Chronological timeline of texts tagged with Wayward Stars
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In the ancient world, the stars and planets were thought to be living beings, rational and divine, set in the heavens and moving in fixed paths. The notion of a "wandering star" came from watching the sky, observing how a few objects in the night sky drifted and at times appear to reverse course, a backward path known today as retrograde motion. Greek observers named these few the wanderers, which is the root of the word planet. Because the steady stars modeled obedience, the "wandering stars" were interpreted as rebellious divine beings that strayed from their path and were destined to be judged for their disobedience.
Note: Dates shown in this timeline are approximate and based on scholarly estimates.
Back to Tag300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.
1 Enoch 2:1
Pseudepigrapha
1 Observe everything that occurs in the heaven, how the celestial bodies do not alter their paths, and the lights in the sky, how they all rise and set orderly, each in its own season, without deviating from their assigned courses. 2 Look at the earth, and pay attention to the things that unfold from beginning to end, how consistent they are, how nothing on earth changes, how all of God’s works appear to you. 3 Observe the summer and winter, how the entire earth is filled with water, and how clouds, dew, and rain cover it.
300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.
1 Enoch 18:15
Pseudepigrapha
12 And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no dome of heaven above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it; there was no water upon it, and no birds, but it was a waste and horrible place. 13 I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, and to me, when I inquired about them, 14 The angel said: 'This place is the end of heaven and earth; this has become a prison for the stars and the army of heaven. 15 And the stars which roll over the fire are those which have transgressed the command of the Lord at the beginning of their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times. 16 And He was angry with them, and bound them until the time when their guilt should be consummated, even for ten thousand years.'
300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.
1 Enoch 21:5
Pseudepigrapha
1 I went on to where things were chaotic. 2 There I saw something terrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place that was chaotic and terrible. 3 There I saw seven stars of heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and blazing with fire. 4 Then I said: 'For what sin are they bound, and why have they been thrown in here?' 5 Then Uriel, one of the holy angels who was with me and was their leader, said: 'Enoch, why do you ask, and why are you so eager for the truth? 6 These are among the stars of heaven that transgressed the command of the Lord, and they are bound here until ten thousand years, the time fixed for their sins, are completed.'
300 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.
1 Enoch 80:6
Pseudepigrapha
5 In those days, the sun will be seen, and it will travel in the evening on the extremity of the great chariot in the west and will shine more brightly than is typical for the order of light. 6 Many leaders of the stars will deviate from their established order. They will change their orbits and duties and not appear at their designated seasons. 7 The entire order of the stars will be hidden from the sinners, and the thoughts of those on the earth will be mistaken about them, leading them to go astray and even regard them as gods. 8 Evil will be multiplied upon them, and punishment will come upon them to destroy all.'
100 B.C.E. - 100 C.E.
Testament of Naphtali 3:2
Pseudepigrapha
1 So do not be eager to corrupt your deeds through greed or to deceive your souls with empty words; for if you keep silent with a pure heart, you will understand how to hold fast to the will of God and to cast away the will of Beliar. 2 The sun, the moon, and the stars do not change their order; so you too must not change the law of God by the disorder of your deeds. 3 The Gentiles went astray and abandoned the Lord; they changed their order and obeyed sticks and stones, the spirits of dishonesty. 4 But you must not be like that, my children. Recognize in the sky, the earth, the sea, and all created things the Lord who made everything, so that you do not become like Sodom, which changed the order of nature. 5 In the same way the Watchers also changed the order of their nature, and the Lord cursed them at the flood; because of them he made the earth uninhabited and barren.
80-30 B.C.E.
Psalms of Solomon 18:10
Pseudepigrapha
8 to direct people to righteous actions, in the fear of God, to confirm them all in the presence of the Lord. 9 This will be a good generation living in the fear of God, in the days of mercy. 10 Our God is great and glorious living in the highest heavens, who arranged the sun and moon into orbits to mark the times of the hours from day to day. And they have not deviated from their course that he appointed for them. 11 Their course each day is in the fear of God, from the day God created them and until forever. 12 And they have not wandered from the day he created them, from ancient generations. They have not veered off their course except when God directed them by the command of his servants.
c. 360 B.C.E.
Plato, Timaeus 40b
Classical
And each member of this class He endowed with two motions, whereof the one is uniform motion in the same spot, whereby it conceives always identical thoughts about the same objects, and the other is a forward motion due to its being dominated by the revolution of the Same and Similar; but in respect of the other five motions they are at rest and move not, so that each of them may attain the greatest possible perfection. From this cause, then, came into existence all those unwandering stars which are living creatures divine and eternal and abide for ever revolving uniformly in the same spot; and those which keep swerving and wandering have been generated in the fashion previously described. And Earth, our nurse, which is globed around the pole that stretches through all, He framed to be the wardress and fashioner of night and day, she being the first and eldest of all the gods which have come into existence within the Heaven. But the choric dances of these same stars and their crossings one of another, and the relative reversals and progressions of their orbits, and which of the gods meet in their conjunctions, and how many are in opposition, and behind which and at what times they severally pass before one another and are hidden from our view, and again re-appearing send upon men unable to calculate alarming portents of the things which shall come to pass hereafter — to describe all this without an inspection of models of these movements would be labor in vain.
300-250 B.C.E.
Aratus, Phaenomena 454
Classical
But of quite a different class are those five other orbs, that intermingle with them and wheel wandering on every side of the twelve figures of the Zodiac. No longer with the others as they guide couldst thou mark where lies the path of those, since all pursue a shifty course, and long are the periods of their revolution and far distant lies the goal of their conjunction. When I come to them my daring fails, but mine be the power to tell of the orbits of the Fixed Stars and Signs in heaven.
54-51 B.C.E.
Cicero, Dream of Scipio 6.17
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.
20-50 C.E.
Philo, On the Creation 1:50
Classical
But since every city with properly established laws has a regular constitution, this citizen of the world had to adopt the same constitution as the one that prevailed in the whole world. This constitution is the right reason of nature, more properly called law, a divine arrangement by which everything suitable and appropriate is assigned to each individual. But this city and constitution must have had some citizens before man, who could rightly be called citizens of a mighty city, since they had received the widest imaginable circumference to live in and had been enrolled in the largest and most perfect commonwealth. And who could these have been but rational, divine natures, some incorporeal and perceptible only by the intellect, others not lacking bodily substance, as the stars in fact are? And the one who associated and lived among them naturally lived in unmixed happiness. Being akin and closely related to the ruler of all, since a great deal of the divine spirit had flowed into him, he was eager to say and do everything that might please his father and king, following him step by step along the paths that the virtues prepare and make plain, the paths on which only those souls may walk who regard becoming like God, who made them, as the proper end of their existence.
20-50 C.E.
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.
77 C.E.
(6.) Between this body and the heavens there are suspended, in this aërial spirit, seven stars, separated by determinate spaces, which, on account of their motion, we call wandering, although, in reality, none are less so. The sun is carried along in the midst of these, a body of great size and power, the ruler, not only of the seasons and of the different climates, but also of the stars themselves and of the heavens. When we consider his operations, we must regard him as the life, or rather the mind of the universe, the chief regulator and the God of nature; he also lends his light to the other stars. He is most illustrious and excellent, beholding all things and hearing all things, which, I perceive, is ascribed to him exclusively by the prince of poets, Homer.
90-100 C.E.
Jude 1:12
New Testament
10 But these men do not understand the things they slander, and they are being destroyed by the very things that, like irrational animals, they instinctively comprehend. 11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, and because of greed have abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error; hence, they will certainly perish in Korah’s rebellion. 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.
90-100 C.E.
Jude 1:13
New Testament
11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, and because of greed have abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error; hence, they will certainly perish in Korah’s rebellion. 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.