Texts in Conversation
The historian Pliny notes that the seven planets are called wandering stars because of their unusual motion. Jude draws on this tradition when he calls the false teachers wayward stars headed for judgment.
Share:
2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Pliny Natural History 2.12
Classical
11 Thus the mutual embrace of the unlike results in an interlacing, the light substances being prevented by the heavy ones from flying up, while on the contrary the heavy substances are held from crashing down by the upward tendency of the light ones. In this way owing to an equal urge in opposite directions the elements remain stationary, each in its own place, bound together by the unresting revolution of the world itself; and with this always running back to its starting-point, the earth is the lowest and central object in the whole, and stays suspended at the pivot of the universe and also balancing the bodies to which its suspension is due; thus being alone motionless with the universe revolving round her she both hangs attached to them all and at the same time is that on which they all rest. 12 Upheld by the same vapour between earth and heaven, at definite spaces apart, hang the seven stars which owing to their motion we call 'planets,' although no stars wander less than they do. In the midst of these moves the sun, whose magnitude and power are the greatest, and who is the ruler not only of the seasons and of the lands; but even of the stars themselves and of the heaven.
Date: 77 C.E. (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,
Tags:
Search:
Notes and References
... our word “planet” is derived from the Greek planētēs, meaning “wanderer.” In the Septuagint the word is only attested in Hosea 9:17 as a translation of the Hebrew nōdědîm, referring to those who “flee, escape, wander about.” In the New Testament (Jude 13), as with all other early Christian literature, planētēs is used only in conjunction with asteres, “star.” So, in the pre-Copernican cosmological systems, planets were viewed as wandering stars, whose heavenly paths were irregular. Incidentally, we will see in the coming chapters that the wandering nature of the planets is what became the most perplexing feature of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic systems. ...
Greenwood, Kyle
Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible between the Ancient World and Modern Science
(p. 92) InterVarsity Press, 2015
* 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.
Your Feedback:
Leave a Comment
Anonymous comments are welcome. All comments are subject to moderation.