Oct 11
About this blog
This is an old astronomy and religion scholarship blog, placed here for researchers and those who are interested in the topic. Welcome!
Who am I? I’m Rabbi Andrea D. Lobel, Ph.D., religion scholar, writer/editor, and co-editor of Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People. Ben Yehuda Press, December, 2022. I am also a Course Lecturer and Research Associate at Carleton University, and Rabbinic Mentor at Darshan Yeshiva.
Research: My research spans the history of science in religion, as well as hermeneutics — more specifically, the study of religion (primarily Judaism) and its intersections with the history of science, astronomy, cosmogony, cosmology, mathematics, nature, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and religious authority.
Why the blog title? For more about Chaldea, click here.
Please feel free to visit my Academia.edu page.
I may be reached at andrea.lobel (at) carleton.ca
Thank you for visiting!
October 14th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Hi Andrea,
great blog – excellent idea.
How are you?
Nick
October 15th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Hi, Nick!
Thanks very much.
I’ve been well. Teaching and research have been keeping me quite occupied. How have you been?
Coincidentally, I was going to e-mail you about your recent book, ‘The Dawn of Astrology’. I’m enjoying it.
January 14th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I live in Alberta (where partner is part-time university lecturer in astronomy) & UK, and am just back from working on a favourite dig in Israel. My archaeology experience since 1999 has fortuitously been on sites with Synagogue Zodiacs. I am an Egyptologist especially interested in the origins of astronomy in Ancient Egypt. Although my Somerset neighbour Nick Campion wouldn’t agree with me, I am starting to have the startling conviction that the earliest known religious astronomy (circa. 4000 BCE) is perhaps ‘Out of Israel’, rather than of Mespotamian beginnings. Watch this space, as they say!
January 18th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
have you any opinion on the book “Babylonian Star-Lore” by Gavin White (2008), the review of which I have just read by Deborah Houlding on http://www.skyscript.co.uk
January 19th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Hi, Roz! Thanks for posting!
There is certainly some compelling research on the existence of early astronomical alignments in the Levant by Sara L. Gardner and others. I’m not certain whether these pre-date the Mesopotamian findings; perhaps time (and further excavations) will tell.
I haven’t yet read ‘Babylonian Star-Lore’. Would you recommend it?
January 20th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Excavations with an archaeoastronomer as part of the team are much needed on the Chalcolithic high-placed temple sites. Teleilat Ghassul c.4500BCE is an exciting beginning and, with the Rujm el-Hira site, it continues to get better. I am particularly enthusiastic about the “Leopard temples” in the Negev and Sinai which strike me as being celestial images on the ground. I cannot comment further as the notes and rule-of-thumb measurements of some fascinating geometry I made 7 years ago are back in the UK.// Yet to read “Babylonian Star-Lore”….
February 19th, 2009 at 12:33 am
In response to the astrological alignments and other evidence in the Levant. Some it definitely predates the Mesopotamian star charts. The Constellation Leo or Israelite Judah appears on the Chalcolithic pavement at Megiddo dating to 3300 BCE as well as other intriguing drawings that may be Taurus, Scorpio and some other possibilities. The standing stones at Gezer align with the both solstices, the equinoxes and the lunar solstice. The stones that are in place today date to about 1600 BCE, but there are underlying stones that date earlier. Furthermore, Gezer has caves with drawings that may well be of the stones and relative horizons. Above the horizons and the verticle lines that I think are representative of the stones are animals. None that we would recognize today. The cave date to 2900 BCE well before any written star charts from Mesopotamia.
Hope this helps,
Dr. Sara L. Gardner
February 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I should add that the Mesopotamian texts date to about 1500 BCE. But knowledge is cumulative and therefore, could have been used as much as 300 years earlier. My research shows that the above was in place as much as 1500 years earlier.
March 8th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Thanks for posting here, Dr. Gardner.
I wonder if precession of the equinoxes would have figured into the possible Chalcolithic portrayal of Taurus (as opposed to Aries) at Megiddo, especially given the evidence you’ve found of quite early awareness of the equinoxes and solstices. If you happen to read this, do you have any thoughts on the matter?
May 14th, 2009 at 7:02 am
Dear Madam, found your blog by searching out Chaldea and it felt good to find you. May I ask you, when you have the time, to look at another blog, which I find highly interesting just the same. It is seventhoughts.blogspot.com. The writer and his wife are currently living in London, and are deeply interested in archaic teachings. She is a nuclear physicist and he was an officer in the british army. They dedicate their lives to study and to contribute to the world at the same time, by giving seminars in Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam and in the past in southern Spain. Also they volunteer in high-schools in London, to help young people to find a place and give more meaning to their lives.
Well, sending you well wishes and I hope you enjoy the blog, Alexandra
May 19th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Hello, Alexandra. Thanks for visiting! Interesting blog.
December 2nd, 2013 at 1:10 am
Awesome blog, Andrea!!!!
December 2nd, 2013 at 1:25 am
Thanks, Carla!