Texts in Conversation
Jude calls the false teachers wayward stars doomed to darkness, treating the stars and planets as living beings that can become disobedient and be punished. Philo similarly describes the stars as living, divine souls that fill the heavens.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo, On the Giants 1:2
Classical
"And when the angels of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, they took as wives any of them whom they chose." Those beings, whom other philosophers call demons, Moses usually calls angels; and they are souls hovering in the air. And let no one suppose that what is stated here is a fable, for the universe must necessarily be filled with living things in all its parts, since each of its primary and elementary parts contains its own proper animals, those consistent with its nature; --the earth containing terrestrial animals, the sea and the rivers containing aquatic animals, and the fire those that are born in fire (though it is said that these last are found chiefly in Macedonia), and the heaven containing the stars: for these also are entire souls pervading the universe, being unadulterated and divine, since they move in a circle, which is the kind of motion most akin to the mind, for each of them is the parent mind. So the air too must be full of living beings. And these beings are invisible to us, since the air itself is not visible to mortal sight. But it does not follow that, because our sight cannot perceive the forms of souls, there are no souls in the air; rather, they must necessarily be grasped by the mind, in order that like may be contemplated by like. For what shall we say? Must we not say that the animals of land and water live in air and spirit? What? Do pestilential afflictions not usually arise when the air is tainted or corrupted, as if the air were the cause of life in all such creatures? Again, when the air is free from all taint and harmless, as it especially tends to be when the north wind prevails, does breathing a purer air not make life more vigorous and more lasting? Is it natural, then, that the medium which gives life to all other animals, whether aquatic or terrestrial, should itself be empty and destitute of souls? On the contrary, even if all other animals were barren, the air by itself would still be bound to produce life, having received the seeds of life from the great Creator by his special favour.
Date: 20–50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Jude 1:13
New Testament
12 These men are dangerous reefs at your love feasts, feasting without reverence, feeding only themselves. They are waterless clouds, carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit—twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild sea waves, spewing out the foam of their shame; wayward stars for whom the utter depths of eternal darkness have been reserved. 14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, “Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones,
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Notes and References
... At the same time stars were depicted as sentient beings in the Second Temple period. Bruce Malina describes stars, as well as other celestial phenomena like the sun and moon, as "nonhuman personages obedient to God and of service to him." Malina illustrates his point with Baruch 3:34-35, a passage that describes the stars as participants in worship of the divine. Philo also depicts stars as living creatures endowed with mind and soul. 1 Enoch 18:14-16 and Jude 13 preserve traditions, however, about disobedient stars that eventually are punished. These accounts bear witness to a tradition in Judaism that understood stars to be creatures with awareness and with will. Stars also appear in Greco-Roman literature as divine souls or as fiery beings that are souls in the afterlife. Plato (i.e. Phaedrus), Aristophanes (Peace) and the Stoics especially understood stars as sidereal beings connected to the afterlife. ...
Bautch, Kelley Coblentz
A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17-19: “No One Has Seen What I Have Seen.”
(p. 47) Brill, 2003
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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