A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our EraThorndike, Lynn
Religion
A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2): During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era
Thorndike, Lynn
Magic -- History; Science -- History
Philo, nevertheless, despite his attack on the Chaldeans, believed
in much which we should call astrological. The stars, although not
independent gods, are nevertheless divine images of surpassing beauty
and possess divine natures, although they are not incorporeal beings.
Philo distinguishes between the stars, men, and other animals as
follows. The beasts are capable of neither virtue nor vice; human
beings are capable of both; the stars are intelligent animals, but
incapable of any evil and wholly virtuous.[1570] They were native-born
citizens of the world long before its first human citizen had been
naturalized.[1571] God, moreover, did not postpone their creation
until the fourth day because superiors are subject to inferiors. On
the contrary they are the viceroys of the Father of all and in the
vast city of this universe the ruling class is made up of the planets
and fixed stars, and the subject class consists of all the natures
beneath the moon.[1572] A relation of natural sympathy exists between
the different parts of the universe, and all things upon the earth are
dependent upon the stars.[1573]
[Sidenote: They do not cause evil: but it is possible to predict the
future from their motions.]
Philo of course will not admit that evil is caused either by the
virtuous stars or by God working through them. As has been said,
he attributed evil to matter or to “the natural changes of the
elements,”[1574] drawing a line between God and nature in much the
fashion of the church fathers later. But he granted that “before now
some men have conjecturally predicted disturbances and commotions of
the earth from the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and innumerable
other events which have turned out most exactly true.”[1575] Philo’s
interest in astronomy and astrology is further suggested by his
interpretation of the eleven stars of Joseph’s dream as referring to
the signs of the zodiac,[1576] Joseph himself making the twelfth; and
by his interpreting the ladder in Jacob’s dream which stretched between
earth and heaven as referring to the air,[1577] into which earth’s
evaporations dissolve, while the moon is not pure ether like the other
stars but itself contains some air. This accounts, Philo thinks, for
the spots upon the moon—an explanation which I do not remember having
met in subsequent writers.
[Sidenote: Jewish astrology.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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