Parkhurst) I found the שמים smim, called the disposers of the affairs of men, and by mistake, if it were a mistake, I quoted it as from Parkhurst in my Celtic Druids. It is of little consequence where I got the quotation, as the fact itself is true. The planets in ancient times were always taken to be the superintendants and regulators of the affairs of mankind, and this is the meaning of Genesis. This idea, too, was the foundation of all judicial astrology: which is as visible as the noonday sun in every part of the Old and New Testament. The word רקיע rqio means the firmament or ethereal space; the word ככב ccb means a star: and though the word שמים smim sometimes means stars, as we call the planets stars, yet its primary meaning is the disposers or planets. Originally the fixed stars were not regarded as disposers.
For proof that the word שמים smim means placers or disposers, see Hutchinson, “Of the Trinity of the Gentiles,”[1] and Moses’s Principia.[2] They shew that the essential meaning of the word שמים smim is disposers or placers of other things. If they were not to dispose or place the affairs or conduct of men, pray what were they to place? Were they to dispose of the affairs of beasts, or of themselves? They were the צבא Zba, or Heavenly Host, and I have no doubt the original word was confined to the wandering stars, whatever it might be afterward. Parkhurst and Hutchinson shew great unwillingness to allow that they mean disposers, but they are both obliged to confess it, and in this confession, admit, in fact, the foundation of judicial astrology.
It is very certain that the ancient philosophers knew the difference between the stars and planets, as well as the moderns. This is the only place where the formation of the planets is named; the formation of the sun, moon, and stars, is described in the 14th verse. As I have just said, השמים esmim does not mean the vast expanse, because this is afterward described in the 6th verse by the word רקיע rqio.
In the eighth verse the word rqio is used. In our translation it is said, he called the expanse heavens. But before the word רקיע rqio the particle ל l, the sign of the dative case is written, which shews that a word is understood to make sense. Thus, And he called the שמים smim, in the rqio or expanse, planets. This merely means, and he gave to the smim the name which they now bear, of smim. This explanation of mine is justified by the Jerusalem Targum, in its use of the word יתשמיא itsmia, placers.
Persons are apt to regard with contempt the opinion, that the planetary bodies are animated or rational beings. But let it not be forgotten that the really great Kepler believed our globe to be endowed with living faculties; that it possessed instinct and volition—an hypothesis which Mons. Patrin has supported with great ingenuity.[3] Among those who believed that the planets were intelligent beings, were Philo, Origen, and Maimonides.[4]
The first verse of Genesis betrays the Persian or Oriental philosophy in almost every word. The first word rasit ראשית or wisdom refers to one, or probably to the chief, of the emanations from the Deity. This is allowed by most of the early fathers, who see in it the second person of the Trinity. The word בארא bara in the singular number, followed by אלהים Aleim in the plural, or a noun of multitude, refers to the Trinity, three Persons and one God; and does not mean that the Aleim created, but that it formed, εποιησεν, fecit, as the Septuagint says, out of matter previously existing. On the question of the eternity of matter it is perfectly neutral: it gives no opinion. The word השמים esmim in the Hebrew, and השמין esmin in the Chaldee, do not mean the heavens or heavenly bodies generally, but the planets only, the disposers, as Dr. Parkhurst, after the Magi, calls them.
This is all perfectly consistent, and in good keeping, with what we know of the Jewish Cabala.
