From the varied narratives of Christian pilgrims the Western student might have gleaned some arid details about routes eastward and about the topography of the Holy Land. _THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE_ We saw in the first chapter that Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and most of the other Greek philosophers had believed that the universe is eternal, though subject to ever-recurring destructions by fire or water, followed by “rebirths” (_palingeneses_).[209] Aristotle had attributed to the stars control over all occurrences in the sphere below the moon; not only over physical and material happenings, but over the mind and will. He had believed that this was by virtue of the fact that the celestial bodies are formed of a divine substance different from the four corruptible elements which constitute the sublunar world. On this theory of the stars had been built the “science” of astrology. CHRISTIANITY OPPOSED TO BELIEF IN AN ETERNAL UNIVERSE What could be more antagonistic to such ideas than the teachings of the Bible? The antagonism, however, was not felt by all the Fathers of the Church. The fascination of Platonism led many to seek for analogies between Greek and Biblical cosmology. Clement of Alexandria, for instance, thought that the destruction of the world by fire prophesied in Deuteronomy (xxxii, 22) was one of those general burnings which would occur when the stars find themselves in conjunction in Cancer.[210] Indeed, it was a common belief, and one shared by Augustine, that the Greeks themselves had actually derived the best of their theological concepts from the Bible.[211] But the glaring contradictions between Scriptural and classical cosmology could not be overlooked even by the Augustinians, and classical theories of the periodicity of the universe in general were vigorously combated. Christian monotheism could never be reconciled with a fatalistic doctrine that attributed to the stars in their control over the destinies of the world a quality that approached the divine; and through Christian teachings the astrology built on this doctrine was discredited and the stars stripped of their divinity.[212] This alone was enough to strike a deathblow at the idea of the unvarying periodicity of the universe under celestial controls; but other arguments equally potent were leveled against it. Augustine refused to believe that Christ had been incarnated an infinite number of times in the past or was destined to suffer the Passion an infinite number of times in the future.[213] Origen declared that another Adam, another Moses, another Judas were unthinkable and asked how the belief in the stellar control of man’s actions and volition could be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will.[214]