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1 Enoch describes seven stars that disobey God's command and are bound in a prison until judgment. The Philosopher Cicero similarly describes the same seven wandering bodies as planetary spheres set in order beneath the fixed stars.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Enoch 21:5
Pseudepigrapha
1 And I proceeded to where things were chaotic. 2 And I saw there something horrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible. 3 And there I saw seven stars of heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and burning with fire. 4 Then I said: 'For what sin are they bound, and on what account have they been cast in here?' 5 Then said Uriel, one of the holy angels who was with me and was chief over them, and said: 'Enoch, why do you ask, and why are you eager for the truth? 6 These are of the number of the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and are bound here until ten thousand years, the time entailed by their sins, are consummated.'
Cicero Dream of Scipio 6.17
Somnium Scipionis
Classical
See! the universe is linked together in nine circles or rather spheres; one of which is that of the heavens, the outermost of all, which embraces all the other spheres, the supreme deity, which keeps in and holds together all the others; and to this are attached those everlasting orbits of the stars. Beneath this there lie seven, which turn backwards with a counter revolution to the heavens; and of these spheres that star holds one, which men on earth call Saturn's star. Next is that bright radiance, rich in hope and healing for the sons of men, which is called Jove's star; then one fiery red and dreaded by the world, which you call Mars; next lower down the sun holds nearly the middle region, the leader, chief and ruler of the other lights, the mind and ordering spirit of the universe, of such magnitude that he illumines the whole and fills it with his light. With him Venus and Mercury keep pace as satellites in their successive spheres; and in the lowest zone of all the moon revolves lighted up by the rays of the sun. Now below these there is nothing more but what is mortal and transient except those souls which the bounty of the Gods has given to the sons of men; above the moon all is eternal.
Date: 54-51 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... 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. The soul, in fact, was viewed among certain Greek philosophers as fiery in nature, much like the sun and moon. The soul, according to Ionian philosophers, was created from a fiery principle, the divine ether, and as a part of the cosmos, it would return to this realm in death. For instance, in "Scipio's Dream" 16, Cicero has Africanus relate that the end to a good life is the road to the skies (via in caelum). This is where people, unburdened of their bodies, can join in the circle of light, the Milky Way (Via Lactea), brightest among the fires. ...
Bautch, Kelley Coblentz
A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17-19: “No One Has Seen What I Have Seen.”
(pp. 47-48) 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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