Adam's Astronomy

The Original Zodiac

Poole

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781621893035
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Long before Moses wrote Genesis, the world's first astronomers invented star signs to illustrate a prophecy: a God-man would come to repair the breach between us and the Creator. Those starry figures were pirated, however, and used to advance a false religion which spread all over the world. Faithful men from Noah to the magi of the Christ child stood against that error, yet the true star signs all but vanished for millennia.Adam's Astronomy lays out the original signs, introduces the linguist who recovered them, and explains how she did it. The last chapter describes many deep sky objects whose traits--revealed by modern telescopes--illustrate the ancient message of the constellations in which they are found.

1

Primordial Astronomy

We might imagine that the images spread over ancient sky maps always portrayed gods and goddesses. After all, they are thousands of years old. But in the beginning, people recognized only one God, the Creator of all things, and those images originally had to do with him. The Bible says the heavens reveal something about God, so let’s find out what they have to tell us.

Good Start Goes Bad

God created Adam from the soil, the first human being, and then Eve from Adam’s DNA. God planted a garden where he and they enjoyed each other’s company.

God gave Adam and Eve everything they needed—including a moral test. One tree out of all the trees in the garden was denied them: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they ate of it, God warned, they would die.

All was good until the serpent spoke to Eve. Was she sure God had her best interest at heart? Eating the fruit would not make her die—it would make her wise like God. Eve took the fruit, ate, gave some to Adam, and he ate. That act changed everything. In fear and shame they hid from God. They had cut themselves off from their source of life. Death entered the world.

In justice and love, God cursed the serpent and promised that some day a Deliverer would restore the broken relationship. This Deliverer would be born of a woman, that is, without human father. He would crush the serpent’s head and his own heel be bruised.1 In other words, he would overcome evil by paying the death penalty. Until that time, Adam and Eve and their offspring must cover their guilt with the blood of a lamb. The lamb sacrifice not only hid their sin, it also pictured the coming Deliverer.

One of Adam’s sons, Cain, offered God garden produce instead of a lamb. Then, angered by God’s rejection, he killed his brother, Abel, who had brought the required lamb. Animosity toward the faithful is natural to those who reject God’s way.2

Message Needed

Adam, his son Seth, and Seth’s great, great, great, grandson Enoch knew God, but by Enoch’s time, most of the tens of thousands of people on earth had rejected the way of the lamb.

Adam, Seth and Enoch wanted to alert people to the truth, but how could they communicate it to everyone? If they wrote a book, people might not read it.3 If they set up a monument, people might move away. They needed a permanent reminder visible to all.

But think a moment. What did they see night after night that never changed, that naturally called to mind God’s eternal character? Why not use the stars to teach God’s truth!

First Astronomy

Adam and Seth lived more than nine hundred years—plenty of time to study the sky. Adam was six hundred when Enoch was born. These early astronomers knew the ways of the heavenly bodies:

• The sun measured each day by its journey across the sky;

• The moon measured each month as it waxed and waned;4

• The stars measured the year. While some stars seemed to rotate around one area of the sky and remained visible year round, others appeared to travel along the sun’s path.5 They rose in the east, moved across the sky, and passed out of sight in the west. After twelve months the first stars reappeared. Year after year, those stars in their unchanging patterns followed that path.

God provided the lights in the sky for light, warmth and orientation in time. Thus they evidenced both God’s power and his kindness. But to get the specific message of God’s plan for our sin problem, more was needed. And so, the astronomer-prophets covered the sky with pictures of the cursed serpent and the coming Deliverer.

This planisphere (sky map) shows a few of the images. The serpent winds its way among the stars near the center of the sky, the foot of a kneeling human figure over its head. Above that human figure is another, who struggles with a serpent while his foot crushes a scorpion. A straight line from the scorpion through the serpent leads to a great bull and two other human figures. The foot of one is pierced by the bull’s horn; the foot of the other rests on the bull’s neck. Below them, one more figure threatens an unknown beast. Three of these human figures hold a severed head of a monster.

If we imagine ourselves among the first humans on earth—remembering that TV lies far in the future—part of our evening entertainment is to watch the sun set and the stars appear on the big screen above. Once in a while Great-grandfather Seth comes to visit. When all is quiet and the tiny children sleep, the older children join the grown-ups to hear Great-grandfather talk about life. He points to the starry serpent and tells about Adam and Eve’s failure in the garden—how shame, sorrow and death resulted. He describes the Deliverer’s foot above the serpent’s head, and promises freedom some day from the serpent’s power.

Designing the Zodiac

The astronomers divided the stars on the sun’s path into twelve groups and gave each a picture. The twelve pictures were called signs because they signified something. God created the sun, moon and stars to have meaning as well as to mark time and provide light.6 These twelve signs are known as the zodiac.7

Each sign showed ...