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Page:Colson - The Week (1926, IA weekessayonorigi0000fhco).djvu/94

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§ 6
The Week in the New Testament and the Early Church

The New Testament shews little sign of the great astrological movement of those times. It is true that at the very outset of the Gospels we find a story in which Chaldaean astrologers have learnt by a star that a King of the Jews has been born, but the details added, namely that the star accompanies them and finally indicates the house in which the Child lay, have no relation to the regular creed of astrology. In fact the story, though, as far as it goes, it regards astrological divination with a favour which caused considerable searchings of heart among some of the Fathers, does not suggest that the writer knew anything more than that Chaldaean sages were credited with a power of interpreting the stars. In the Acts the absence of allusions to astrology is very marked. We are apt to forget that this book, or at least the latter part of it, is an authority of the first importance not only for the history of the primitive Church but for some aspects of general social life in the provinces of the Empire. There is in fact no parallel to it in what we call the secular literature of the time—nothing, that is, which gives us a similar