conjunction is thought to presage defeat, this can induce panicked flight. This sensitivity is characteristic of pagan religion: "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; do not be dismayed at thee signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them." (Jeremiah 10:2). When people of such different cultures meet each other, world views collide alongside the armed bands; according to the pagan view of the world, stars and other natural phenomena are animate, intentional, powerful, and very likely responsible for the weather. This is not necessarily the Jewish world-view, but certainly is a common pagan construct. The stars are their gods.

To devotees of the astrological system, the stars do not have to do anything remarkable to deliver a message, encouraging or discouraging; their normal courses are interpreted as fraught with meaning. By appearing in a favorable conformation, they might encourage rash aggression which can back-fire, or by lining up in a baleful but still perfectly natural configuration, they can induce hesitancy and over-caution. The stars are drawn into combat, willing or not, by the beliefs of the astrologers. They have already been 'conscripted' into the military by their devotees; simply by being where they are at, they are flashing commands; but once arrayed on the battle-field, they are free to display their true loyalties. Whatever their input on this occasion, it ultimately worked to Israel's advantage. Perhaps it was 'treachery:' they 'encouraged' Sisera then played him false. Perhaps it was open warning: 'Retreat! Retreat!' (the stars do not actually say 'retreat,' but pagan astrologers 'interpret' them as saying such things.) The rainstorm itself, if believed, by the pagans, to have been sent by their star-gods, is a communication of this sort, an act of taking sides.

By contrast to pagan armies, those who put their trust in the LORD are not easily spooked. Josephus retells the story of a pagan army standing around waiting...for a bird to tell them which way to go:

"As I was myself going to the Red Sea, there followed us a man, whose name was Mosollam; he was one of the Jewish horsemen who conducted us; he was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by all allowed to be the most skillful archer that was either among the Greeks or barbarians. Now this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for. Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he took his augury, and told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand still; but that if he got up, and flew onward, they must go forward; but that if he flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no reply, but drew his bow, and shot at the bird, and hit him, and killed him; and as the augur and some others were very angry, and wished imprecations upon him, he answered them thus: Why are you so mad as to take this most unhappy bird into your hands? for how can this bird give us any true information concerning our march, who could not foresee how to save himself? for had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam the Jew should shoot at him, and kill him.'" (Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, Book 1).

So the Jew Mosollam was unimpressed with the bird's hesitation. Mosollam was no atheist, but his understanding of bird behavior was realistic and naturalistic, because his religion dictated such an understanding. And doesn't it make more sense for the army to advance or retreat based on its military interest, rather than to rely on the generalship of a bird? So this is one way stars can take sides and fight: it may be there was a sign, conjunction, or portent meaningful to pagan star-interpreters. Deborah's army was unimpressed by the portent in the heavens, but the facing pagan army was scared witless, because the pagans take the ordinary motions of the heavenly bodies either as portents of doom, or as harbingers of victory. So the stars did their bit in the battle: the military advantage went to Israel, when the stars alarmed their pagan devotees by an unfavorable conjunction or other unsettling phenomenon.

The stars' contribution is paired with the brook Kishon's activity, which appears not poetical but prosaic, the torrent over-flowing its normal course, impeding the movements of the enemy army. The brook Kishon does not have a mind and a will, but neither is there any such thing as coincidence; no sparrow falls from the sky apart from the Father, and the brook made common cause with Israel and 'helped' under God's command. In parallel, the stars fighting in their courses could be, not 'poetic language,' but some objective fact, something that actually happened, marshalled by God into His master plan. The pagans might have imagined their star-gods to have sent the rain which made the brook overflow; we do not need to assume Israel adopted the same system of meteorology to understand this as an ad hominem rejoinder, mockery over the enemy's panicked flight. S0 this could be how the unexpected rain storm affected the battle outcome: it was taken as a portent.

And The Rains Came

But what have stars got to do with rain, unexpected or otherwise, taken as a portent or thought insignificant? There is a connection there; ancient literature is sure of it. And nature bears it out. There is, as we shall see, a legitimate empirical link between the movements of stars: actual stars, not star-gods,— and the rain, in those climate zones which incorporate a dry season and a rainy season: ". . .it is near autumn and the time is at hand when the sun, entering the southern signs (which are all named from showers), will send us storm and tempest." (Cassiodorus, The Letters of Cassiodorus, Kindle location 3411). This connection, which runs between actual stars and rain, and does not involve animated cartoon star-gods, may be at the heart of this otherwise obscure Bible reference. The Roman historian Florus perceived a link between the constellations and the rain-charged storm cloud::

There actually is an empirical basis for this, though it is indirect; the rising and setting of constellations coincide with, and presage, changes in seasonal climate, not one the cause of the other, but both caused by the same circumstances of planetary angle and orbit. The relationship between the two things, stars and rain, is not a simple one of cause-and-effect, but one of sign and thing signified.

Ancient peoples are known to have ascribed meteorological events, like a rain-storm, to the stars, which are literally behind the rain-charged storm-clouds. Draw a straight line through a storm-cloud, and you hit what? A star, invisible through the overcast. Here an Arabic poetess suggests they are actually pulling the strings behind the scenes:

"All generous men in years of drought
When the stars withheld their rain." (Life of Muhammad, A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume,  p. 358).

Again, a poet lamenting the losses among the Quraysh attributes the rain to the stars:

"How many noble handsome men,
The refuge of the homeless were slain
Liberal when the stars gave no rain,
Who bore others' burdens, ruling and taking their due fourth."
(Life of Muhammad, A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume, p. 365).

What did these poets, and their audience, understand it to mean, that the stars produce rain? It does not necessarily short-circuit the customary understanding of the water cycle, that water evaporates from lakes and streams, ascends to the clouds, and then comes back down. Mohammed ibn Abdallah understood that the rain comes from the clouds: "Hast thou not seen that God driveth clouds lightly forward, then gathereth them together, then pileth them in masses? And then thou seest the rain forthcoming from their midst.. . ." (Koran Sura 24:43). "It is God who sendeth the winds and uplifteth the clouds, and, as He pleaseth, spreadeth them on high, and breaketh them up; and thou mayest see the rain issuing from their midst; and when He poureth it down on such of his servants as He pleaseth, lo! they are filled with joy. . ." (Koran Sura 30:47). There is no expectation that rain will come from a clear blue sky. The ancients used to talk about the dog-days of summer, meaning the hottest days of late July and August. The dog-star, Sirius, would rise before the sun, in the latitude of Athens, presaging the hot weather to come. Now we know correlation does not mean causation, but there was a strong correlation between the rising of Sirius and the hot summer weather. Perhaps in regions where rainfall tends to be seasonal, a similar correlation is observed between the weather,— the advent of the life-giving rains,— and the rising of some familiar star.

The Biblical poet may be employing a familiar convention, ascribing a sudden thunder-shower to the stars, which caused an unexpected flash flood that scattered the enemy. While there is no causal nexus, there is in fact a bona fide association between stars and climate; ancient agriculturalists knew to coordinate their planting and sowing with risings and settings of particular stars. This association is fundamental to the pagan religion whose crowning achievement is the pseudo-science of astrology, but it is also a legitimate datum of meteorology. The Book of Jubilees gives us Abraham, while still in the house of Terah the idolater, observing the stars in order to prognosticate the rains: "Abram sat up throughout the night on the new moon of the seventh month to observe the stars from the evening to the morning, in order to see what would be the character of the year with regard to the rains, and he was alone as he sat and observed." (The Book of Jubilees, Chapter 12, Section 16). In regions where rains are seasonal, this natural phenomenon might have suggested such a connection, as implied here:

"The winds of summer and the rain of Aquarius,
The torrential cloudbringer, has effaced them;
Naught remains but the place where the fire was,
Round it on the ground are the firestones like doves."
(Life of Muhammad, A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, A. Guillaume, p. 412)

As to which constellations are particularly associated with rain-storms, with the Greeks it was the Hyades: "But the hyades, says he, are so called, ουκ απο των υων (that is, not from pigs), as our rude forefathers believed, but from the word hyein; for both when they rise and when they set they cause rainstorms and heavy showers. And pluere, (to rain) is expressed in the Greek tongue by hyein." (Tullius Tiro, quoted in Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book XIII, Chapter IX). The encyclopedist Pliny gives a similar account: "For who can doubt that summer and winter, and the annual revolution of the seasons are caused by the motion of the stars? As therefore the nature of the sun is understood to influence the temperature of the year, so each of the other stars has its specific power, which produces its appropriate effects. Some abound in a fluid retaining its liquid state, others, in the same fluid concreted into hoar frost, compressed into snow, or frozen into hail; some are prolific in winds, some in heat, some in vapours, some in dew, some in cold. . .Nor is this power confined to the stars which change their situations, but is found to exist in many of the fixed stars, whenever they are impelled by the force of any of the planets, or excited by the impulse of their rays; as we find to be the case with respect to the Suculæ, which the Greeks, in reference to their rainy nature, have termed the Hyades." (Pliny, Natural History, Book II, Chapter 39.)

While, depending upon latitude and climate zone, there may be a legitimate association between the rising or setting of a particular constellation and the advent of the rainy season, it is not actually the case that these stars are causing the rain. It is a case, rather, of joint production from the grand movements of the same natural mechanism.

The Biblical poet does not necessarily buy into a causal meteorology, but rather makes an ad hominem rejoinder, as here: "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." (Judges 11:24). Who thought that 'Chemosh,' a black stone, had given anybody anything to possess? The Jews? No, the pagans. This is a perfectly legitimate form of address; the messengers seek to persuade, they are not endorsing the alien system.

The pagans did not worship unknown mythological 'star-gods' who have mysteriously disappeared for the past three millenia. One might well ask the Jehovah's Witnesses, if there really are 'star-gods' as you claim, where did they go? The ancient pagans worshipped the very stars themselves, the same ones that we see in the sky (the planets only visible by telescope, Uranus, Neptune, and the recently demoted Pluto, they did not know). How the astrologers arrived at the conclusion the stars were gods controlling the world is by bad theology chasing bad science. First comes good science: ancient peoples noticed that the changing face of the night-time sky correlates with seasonal changes. Different constellations rise above the horizon at different times of year, as the earth with tilted axis orbits the sun. In the absence of a reliable written calendar, these risings and settings function as alarm-clocks, precisely timing important events of the agricultural year, like planting and harvest. This is just as God ordained: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:..." (Genesis 1:14).

Bad Meteorology

Here is good science: "Pleiades rising in the dawning sky, Harvest is nigh. Pleiades setting in the waning night, Plowing is right. Forty days and nights in the turning year They disappear. When they shine again in the morning shade, Sharpen your blade." (Hesiod, Works and Days, 430-436). So long as the farmer is timing his activities by the rising and setting of the Pleiades he's doing right, in that latitude. If the farmer should start saying, 'the Pleiades by their occult virtue ripen the crops,' then he's advanced to doing bad science, reasoning 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc.' If he then goes on to bow himself down before the Pleiades, hymning them, 'O gracious Pleiades, thank you for the bountiful harvest,' he's advanced to doing bad theology, and false, idolatrous worship.

The pagan Greeks did bad meteorology, believing that Sirius, the Dog-Star, prominent in the night sky during the hottest days of summer, actually caused the 'Dog-Days' of summer by exercising some baleful influence upon the earth. This is not accurate; while there is an invariant association between (a) and (b) — Sirius, the Dog-Star, is invariably sighted in that position during the hottest days of summer in that latitude — there is no causal nexus, rather both (a) Sirius, and (b), the arrival of hot weather, are caused by (c), the earth's travels about the sun with tilted axis.

Taking it the next step, adding animal cruelty to bad meteorology, the pagan Romans sacrificed a dog every year to prevent the crops from developing mildew:

"The Robigalia were established by Numa in the fortieth year of his reign, and are still celebrated on the seventh day before the calends of May, as it is at this period that mildew mostly makes its first attacks upon the growing corn. Varro fixes this crisis at the moment at which the sun enters the tenth degree of Taurus, in accordance with the notions that prevailed in his day: but the real cause is the fact, that thirty-one days after the vernal equinox, according to the observations of various nations, the Dog-star sets between the seventh and fourth before the calends of May, a constellation baneful in itself, and to appease which a young dog should first be sacrificed." (Pliny, Natural History, Book XVIII, Chapter 69).

The ancient Babylonians took this logic all the way to full-fledged bad religion, basing their entire theological system on the premise that the stars, by their various conjunctions, determined every event upon the earth. Thus the stars were the high gods who determined the fates. And their stars were our stars, not hitherto unknown mythological beings; the Babylonians left exquisitely detailed records of their star-sightings:

These were the gods of the Babylonians — the planets. These are the very same planets we see in the night sky. What they were then, they are now. They have not changed. I have actually talked to Jehovah's Witnesses who will patiently explain that, being that stars are actually incandescent gas-balls made of plasma, fusion factories, the ancient 'star-gods' must be some other order of being altogether. But ancient Babylon's stars are still our stars; they just aren't all they're cracked up to be.

It may be objected, in fact the pagans did make these distinctions, for instance between the solar disc and the god associated thereto; but they made similar distinctions in the case of humanity, dissolving the soul and spirit into multiple entities entombed in the body: "For as with us, the animal is different from the man, and the visible Socrates is one thing, but the true Socrates another; much more are the Sun and Jupiter [different from the visible orbs of them] which consist of body and soul." (Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, translated by Thomas Taylor, Book IV, p. 706). The original system, in all its simplicity, naivete, and wrongness, deified the actual heavenly travellers. It causes some awkwardness for the followers of Plato that the old gods were undeniably corporeal, because Plato devalued matter, and so, to be superior to human beings, the gods had to be incorporeal:

"If, however, the mundane as well as the supermundane Gods are incorporeal, it may be asked how the visible celestial orbs can be Gods?

"To this we reply, that the celestial Gods are not comprehended by bodies, but that they contain bodies in their divine lives and energies; that they are not converted to body, but that the body which is suspended from their essence is converted to a divine cause; and that body is no impediment to their intellectual and incorporeal perfection, and is not the cause of any molestation to them by its intervention. Hence it does not require an abundant care and attention, but spontaneously and after a certain manner self-motively follows the divinities with which it is connected, not being in want of any manuduction, but by its elevation to the one of the Gods, is also itself uniformly raised by itself." (Proclus' On the Theology of Plato, by Thomas Taylor, Volume II, Book VII, Chapter IV, p. 452).

Whatever that means, nineteenth century Neopagan Thomas Taylor evidently felt it removed the difficulty, because the earlier theology had left no doubt that the heavenly bodies were gods. We know that these are rocks, the ancients were not sure; when Anaxagoras decided they were, he had to leave town. Ultimately, however, the whole system ended up mechanized, made into clock-work, so that the star-gods become in Kepler angelic conductors of the planets, now mere orbs; they might as well be made of plastic as of quintessence! These angelic star-pushers are finally themselves pushed off the stage of history when Newton discovered gravity.

Poetic Diction

We know that correlation is not causation. There is a legitimate naturalistic link between stars and the rains, though it would not be accurate to ascribe agency or ultimately causality to the stars. They tell you where you are in the meteorological year, that's all. But really, isn't that close enough to justify Deborah's language? The reference is not arbitrary nor unintelligible. And we certainly do not need to import the Jehovah Witnesses' star gods into the text to make sense of it! As it happens, to take another tack, there is such a usage as 'poetic language' in the Bible, and atheists who hope to discredit the Bible seize upon expressions like, "Let the rivers clap their hands; let the mountains sing together for joy..." (Psalm 98:8). Here the genre is a 'song,' so there can be no reasonable expectation that the language must be prosaic and matter-of-fact. While 'fighting stars' as 'poetic language' will never satisfy the Jehovah's Witnesses and other believers in star-gods, any sincere attempt to recover the author's original intent cannot detour totally around it.

Skeptics trumpet, 'Rivers don't have hands to clap!' But English poets say the same kind of thing, which carries the dreadful name of the 'pathetic fallacy.' Things that wouldn't ordinarily be expected to express feelings and emotions do so, like "The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign." (Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard). The owl isn't actually complaining, nor does the moon care a whole lot whether people on earth are out and about at night. The feelings are the poets'; they do it because it 'works.' Or, "Dim moon-eyes fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: 'What does this vain-gloriousness down here?'" (The Convergence of the Twain, Lines on the loss of the 'Titanic', Thomas Hardy). Fish are not noted for their inquisitiveness, nor for moralizing about "vain-gloriousness." It's the poet who is struck by the incongruity of the glittery apparition from another world that has settled down in the fishes' mud. One of the services humankind can perform for our less vocal fellow creatures is to give them a voice. While disbelieving the 'fighting stars' are a case in point, one thing of which I am sure is that no 'star-gods' arrayed in dazzling armor put in an appearance on the battle-field...because there ain't none.

Stars are creatures: "Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created." (Psalm 148:3-5). No creature is God; the true and living God is the Creator: "And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:..." (Acts 14:15). Ergo, stars are not gods.

Book of Enoch

But wait, you've forgotten the Book of Enoch!:

This completes the circuit, does it not? We learn here that the fallen angels are stars. The stars are angels, and thus gods! What did the stars do wrong? They wanted to be worshipped as gods; it happens to the best of us:

"And in those times the fruits of the earth shall be backward and shall not grow in their time, and the fruits of the trees shall be withheld in their time. And the moon shall alter her order and not appear at her time. And in those days the sun shall be seen and he shall journey in the evening on the extremity of the great chariot in the west and shall shine more brightly than accords with the order of light. And many chiefs of the stars shall transgress the order and these shall alter their orbits and tasks and not appear at the seasons prescribed to them. And the whole order of the stars shall be concealed from the sinners and the thoughts of those on the earth shall err concerning them. And they shall be altered from all their ways. Yea, they shall err and take them to be gods." (Book of Enoch, Book IV, Chapter 3, 4-8).

Certainly the stars succeeded in being worshipped, by masses of deluded polytheists, back in those days and even at present, although the Jehovah's Witnesses insist that, though they believe the stars to be gods, they do not worship them. But this is all in the Bible, isn't it? Not exactly. The Bible knows of fallen angels who will be judged, but these are not identified with the stars, as in Enoch:

"And the judgement was held first over the stars, and they were judged and found guilty, and went to the place of condemnation, and they were cast into an abyss, full of fire and flaming, and full of pillars of fire." (Book of Enoch, Book IV, Chapter 5,  134).

Is this what the Bible teaches about the stars? Not really, though stars are, in metaphor, identified with believers and with angels.

With this we already are in a slightly different realm than the vernacular pagan astronomy. The stars follow the ordinances of God, not because they are constrained by crystalline spheres, but 'willingly,' as it were. This is the kernel of the concept of natural law which would later prove so fruitful in astronomy.

Then we get into the Book of Revelation. Are the stars angels? Do the stars signify angels? Is this conception consistent with Anaxagoras' vision of fiery rocks (or plasma clouds, or gas  globules, as you will)? Realizing that this conception is basically correct, one would hope so.

'Enoch is confident that the year is precisely 364 days long, which it isn't. When was the Book of Enoch dropped from the canon? Never; it was never in it to begin with. Does the Book of Enoch provide the secret key to the scriptures, the Rosetta Stone with which to decode the Bible's 'secret' flat earth astronomy? I scarcely think so; Enoch after all is a flat-earther. The idea that the luminaries rest in barns during the day and then exit through gates to traverse the night sky is not consistent with a round earth.

Though it's strange to reflect on this now, the era when people were just as likely to believe the earth is flat did overlap with the era which saw the birth of physical science. The pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes believed in a flat earth, of infinite extent: "This upper limit, of earth at our feet is visible and touches the air, but below it reaches to infinity." (Fragments of Xenophanes, Fragment 12). Several others did as well. The pre-Socratics were quite willing to assign material causes where appropriate, or even where not.

So where might 'Enoch' have got the impression that the stars were gods? From the culture around him. It was a bedrock assumption of the pagans that the stars were gods. Entire civilizations, like the Babylonian, were built upon that premise. It is not very remarkable when someone conforms to the prevailing conventional wisdom. It is more remarkable when someone does not conform.

Many people have read the Bible multiple times and never once suspected that it teaches flat-earthism. They come across a phrase like 'the deep,' and surmise that perhaps it refers to the oceanic depths. They read about the 'corners' of the earth and think perhaps the speaker is looking at a map, a planar projection of the earth's surface, quit legitimate. They hear about the 'pillars of the earth' and think perhaps this refers to the bedrock you encounter at depth, if digging a well or tunnelling, and are relieved to realize our life here on the surface is strongly founded, most of the time. Along come the atheists seeking to discredit the Bible, who announce that all these phrases refer to structures no human being has ever seen, nor ever could since they don't exist. And how can you verify that common catch-phrases, still in use, refer to structures no one has ever seen nor ever could see? If these words mean what they say they mean, then surely no one has ever taught their meaning by pointing. Enter 'Enoch,' to the rescue.