At a weekly Bible study I attend, we ran across a couple passages in Job in which God is speaking and makes some very specific references to constellations named after Greek Mythological characters:
Job 38:31-32 (NKJV)
31 “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the belt of Orion?
32 Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season?
Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?
Since Job is regarded by many to be the oldest book in the Bible, this made me wonder about the timeline in relation to the Greeks and also why God would choose to use Greek Mythological characters as a reference in His message to Job throughout this chapter.
As with most of the issues I run across and can't seem to find a decent answer, I turned to my dad to find his take on it, since he has studied the Bible in its Greek and Hebrew forms with some intensity, hoping he might be able to shed some light on it for me.
Below is our exchange, which I think gives a pretty good answer to my questions.
Begin Question>>
http://read.ly/Job38.31.nasb
Why does this verse and the next, spoken by God, reference characters from Greek Mythology? Is it this way in Hebrew? I would have thought Job would predate Greek Mythology. If it doesn't, does this then mean that Greek culture was a, or even the prevelant philosophy in the area at the time, and that God was using these references to be relevant to their culture in this chapter?
This came up at our Bible study this morning and none us can figure out why those specific references would have been used. - Adam
End Question>>
Begin Response>>
Adam:
It is at least somewhat accepted that Job is the oldest book in the canon. There is also a legend that Job was in fact, the architect of the Great Pyramid of Giza which is on the order of 4500-5000 years old, (some think much older). In Isa. 19 there is a description of an altar to the Lord (a "pillar") in the "midst of the land of Egypt" and "at the border" which may refer to the pyramid since it is in the place which is both in the middle and at the border as the land "Egypt" has not remained geographically the same through its history.
The Hebrew text uses distinctly Hebrew names for these Greek translations. I can only assume that the translators emplaced the more modern Greek names. For example, the Hebrew text uses "the seven stars" -or more literally, a derivative of the word "cluster" in the case of Pleiades. Now that does however at least imply that these groupings or constellations were widely recognized across various cultures a very long time ago. Having said that, Greek mythic history is very old. Athens for example, is one of the oldest cities, possibly as old as 5000-7000 years (before there were "Greeks") and the name is obviously a derivative of Athena (though the corresponding myth could have been constructed to fit the name of the city ?)
In any case, the mythic characters were well known and were written about nearly 3000 years ago and the verbal history obviously predates the written records by a long time. So- I dunno which is older but constellations were widely recognized, whatever they may have been called, in various cultures for a long time. Gen. 1 states: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" .
Sorry for the slow response time.
fwiw
End Response>>
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