This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Monday! That means that all the heavenly bodies are once again perfectly aligned for another session of Monday School – STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!” (And it’s likely to remain that way until I’m stupid enough to let my pet tiger out of his cage to help me write these entries.)

Today’s Lesson: What’s The Connection Between Astrology And The Bible?

According to the fundamentalist Baptist I befriended in junior high, there is NO connection. In my friend’s view, the Bible is the word of God Almighty and astrology is one of the black arts of Satan that the Bible condemns in passages such as these:

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” – Deuteronomy 18:10-12

“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.” – Isaiah 47:13-14

“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.” – Jeremiah 10:2

Unfortunately for my friend and others like him, there are other Bible passages that seem to lend credence to the claims of astrologers:

“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

“They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” – Judges 5:20

“Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” – Job 38:31 (The speaker here is allegedly God Himself. The Pleiades, according to Greek myth, were the seven daughters of Atlas who were transformed into stars. You can still see these “sisters” in the constellation of Taurus today.)

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars….” – Luke 21:25

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on astrology, “… it does not appear impossible that in Daniel’s time exiled Jews practiced astrology. Judging from Daniel v, 5, 7, it is possible that the prophet himself held a high rank among the astrologers of the Babylonian court.”

As I’ve pointed out repeatedly in previous Monday School lessons, the Bible did not come from God, perfect and unique, but is the creation of human beings who lived in specific times and places. These human beings were very much products of their cultures, and as these cultures changed, so, too, did the nature of what was created and how prior creations were interpreted.

Astrology seems to have been very much a part of the world that created the Bible. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, looking to the sky in search of signs of coming calamity can be traced as far back as 1800 BCE Babylonia. The more refined sort of astrology which claims that the position of heavenly bodies controls what happens here on earth can be traced back to 300 BCE Hellenistic Egypt, with most of the essential elements we associate with astrology today being in place by about 100 BCE. An interesting foreshadowing or echo of the 12 signs of the zodiac can be found in Genesis 49 where a dying Jacob assigns qualities and animal symbols to each of his 12 sons – sons destined to give rise to the 12 tribes of Israel. (For one person’s very interesting views on this and other apparent connections between astrology and the Bible, click here.)

More generally, the sky seems to have long played a huge role in many religions all around the world. According to David Leeming and Jake Page’s God: Myths of the Male Divine, “God was often equated with the sky itself with little attempt on the part of his worshippers to personalize him or to provide him with a mythology of his own. In ancient Sumer, Anu, the relatively abstract god of the sky (Anu means ‘sky’), lived in the ‘Sky House’ and the stars were his army…. The idea of God as the sky is especially present in African mythologies….” (p. 109). Nut, Milo, Uranos, Rangi, and Wulbari are some of the names besides Anu that various peoples have given this Sky God.

Cultures as diverse as that of the Egyptians, the Aztecs, and the Japanese have had Sun Gods. Many cultures have associated the moon with a goddess. Easter and Ramadan are just two religious holidays which are determined by observation of the moon. The many holidays associated with the end of December are derived from the winter solstice – that time of the year when the night is longest and the sun is lowest in the sky in the northern hemisphere. It seems that some of the oldest priestly classes that we know of arose by virtue of close observation of the heavens and the learned ability to make predictions about the movements of the heavenly bodies and related seasonal events (e.g., the annual flooding of the Nile).

Matthew 2:1 touches on one of these priestly classes when it says “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem….” According to Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, “‘Wise men’ is a translation of the Greek ‘magoi,’ which has entered our language by way of the Latin as ‘magi.’ The word is derived from ‘magu,’ the name given to their priests by the Persian Zoroastrians. Throughout ancient history, the priests were considered the repository of important knowledge. Not only did they know the techniques for the propitiation of the gods, but – in Babylon in particular – they studied the heavenly bodies…. The priests were therefore learned astrologers….” (p. 788). How ironic that the very Bible my fundamentalist friend claimed condemned astrology actually presents astrologers as being some of the first people to recognize the greatness of Jesus!

According to William Harwood’s Mythology’s Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, “The fable of the magi’s visit to Jerusalem and Bethlehem was consistent with at least one previous instance of alleged magi behaviour. Seven hundred years earlier magi were said to have followed a new star to the birthplace of Zarathustra, whom they presented with expensive gifts. And before that new stars had heralded the births of Abraham and Krishna” (p. 257). Once again, it seems that religions like to recycle stories almost as much as Hollywood does.

An article by Frank Zindler that appeared in the June 1992 issue of American Atheist magazine explains the connection between older religions, astrology, and Christianity in much more detail. According to Zindler, “The mystery religion to which Christianity seems most closely related is Mithraism. Mithra (also spelled Mithras), a Graeco-Persian invention, was born of a virgin on the winter solstice…. Being a solar deity, Mithra was worshiped on Sundays; after Mithra had become amalgamated with Helios, he was depicted with a halo…. In some cases it is difficult to tell if ancient images were intended as depictions of Mithra or Jesus. The leader of the cult was called a pope (papa) and he ruled from a ‘mithraeum’ on the Vatican Hill in Rome. A prominent iconographic feature of Mithraism was a large key, needed to unlock the celestial gates through which souls of the deceased were believed to pass. It would appear that the ‘keys of the Kingdom’ held by the popes as successors to ‘St. Peter’ derive from Mithra, not from a Palestinian messiah. The Mithric priests wore miters, special headdresses from which the Christian bishop’s hat was derived. (The Latin name for this Phrygian/Persian hat was mitra – which also was an acceptable Latin spelling for Mithra!) The Mithraists consumed a sacred meal (Myazda) which was completely analogous to the Catholic eucharistic service…. Like the Christians, they celebrated the atoning death of a savior who was resurrected on a Sunday. A major center of Mithraic philosophy was Tarsus – St. Paul’s hometown – in what is now southeast Turkey.”

Zindler goes on to explain that both Mithraism and Christianity are heavily dependent on the ancient Near East’s astrological understanding of the universe. It’s a tad complicated, but here it is in a nutshell:

In 128 BCE the Greek astronomer Hipparchus discovered the precession of the equinoxes. That is to say, the apparent position of the sun in the sky changes over time with respect to the background provided by the fixed stars and constellations. Hipparchus discovered that the sun’s position on the vernal equinox – the first day of spring – had shifted from the constellation of Taurus to the constellation of Aries. Some people thought only a god could have moved the sun in this way. What god? Mithras – the Persian deity associated with the sacrifice of a bull (Taurus).

By the time Hipparchus had made his discovery, however, the sun was almost out of Aries as well. This new movement would come to be symbolized by the sacrifice of a lamb. The constellation that the sun appeared to be entering was Pisces – symbolized by fish. Apparently it’s no coincidence that Jesus named twelve disciples (one for every sign of the zodiac), that he would come to be associated with the lamb sacrifice, and that one of the first symbols of early Christians was the fish. (It might also be no coincidence that it was the ancient Hebrews’s creation of a golden calf that pissed off Moses.)

Lest you think all this is merely the ravings of one lone atheist, consider these passages from Peter Occhiogrosso’s The Joy of Sects: A Spirited Guide to the World’s Religious Traditions:

“One group of scholars has associated this figure [Mithras] with that of Perseus – who represents the northern constellation named after him – and hypothesize that the cult arose in response to newly developed information that the reign of Taurus as the constellation of the spring equinox had been replaced by that of Pisces. (In our own day, the news that Pisces itself was soon to be replaced in the spring equinox by Aquarius was enough to give rise to a hit Broadway musical centered around the so-called Age of Aquarius)….

“As paganism waned, Mithraism became Christianity’s strongest competitor. The church formally suppressed it in the 4th century, but not before seeming to appropriate certain of its observances and symbols…. Sunday had always been the holy day of the Mithraists, who also celebrated December 25 as the birthday of the sun, in reassurance that the days began to grow longer following the winter solstice” (pp. 307-308).

It’s worth noting at this point that Perseus was allegedly the son of Zeus and a human female whom Zeus allegedly impregnated without harm to her virginity.

Chas. S. Clifton’s Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics adds a few more details:

“Before his religion spread into the Roman world in the first century B.C., Mithras had been worshiped throughout the Persian Empire, where he represented a savior-king…. A Persian prophecy placed him as reigning last in a series of 7,000-year periods (each symbolized by one of the seven visible planets), followed by an apocalypse and renewal of the world…. Not surprisingly, this prophecy became blended with early Christians’ views of the Second Coming of Christ” (p. 96).

At times, Christians seem to have openly accepted the basic ideas of astrology and attempted to reconcile them with their religious beliefs despite the attempts of the Church to stamp out competing mystical sources of knowledge. According to the Britannica’s article on astrology, “In the interpretation of Bardesanes, a Syrian Christian scholar (154-222)… the motions of the stars govern only the elemental world, leaving the soul free to choose between good and evil…. In still other interpretations – e.g., that of the Christian Priscillianists (followers of Priscilla, a Spanish ascetic of the 4th century…) – the stars merely make manifest the will of God to those trained in astrological symbolism.”

Gallup polls taken in 1990 and 1996 indicate that 25% of Americans believe in astrology. A 1997 Yankelovich poll indicates that 37% of Americans believe in astrology to some degree. Two almanacs tell me that about 85% of Americans claim to be Christian. If these numbers are even approximately accurate, it would seem that millions of Christians continue to believe in astrology today despite its condemnation by the Vatican and other Christian authorities.

Could this be an indication that once one abandons evidence and logic and starts believing in ridiculous things there’s simply no end to the number of ridiculous things one will believe in? I wonder….