Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Stars? Divine?

I maintain that the stars’ role as active agents is, in a certain sense, linked to a divine nature, even if the biblical authors often deny them this status outright. Put another way, agents that would have been considered divine in the broader ancient Near East are frequently labeled otherwise by the biblical authors. Despite the biblical authors’ theologically oriented reluctance, I understand biblical narratives that include astral features as active agents as a genuine literary reflex of Canaanite-Israelite astral religion, even if this reflex was heavily qualified by the monotheizing penchants of the biblical authors.—Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East, page 291

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I've always been intrigued by C.S. Lewis's view of stars as expressed in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He puts words in the mouth of a recovering star in Narnia, saying something to the effect that even in our world, stars are far more than they appear to be. I would tend to agree—he develops this a bit more in Perelandra in a delightful exposition on sexless sexuality.
</idle musing>

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