ASTRONOMY.

1. Creation. The Bible affirms that God created the sun, moon, and stars, as well as heaven and earth (Gen 1:1, 16; Ps 8:3), and that everything is subject to His will (Job 9:7). At first reading, the beginning vv. of Genesis may be puzzling because they seem to imply that night and day occurred before God made the sun and moon. Actually, the record may be a good description of the earth’s early development if the picture is drawn from the point of view of a hypothetical observer on the earth watching the gradual clearing of a misty atmosphere. At first the clouds became thin enough for night and day to be distinguished, and only later did the discs of the sun and moon, which already were in existence, become visible. Finally, even the stars could be seen. The Scofield Bible notes the difference between the Heb. word בָּרָא֒, H1343, tr. “created,” and the word עָשָׂה֒, H6913, tr. “made,” and suggests that in Genesis 1:7, 16, 25f. “God made” has the meaning of “God made visible,” in contrast with the three definite creative acts for the heavens and earth (v. 1), the animals (v. 21), and mankind (v. 27). Other authorities dispute this meaning for asah, which implies “make” or “do” in the broadest sense. A better interpetation here might be “prepared for use,” as in Genesis 18:7, 8 and Judges 6:19 in connection with food.

It certainly would have been possible for God to accomplish the creation events in six ordinary days, but perhaps here is a place where Biblical interpretation can be helped by science, which gives rather definite evidence that the whole process took a long time. The best information from the products of radioactive decay in meteorites suggests that the solar system was formed about 4,700,000,000 years ago, while calculations of the life histories of some stars as they consume their internal nuclear fuel indicate they must have two or three times this age. Measurements of the remnants from radioactive decay in the soil and dust brought back by the first astronauts to land on the moon gave ages around 4,700,000,000 years. Fossils of simple, single-celled micro-organisms have been found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior in Precambrian rocks known through radio-active dating to be 1,900,000,000 years old. If God took only six literal days for creation, then it is difficult to understand His purpose in arranging everything to appear as if long periods of time were involved.

a. Earth and sky. Job shows considerable insight into the true nature of the world by his statement, “He [God]...hangs the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7), but elsewhere the Biblical writers use more poetical terms, such as “the four corners of the earth” (Isa 11:12; Rev 7:1). Isaiah possibly was thinking of the circumference of the horizon, rather than a spherical earth, in his phrase “the circle of the earth” (Isa 40:22).

The word “firmament” in Genesis 1:6-20 tr. the Heb. רָקִיעַ, H8385, which usually refers to something stamped or beaten out like a sheet of metal (cf. Ezek 6:11; 25:6, where the root word רָקַע, H8392, is tr. “stamped”). “Firmament” prob. means “solid covering” in Ezekiel 1:22-26 and 10:1. However, for the description of the sky in Genesis 1:6-20; Psalm 19:1 and Daniel 12:3, the more general meaning of “expanse” has been suggested. This still leaves the difficulty that the earth’s atmosphere, which stores water as clouds and vapor (Gen 1:7), is above the firmament in which are set the sun, moon, and stars (1:14-17), contrary to our present concept of the universe. (See also Psalm 148:4, “Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!”) Consequently an alternative interpretation accepts the usual meaning of rakia and pictures the firmament as a solid canopy separating us from the heavens where the rain water is stored. Then the opening of “the windows of the heavens” (Gen 7:11) provided the rain of Noah’s flood. Since the writer did not claim to be giving a scientific description, he was free to use images and figures of speech easily understood by his early readers to convey the spiritual message that God created and controls everything.

b. Big-bang and steady-state theories of creation. The largest telescopes reveal that galaxies like the Milky Way, which consists of a hundred billion stars, populate the universe in all directions to at least a billion light years. Wave-length measurements of the light emitted from these galaxies show that they are all receding from the earth with speeds proportional to their distances. This pattern is exactly what would result from an explosion, even if the solar system is not at its center, and led George Gammow to describe the formation of the universe as a big bang from an initial hot and dense collection of matter and energy. An alternative picture was presented by Fred Hoyle and his colleagues in their postulate that the universe is in a steady state and, therefore, must appear the same to all observers at all times. Since the distances between the galaxies are always increasing, this theory requires the spontaneous creation of new protons and electrons throughout the expanding universe to keep the average density constant. Hoyle rejected the universe with a unique creation event and proposed a universe that has existed forever, with matter continuously being created to fill the voids caused by the expansion.

This steady-state or continuous-creation theory is now seriously questioned, primarily as a result of the discovery in 1965 of weak radio waves which cannot be identified with any particular object, but which come uniformly from all directions of space. So far the only reasonable explanation attributes this radio emission to the remains of the explosion of the primordial fireball which initially contained all the matter and energy of the universe at a temperature of a billion degrees or more. It now has cooled by expansion to only 2.7 degrees centigrade above absolute zero. If further investigations of these radio waves confirm the above interpretation, it follows that there must have been an earlier time when the universe was much hotter and denser, and, therefore, it is not in a steady state.

It is tempting to identify the fireball with the creation event of Genesis, but if there is sufficient matter in the universe to bind it by its own gravity, the expansion eventually must stop and contraction begin, returning everything to the compact high temperature state from which another explosion presumably would occur. Thus the universe could oscillate indefinitely between states of high and low density so that there may have been many cycles before the present one. In this case there are no known astronomical measurements that can distinguish between a universe that started oscillating at creation and one that has been expanding and contracting forever. On the other hand, if the average density at present is below the one hydrogen atom per hundred thousand cubic centimeters necessary to hold the universe together, it will never contract, and is now expanding from a unique dense state which must be described as the beginning. The galaxies seem to account for only four percent of the matter needed to bind everything gravitationally, so that one of the major problems of present-day astronomy is to discover whether a significant amount of material lies between the galaxies.

2. The solar system.

a. Sun and moon. According to Genesis 1:14-18, God provided the sun and moon to light the earth and to be signs for days, seasons, and years. The Heb. day ended at sunset, while the year was marked by the time the sun required to make one complete circuit among the stars or to return to the same point on the horizon at rising or setting. “Have you...caused the dawn to know its place” (Job 38:12), refers to this variation of the position of sunrise due to the annual motion of the sun N and S of the celestial equator. The 29.5 day cycle of the moon’s phases defined the Heb. month, beginning with the first appearance of the thin crescent just after sunset (cf. “from new moon to new moon,” Isa 66:23). Although the Scriptures do not mention the procedure, it must have been necessary to add an extra month every two or three years to keep the months in line with the seasons, since twelve lunar months fall short of a year by almost eleven days.

b. Eclipses. Several passages referring to future events give good descriptions of total eclipses of the sun and moon: “the sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light” (Isa 13:10); “The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood” (Joel 2:31); “I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight” (Amos 8:9); and “the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood” (Rev 6:12). The references to the blood color are specially appropriate for a total eclipse of the moon, since then it is illuminated by a part of the sun’s red light which is bent by the earth’s atmosphere toward the moon making it a copper color. Other possible allusions to eclipses include Ezekiel 30:18; 32:7; Matthew 24:29; and Revelation 8:12 (partial eclipses). However, the three hours of darkness at the time of the crucifixion (Luke 23:44, 45) definitely were not due to an ordinary eclipse, which can occur only at the time of the new moon, since the moon must have been at the full phase for Passover.

c. The long day of Joshua and the sun dial of Ahaz. One of the most remarkable astronomical events of the Bible occurred when both the sun and moon appeared to stand still in the sky at Joshua’s command while the Israelites won a battle over the Amorites (Josh 10:12-14). This suggests the earth may have temporarily stopped rotating on its axis, but keeping everything from flying off the surface would require a miracle as great as the Resurrection of Jesus. If men believe God relates the degree of each miracle to the importance of the event, it seems more likely that keeping the sun and moon fixed in the sky for a battle with the Amorites was accomplished by some simpler means such as an extraordinary refraction by the atmosphere. Alternatively, the story could be a poetical description of Joshua’s victory from the lost book of Jashar, whose only other reference is in 2 Samuel 1:18. Without the full context of the original, it is difficult to say how literally the account is to be taken. Still another interpretation notes that the Heb. words tr. “stand still” and “stayed” also could mean “be silent” or “cease”; and “The sun...did not hasten to go down” could be rendered “The sun...made no haste to come.” The sun and moon simply may have been darkened, prob. by the storm which brought the hail (Josh 10:11), thus prolonging the night (v. 9) so that the Israelites could continue their surprise attack. A refraction phenomenon also may have occurred when the shadow of the sun on the dial of Ahaz turned back ten steps as a sign that King Hezekiah would recover from his sickness (2 Kings 20:9-11; Isa 38:8).

d. Planets and the morning star. The only planet to be mentioned explicitly seems to be Saturn as the star-god Kaiwan (KJV Chiun) in Amos 5:26. The Babylonians and Assyrians called this planet kaawanu and in Arab. it is known as kaiwan.

The morning star (Isa 14:12; 2 Pet 1:19; Rev 2:28; 22:16) is never a star, but any one of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn when it is in position to be visible in the E just before sunrise. At times, two or more morning stars may be seen in the sky. However, the passages most likely refer to Venus, since it is the brightest and sometimes can be seen long after the sun is up.

e. Meteors. Meteors easily could fit descriptions such as “a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch” (Rev 8:10) and other references to falling stars (Matt 24:29; Mark 13:25; Rev 9:1; 12:4).

3. Stars and constellations. The Bible rarely mentions particular stars or constellations, except for the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades (Job 9:9; 38:31, 32; Amos 5:8). Constellation names seem appropriate in these passages, but none of the adopted trs. is completely certain, as indicated by the KJV use of the star name “Arcturus” where the ASV and RSV have “Bear.” The latter use follows from the similarity of the Heb. words ash and ayish found in the Job passages with the Arab. name nash (a bier) for Ursa Major, more commonly known as the Big Dipper, the Wagon, or the Plough.

The Heb. word kesil normally is tr. “fool” or “impious one,” but where it appears in Job and Amos a proper name is required, and all modern VSS seem to have followed the LXX rendering of Job 38:31 as ̓Ωρίωνος and used Orion, the name of the mighty hunter, although Job 9:9 has ̔Εσπερον. The correct meaning of the Heb. kima, which also appears in all three passages, is not known, but similar words mean “heap” in Syr. and Arab., and “family” in Assyrian, so that it is reasonable to use Pleiades, the name of the compact star cluster in Taurus. The LXX has πλειάδος in Job 9:9 and 38:31. For kima in Amos 5:8 the KJV has “seven stars” instead of Pleiades, consistent with the ancient tradition of seven stars in this cluster. Today only six are easily visible, although someone with keen eyesight can count eight or more. Probably one of the stars has faded in brightness. Telescopes show that the cluster contains more than a hundred stars.

Constellations also seem to be implied by the phrases “chambers of the south” (Job 9:9), “the fleeing serpent” (26:13), and “the Mazzaroth” (38:32). The identifications are entirely uncertain, though it has been suggested the Mazzaroth are the signs of the zodiac, the twelve constellations through which the sun passes during its yearly motion around the sky.

The Star of Bethlehem. Although God need not have used an ordinary astronomical event to herald the Incarnation, several natural explanations have been put forward for the star which appeared to the wise men in the E and guided them to the birthplace of Jesus (Matt 2:1-10). Certainly these men must have been familiar with the sky so that they would have noticed immediately any special arrangement of planets or a new object. Modern calculations show that during the possible years of Christ’s birth there must have been several close approaches of two or three planets, such as the conjunction of Venus, Mars, and Saturn on January 22, 12 b.c., or the approach of Venus and Jupiter within three arc minutes of each other on June 17, 2 b.c. These must have been notable astronomical events, but they do not easily fit the description of a single star which reappeared every night during the journey, since the relative motions of the planets would separate them again in less than a day.

More likely possibilities are a comet or a new star, either a nova or supernova. A new star occasionally does appear in the sky due to an explosion in an existing star initially too faint to be seen without a telescope. The resulting tremendous increase in brightness suddenly causes the star to become visible for a period, sometimes even in daylight. A nova is the consequence of a modest perturbation which increases the star’s luminosity only some ten thousand times. Such a relatively weak explosion will produce a new star brighter than the second magnitude about on the average of every ten years, and fainter ones more frequently. They will remain visible for a month or two. In the supernova explosion, the light may increase by a hundred million times and then fade gradually for a year or longer, but a hundred years or more usually elapses between these events. In a.d. 1054 in Taurus, the Chinese observed such a supernova which initially was as bright as Venus. At this location telescopes have found the Crab nebula, which is still expanding at 600 m. per second. It is a source of X-rays and radio waves as well as light and has a pulsar at its center emitting bursts of energy every 0.03 seconds.

Whatever the Star of Bethlehem was, it ought to have been seen by others besides the wise men. Among the ancient watchers of the skies, the Chinese kept the best records. From 32 b.c. to a.d. 13, they noted comets in 12 b.c., 10 b.c., and 4 b.c., and an object which appeared in March or early April of 5 b.c. in Capricornus and remained for over seventy days. A detailed description is given of the motions of the comet of 12 b.c., which had a large tail and was visible for fifty-six days beginning August 26th; this must have been Halley’s Comet which returns every seventy-six years. Since no motion was attributed to the object of 5 b.c., it may have been a nova or supernova. Whether any of these events can be identified with the star of the wise men depends on man’s estimate of the birth date of Christ.

4. Worship of the sun and stars, astrology. In contrast with the practices of most ancient cultures, the Bible strictly forbids worship of the sun, moon, and stars (Deut 4:19; 17:3), although the Israelites often failed to obey (2 Kings 23:5, 11; Jer 8:2). The Bible goes even further to proclaim that, “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Ps 19:1), and that the Creator deserves the praises of everything in the heavens (Ps 148:3).

The Bible strongly condemns astrology and all other forms of divination and augury (Deut 18:10-14), even though such things were common in the nations surrounding Israel (Jer 10:2). Isaiah is contemptuous of “those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons predict what shall befall you” (Isa 47:13). However, the admonitions against astrology are not to be confused with the exhortations to watch for special events in the sky, including eclipses and meteor showers which will herald Christ’s return (Matt 24:29; Luke 21:25).

5. Life on other worlds. The Bible gives no hint whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. As yet no astronomical observation has found any evidence for life outside our earth, either as simple forms or intelligent beings. It would be remarkable if God created so vast a universe of stars and galaxies without permitting life to develop somewhere else besides the earth.

Measurements by earth-bound telescopes, and esp. by space probes, have shown that it would be difficult for life as we know it, to exist elsewhere in the solar system. The surface temperature of Venus is 430^o centigrade, hot enough to melt lead, and Mercury is even hotter. No living organisms were found in the rocks the Apollo 11 and 12 astronauts picked up on the moon. The night temperature on the surface of Mars is 100^oC below freezing so that any organism would require some localized hot spot to keep alive. Deep in the atmospheres of hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia found in Jupiter and Saturn there should be layers warm enough for biological activity, but the absence of a solid or liquid surface prob. would permit the organisms to contact regions of temperature extremes where they would be destroyed.

A planet around another star could not be seen by present telescopes, but minute wobbles in the position of Barnard’s star, six light years away, show that it must have a companion with only a few times the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, it seems likely that some solar-type stars elsewhere in the Milky Way could have earth-like planets where life would be possible.

Bibliography J. Taylor, “Orion and Pleiades,” Dictionary of the Bible (1903); H. J. Blair, “Joshua,” New Bible Commentary (1953), 231; B. Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1955); J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958), 97; T. R. von Oppolzor, Canon of Eclipses (1962); H. P. Yoke, “Ancient and Mediaeval Observations of Comets and Novae in Chinese Sources,” Vistas in Astronomy (1962), v. 5, 127-224; F. Hoyle, Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars (1963); P. J. E. Peebles and D. T. Wilkinson, “The Primeval Fireball,” Scientific American (1967), v. 216, 28-36; C. I. Scofield, The New Scofield Reference Bible (1967); R. W. Sinnott, “Thoughts on the Star of Bethlehem,” Sky and Telescope (1968), v. 36, 384-386; R. B. Partridge, “The Primeval Fireball Today,” American Scientist (1969), v. 57, 37-74.