III. References to the Sky and to the Celestial Bodies in Sacred Scripture

Sky Published on Inters.org (https://inters.org) Sky Copyright © Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science ISSN: 2037-2329 and the author. No part of this article may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without the prior permission of the Editors. To refer to the content of this article, quote: INTERS – Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, edited by G. Tanzella-Nitti and A. Strumia, www.inters.org Date: 2002 DOI: 10.17421/2037-2329-2002-GT-7 Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti [1] I. Observation of the Sky and Natural Religious Experience 1. The Heavens: A Place of Divine Transcendence 2. The Mythical-Religious Meaning of Some Celestial Bodies - II. The Association between Celestial Phenomena and Human Lives according to Mesopotamian Astrology and Greek Polytheism 1. Two Different Ways of Relating to Celestial Bodies 2. Astrology and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition - III. References to the Sky and to Celestial Bodies in Sacred Scripture 1. The Sky in Natural Religious Language and the God of Israel. 2. Biblical References to the Sky and Their Principal Meanings 3. The Celestial Bodies - IV. Heaven in the Language of Theology 1.Scientific Thought and the Religious-Theological Notion of Heaven 2. Heaven as a Place and as a “Status.” If nature, understood in the broad sense, was the place from which primitive religiosity and philosophy began their reflections, followed closely by scientific reflections, the natural place in which the weaving together of science, philosophy, and religion reached its greatest cultural expression was, without a doubt, the “sky,” regarded as a space of both conceptual and experimental consideration. Astronomy, having developed a methodology founded on the regularity of celestial phenomena and their predictability, was the discipline that gave philosophy the first elements that shaped early ideas about the universe and the place human beings occupy within it. The observation of the sky and its phenomena has also affected religious language, providing words to express much of religious content; these words have developed a sacral context that even the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in spite of the specificity and originality of its message, has recognized and embraced. Furthermore, a broad range of artistic and cultural expressions, from primitive buildings to grand medieval cathedrals, testify to a profound connection between the sky and religion. Several monuments of ancient times, such as the ritual areas of Stonehenge and many of the pyramids, had both religious and astronomical aims. The Gothic Cathedrals built in the Middle Ages certainly offer the best example of the union between faith and geometry. Many places of worship, both Christian and non-Christian, maintain the ancient concept of the temple as a symbol and representation of the universe. In all of them, the position of the sun remains crucial. For example, in the hermits’ buildings of Celtic Christianity the light coming in from the windows, oeil-de-boeufs, and lunettes regulated the hours of prayer; in the cathedrals, it marked the day and month of the year on the floor of the church and illuminated the mosaics or bas-reliefs of the Virgin Mary or the saints on the days of their liturgical celebrations. © Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science 2003-2013 Page 1 of 16 Sky Published on Inters.org (https://inters.org) I. Observation of the Sky and Natural Religious Experience From a lexical point of view, in modern languages the word “sky” (Lat. Coelum; Gr. ouranós) presents a certain ambivalence, since it is used for both scientific and religious purposes. Only the English language preserves the trace of a past distinction, by reserving the word “sky” for objective and scientific purposes, whereas “heaven” is used for religious connotations. It is also possible, however, to detect certain nuances in the ancient Hebrew language of the Bible: For instance, the word samayim, which is a plural form denoting “the skies”, is used as a synonym for raqîa‘, that is, “dome” (as, for instance, in Gen 1:8: “God called the dome ‘the sky’”). The former is actually connected primarily to a religious meaning, while the latter covers the cosmogonical side of the same concept. In literature and culture in general, many languages are accustomed to the fact that the word used for Galileo’s sky and the sky found in poetry is the same as the word used by Jesus of Nazareth for the prayer he taught his disciples (in English, the word is rendered “Heaven”): “Our Father, who art in heaven” and the Creator of “heaven and earth.” The overlapping of so many different religious experiences, existential paths, cultural backgrounds, and scientific elements leads the “sky” to become a scene of interdisciplinary dialogue and it raises a number of questions. Our modern age has often believed it could provide answers to these questions by simply substituting the object of religious experience with that of scientific observation. 1. The Heavens: A Place of Divine Transcendence. In most primitive religions, the name of the divinity seems to recall a Uranian context of some kind. A fragment of one of the lost works of Aristotle contains explicit reference to the role played by the observation of the sky. According to him, humanity had already derived a notion of God (even before philosophers had begun to reflect on the question) from two primary sources: the ordered movement of the stars and the human soul (cf. E. Gilson, God and Philosophy [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941], p. 32). In Book II of his De Natura Deorum, Cicero states that there are four reasons why the notion of God [2], or rather of gods, has been accepted since ancient times: the desire to access the future; gratitude for and astonishment at nature’s wonderful and beneficial gifts; the action of tremendous atmospheric agents inspiring fear and dependence; and the magnificent order there is within the universe and especially in the movement of the stars in the sky. Many centuries later, Immanuel Kant reached a very similar conclusion in his well-known statement: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me” (Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, “Conclusions”). Strictly speaking, the names most religious traditions have given their divinities or Supreme Being do not refer to the “sky” itself, but rather to Somebody who dwells in the sky, as if it were his home. Since ancient times, the sky has naturally been associated with the “place of transcendence” because it is a limpid image of the attributes of the latter: It is immense, lofty, eternal, and stable, and it is the seat of phenomena and energies that by far exceed that which is accessible to and controllable by human beings on earth. “The phrase ‘contemplating the vault of heaven’ really means something when it is applied to primitive man [...]. Such contemplation is the same as a revelation. The sky shows itself as it really is: infinite, transcendent. The vault of heaven is, more than anything else, ‘something quite apart’ from the tiny thing that is man and his span of life. The symbolism of its transcendence derives from the simple realization of its infinite height. ‘Most High’ becomes quite naturally an attribute of the divinity” (Eliade, 1971, pp. 38-39). The close relationship between the sky and the divinity does not necessarily imply a “Uranian naturalism”: Indeed, in archaic religions, Supreme Beings are never reducible to a mere hierophany (i.e., a manifestation of the sacred) of the sky and its phenomena. Their “being” is something more, and their characters are richer, than what celestial hierophanies may lead one to believe. Even where a divinity (or divinities) “is the sky,” it is actually always “more than the sky.” © Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science 2003-2013 Page 2 of 16 Sky Published on Inters.org (https://inters.org) A number of the names of ancient gods underline the close relationship established between the sky and the divinities of different peoples. Just to mention a few examples, among the many primitive peoples of Africa, for the Bushmen, Khaang is “he who dwells in the sky”; for the Bantu people of Rwanda, Imana is “he who made the sky and dwells in it”; for the Maasai, Ngai is “he who dwells in the sky, behind the clouds.” Among other peoples, for the Eskimos, Tulugankul is “he who dwells in the sky”; Kareya is “the one up there” for Californian Indians, while according to the Guaranì, Tamoi is “the old one up there”; among the Sioux and the Hurons the same names, Wakan and Orenda, are used to indicate the divinity and the sky itself. Among the primitive people of Australia, Kohin, the Supreme Being worshipped in the Herbert River region, “dwells in the Milky Way and sends his lightning,” and Nurelle, worshipped by the Wimbajo, is “the one who has risen to the sky, who destroys the moon every month and sets the rising and setting of the sun.” Among the names by which other Australian peoples have called their Supreme Being, there are even more interesting expressions, for example, the one who, living in the sky, has the stars “as his wives” (Atnatu, for the Kaitish) or “as the fires of his encampment” (Tukura, for the Loritja). In addition to this, almost everywhere, thunder is referred to as his voice, lightning as the sign of his action, and the sun and the moon as his eyes. In telluric areas where the name of the main divinity (or divinities) refers to the earth, there is often another god related to the sky and their coordinated relationship develops into the complex cosmogonies expressing the myth of the “origins.” With respect to the life and activity of primitive human beings, the sky often stands out as the divinity’s seat, since it is here that most meteorological phenomena take place.

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