Biblical Astrotheology [Part I]: Adam's Rib: Man-made, in the Image of God

Introduction

In this series, I explore the dynamic of comparative Astrotheology which arises from the intersection of the Hebrew Bible and Indo-European culture. Note that I come at this simply from an historian's perspective, i.e., from the angle of view that presumes that the narrative developments of these ancient works were not created in a cultural vacuum, as by Hebrews who knew nothing of Indo-European culture; quite the opposite, I aim to show how their materials were inherited from the ancient IE cosmological and astrological ways of speaking, but that they frequently put an iconoclastic spin on these narratives. The recognition of how these narratives were assimilated to Hebrew values exposes tensions and contensions with popular language in its attempts to account for the world, fate, and history.

I anticipate that this study will also give us further reason to take comparative studies more seriously, as the study discloses elements which have been overlooked by Colonialist and Reconstructionist schools of Indology.


Abraham's World

If we take note of the fact that Abraham was a pagan before he was a Jew—or at least, if we acknowledge that, prior to concluding that his own God was some how different from the gods of those in whose culture he first came to ask the question of who his God was—we are left with the question of how Abraham's language came to signal something different than the wide-spread idea of gods and demons. Was, for example, Adam (of Adam and Eve fame) Abraham's Adam? Or was the image of Adam already a matter of wide-spread cultural narrative? Another way to ask this question: did Abraham, being the first Jew, make Adam up, or did he receive this image from "Pagan" sources?

And what of the Flood narrative? If we do not promote any bias toward a particularly Biblical telling of history, how do we account for these narratives? Are they to be taken as semiotic artifacts whose world has long eroded away? A past irrecuperable?

And what of the tower of Babel? Is that too just one more uniquely Jewish image, accountable only by virtue of its relation to the Old Testament?

Or do we have with us today some domain which suggests a common, intelligible origin for all of these narratives? Well, let us discuss the major elements of the narrative, and consider how they might fit together...

Let us go through these elements in the order which Genesis introduces them: 

If these seven days are reduced to Astrological terms, what would each signify?

Also, check out this link. It argues that the "Creation Week" is actually reflected in the Zodiac!

Here then, I forward an important theory, that the narratives of Adam and Eve (in addition to other narratives found in the Bible) can be plausibly traced to the same cultural practices which produced Paganism. By examining these elements carefully, we can develop a concept of whence these elements were composed, and thereby, how they bind the fates of European theistic cosmogony to that of South Asia's.

Seven Days of Creation: accounting for the constellations: the kinds of regions (waters = Tropic of Capricorn, mountain/Eden = Tropic of Cancer), creatures in the sky (cf., Prajåpati's many forms, male and female, and cf., Noah's Ark, Southern Boat, Waters);

Day 1: The Sun, Moon, Planets, Stars and the Night Sky
Day 2: The Summer and the Winter (the Earth and the Year)
Day 3: The Dry Land (repetition of Day 2)? But Ophiuchus and the Banyan
Day 4: The visible "Planets" (including Sun and Moon for total of seven)
Day 5: Which Aquatic and Aqualine creatures survive?
Day 6: Which animals and humans? (Note that if we suggest only Adam and Eve, then God as Bootes is absent?
Day 7: Rest/Death Boötes/Ursa Major

While Creationists get caught up in the imagery of seven literal days, the allegorical character of this description really ought to be obvious to anyone with even a basic astronomical familiarity with the ancient constellations and the basic ideas behind astrotheology.

It helps if we reflect on the conditions of pre-Historic man. "pre-Historic" here does not simply designate the human for whom no historical description is recorded in antiquity, i.e., illiterate man, but rather, designates primarily the human who did not think of the world in Historical terms; i.e., the human who was not yet certain of the ubiquity of Time, and who thus was prone to think of the world in terms of spontaneous generation, or genesis ex nihilo, creation from "Nothing". This idea remains part of contemporary theological discourse, and forms an important counterpart to the saecular (from the Greek saecularus, "pertaining to ages") image of ubiquitous temporality. Those who claim that there survives a self-identical soul, one that can ascend to the "heavens," where it attains to the pure Eternal, freed from the stain of temporality, are prone to fall back to this metaphysical "Nothingness', this "Emptiness" upon which no stain can be ascribed. One can stain a cloth, perhaps, but what can stain empty space, i.e., that which, as a pure passivity, does not cling, does not interfere, does not interact with any force whatsoever? Is Eternity thus the deepest form of passivity, the primary form of the transcendental Nothing? And if so, is not temporality but pure force? Pure activity? Is not Being Pure Activity in the face of impending doom, death (Non-being)? These primary concepts occupied an important place in the discourse of the 20th centuries most prominent hermeneuts of history, i.e., "philosophers".

Many of the extant Astrological forces are accounted for, even if some of them are still unknown: (the Mountain as Ophiuchus [alternatively, the Summit of the Year]

Also, doesn't God actually create the world in six days? On the Seventh Day, he rested, signaling "Death"? Is not the "six day" trope significant of the base-numerical practices found in Calendrical measurements? As such, the Seventh day is a kind of "base-seven", fitting into neither the 24 hour day, nor the 30 day month, nor the 360 day year. It is, as such, a kind of schism in Time, a "different" Time than the "Pagan" schedule invokes. If we take this to reflect "Death" (i.e., Bootes/Yama), does not God walk at every moment with Adam and Eve? Does not he enter into death even prior to Adam or Eve? Or if, in a double role, God is Hercules, as well as Bootes, then He is both the original form of Man and the Grim Reaper (Bone/Conch-Shell), both Life and Death. [Hades and Haladhara?]

Made in the Image of God: Adam's Rib is Corona Borealis, by inference then, Adam is Hercules, and mankind is made in the image of Hercules.

Eve: the "woman" who is both "rib" and "breast": Corona Borealis
The multiple names for Corona Borealis
"Semi-circle": Ardhacandra ("Half-moon"), and the name of a Constellation, acc to Varāha Mihira's Bṛhat-Saṁhitā.
Woman's Breast
Fig Leaf
Rib



The fruits of Eden "eat from all the fruits of this garden, but for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of "good" and "evil"; this 'fruit' is an abstraction, regarding the worship of signs, idolatry, astrological thinking; good and evil here are to be understood as the auspicious and inauspicious, as the conjunction of planets and constellations which portend of fortune and misfortune.
Remnants of The "Fig Tree": Branch, Leaf, Root?

The serpent can be one of many: Hydra, Serpens, Draconus: all of these are "Devilish"; cf., Kāliya, Age of Kali, Draco's foot, and simultaneous the fall of Adam

But why does the Serpent Approach Eve and not Adam? Why does Eve Eat the fruit before offering it to Adam? Does not she fall first as Corona Borealis?

The whirling Fire-brands: stars circling about the Northern Celestial axis:

The Fig Leaf: Chapter 15 of the Gītā, and the Ancient Banyan Tree which stems from the roof of the World

In Future Entries to this Series: 

In Future Entries, we will cover a number of other provocative and suggestive astrotheological narratives from the Old Testament/Toraḥ:

* Abraham's Son and the Ram: (Agni-cum-Ares) or the sacrifice of the Spring Calendar.

* The Tower of Babel: or How the Indo-Europeans Couldn't agree on the Auspice of the Constellations and Planets

* Noah's Ark: Or how Prajāpati's Culture survived a flood by floating in the sky