Philologos
Bible Prophecy Research
Title: Seven Stars
Submitted by: research-bpr@philologos.org
Date: March 23, 1998
URL: http://philologos.org/bpr/files/s004.htm
Seven Stars
What are the Pleiades?
"The beautiful group of stars known as the Pleiades is mentioned three times in Scripture. Job 9:8-9 and Amos 5:8 explain their origin, stating that the Creator 'stretches out the heavens' and is the Master of the Pleiades. Job 38:31-32 further declares that only the Lord can 'bind the beautfiul Pleiades' and bring them forth in their season. These stars are indeed gravitationally bound together in a cluster. They appear in the November skies and are located above Orion's left shoulder, where six icy-blue stars can be seen in the shape of a little dipper, smaller than the moon. Binoculars reveal dozens of additional stars in the Pleiades group. The stars are 400 light-years away but are actually near-neighbors of earth in the Milky Way galaxy.
"The Pleiades stars have been described in many different ways. Chinese records from 2357 BC describe them as golden bees or flying pigeons. The Greeks named the stars the 'seven sisters.' Early Russian literature pictures the Pleiades as a mother hen with her chicks. For a while during the 1800s, it was thought that the Pleiades were located at the exact center of the universe since measurements seemed to show that all the other stars moved around Pleiades. Today we know that the Pleiades group also moves; it is actually speeding away from the earth at 16,000 miles per hour."
(Astronomy and the Bible, Donald B. DeYoung)
"...there is a cluster of stars known as the Pleiades. This word, which means the congregation of the judge or ruler, comes to us through the Greek Septuagint as the translation of the Hebrew kimah, which means the heap or accumulation...
"It consists of a number of stars (in the neck of Taurus) which appear to be near together. The brightest of them...has come down to us with an Arabic name--Al Cyone, which means the centre, and has given the idea to some astronomers that it is the centre of the whole universe. The Syriac name for the Pleiades is Succoth, which means booths."
(The Witness of the Stars, E. W. Bullinger)
"The Pleiades...compared by the Persian poets to a bouquet formed of jewels. It is the constellation of seven stars, whose rising and setting determined the commencement and end of their voyages..."
(Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, volume 4, Job)
"If a star map is superimposed over the Earth with the pole star placed over the terrestial North Pole, we have a celestial clock making one revolution daily. The noon point of that map (like Greenwich) is the Great Pyramid of Giza. Thousands of years ago, Egypt was known as the Land of Khem. The Khema were a group of seven major stars (in the constellation of Taurus), known today as the Pleiades. If the map is placed with the Khema over the Land of Khem (Egypt)-specifically, directly over the apex of the Great Pyramid- then Taurus falls over the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey; Ursa Major, the Great Bear, rambles over Russia; the head of Draco the Dragon coils up over China; Orion (the warrior) over Iran/Iraq; Aries the Ram over Rome, and Capricorn (identified with the god Pan) falls over Panama, Panuco, and Mayapan (the old name of the Yucatan). Aquila the Eagle spans the United States. The analogies are obvious, and quite impressive. This is one of the clearest examples of the law of 'As Above, So Below.'"
(Beyond Prophecies & Predictions, Moira Timms)
See also Heaven.
See also The Great Pyramid.
See also Alignment of Planets.