Page 227 - Foundations

dispensations in the Bible. Even the unregenerate have commented on this correspondence. The
authors of the book Hamlet’s Mill believed that all of the world’s religious teachings (they referred
to them as myths, including the teachings of the Bible) arose as attempts to explain the motions of
the heavens. I can well imagine the “aha!” moment that the authors had when they discerned there
was a very profound correspondence between the precession of the equinoxes through the
constellations of the zodiac and the stories recorded in the Bible. Yet, approaching this subject from
the perspective of unbelievers, they were unable to countenance the thought that these
correspondences were the result of divine design. Instead, they imagined the Bible to be a book of
myths that arose as attempts to convey knowledge about the motions of the heavens.

Sir William Drummund was another unbeliever who viewed the Hebrew Scriptures as something
other than divine revelation. He wrote Oedipus Judaicus - Allegory in the Old Testament in the year
1811. Drummund believed the Hebrew Scriptures to be disguised astronomical records.

Drummund makes his case that at the time of Abraham, the Amorites first recorded the shift from the
Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries as represented by the year commencing with the Ram (Aries) rather
than the bull (Taurus). The Book of Joshua indicates that by the time of Moses the equinoxes had
already shifted from Taurus to Aries as Moses had ordained that the civil year should commence with
the month of Nisan (Aries) rather than the month of Taurus. The feast of the Passover is probably a
celebration of the Age of Aries with the Paschal Lamb representative of Aries, traditionally
associated with the symbol of the ram or sheep.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_age]

There are nearly as many schemes for calculating the beginning and end dates for astrological ages
as there are astrologers and astronomers. Anyone can make a fair estimation of the ages in a general
sense simply by study of the precession of the equinoxes, but setting precise dates is difficult for those
who do not factor in the testimony of the Bible nor allow for divine direction of the stars. The
Wikipedia article on Astrological Ages cites three different calculations for the beginning and end
dates of the Age of Aries. Using the Greek method of allotting to each constellation 30 degrees along
the plane of the ecliptic, two astrologers proposed the following dates.

• Neil Mann interpretation: began in ca. 2150 BC and ended in ca. 1 AD.
• Patrick Burlingame interpretation: began in ca. BC 2006 and ended in ca. BC 6.
[Source: Ibid]

Using the alternate method of using the constellation itself to set its boundaries, the following dates
are set forth.

• Shephard Simpson interpretation: began ca. 1875 BC to ca. 100 AD.
[Source: Ibid]

What is evident in each of these views is that the age of Aries began after the flood of Noah, and
ended at the beginning of the Christian era. I would suggest that postdiluvian men, with their
tremendous focus upon the heavens, are responsible for establishing Aries as first in the list of
zodiacal constellations. The reason their lists begin with Aries is because the earth after the flood