Chaldea

This online article on research conducted by Dr. Benno van Dalen of the Institute for the History of Science at LMU Munich is a few years old, but too fascinating to gloss over.

Tags: andrea d lobel, andrea lobel, Astronomy, Benno van Dalen, cultural astronomy, ethnoastronomy, History of Astronomy, Islam, Medieval China

Several months ago, I posted about an upcoming rare event in Judaism — that is, the blessing of the sun, or Birkat Ha-Hammah, that takes place once every twenty-eight years, and is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Brakhot 59b.

The event takes place this year on April 8th, in the early morning. Because Passover happens to begin on the evening of April 8th (a truly rare convergence indeed), many morning celebrations will combine the burning of leaven (chametz) and the blessing of the sun.

For those who may be interested, here are a number of relevant links, spanning several perspectives, both confessional and non:

http://www.ujc.org/page.aspx?id=197451

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=S&artid=1165

http://www.blessthesun.org/

http://www.jrf.org/birkat-hahammah

http://www.jewfaq.org/chamah.htm

http://mobile.aish.com/literacy/mitzvahs/Here_Comes_the_Sun.asp

http://www.forward.com/articles/104024/

To quote the immortal bards Gerome Ragni and James Rado, “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in.”

For those who are in, or close to, Gloucestershire, England, you may be interested in a lecture on archaeoastronomy to be given at the Corinium Museum by Professor Clive Ruggles on Thursday, March 26th, from 7-8:30 p.m.

Dr. Ruggles is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester. Among his books are ‘Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth’ and ‘Skywatching in the Ancient World: New Perspectives in Cultural Astronomy’.

For more information, including contacts and the price of admission, please visit the British Science Association site, located here.

Just a quick peek behind the workings of this blog. I’m currently spending much of my time reading materials in preparation for my comprehensive exams. (a.k.a. qualifying exams) For now, as has been the case for a few months, until these exams are completed, I only have a limited amount of time to devote to Chaldea (i.e., I’ll post whenever I can). I thought I’d bring a notable source I’m working with to the attention of others in similar fields.

For those interested in cultural perceptions of the heavens in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Israel, Persia, Greco-Roman cultures, as well as early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I highly recommend The Early History of Heaven, by J. Edward Wright. (2000, Oxford University Press)

I first took it out of the library in 2003, but soon found it indispensable, so I bought a copy. It’s a very thorough overview of the important writings and beliefs about heaven and/or the heavens (including heavenly cosmography) in these cultures, and it incorporates archaeological findings as well as textual sources. It is difficult to distinguish between astronomy proper and astral beliefs in many ancient civilizations; this book provides the reader with a solid awareness of the background views of the cosmos in these cultures, thereby setting the stage for later evolutions in cultural astronomy.

Have a good weekend, all!

Fourteenth century Islamic astrolabe, Whipple Museum

This video item from ABC (Australia), complete with transcript, features Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, the first Muslim astronaut to travel into space during Ramadan. This led to the need for Muslim scholars to carefully determine the rules that would apply to prayer in outer space, not to mention the ubiquitous question “Which way is Mecca?”

I was especially interested in the reference to Islam’s “golden age” (circa 8th-16th centuries CE) during which Muslim scientists made various vital contributions to the world in the areas of mathematics and astronomy. This, of course, includes the invention of such devices as the astrolabe, pictured above.

For more information on Dr. Shukor, Wired published an earlier story about his career as an astronaut.

Because tempus fugit, here’s some information for those who want to make plans to attend the upcoming 17th annual conference of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC).

An IYA-related conference, the meeting will be held between October 25th and 31st, 2009 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt.

You can find a list of scheduled speakers here, and the registration section and other important items are listed in the menu to the left. For more information about the SEAC, please visit their homepage.

Star Over Bethlehem, free clip art by Midolluin

Well, this article is certainly relevant. According to astronomer Dave Reneke, the star used by the three wise men to locate the infant Jesus appeared in June, and not December. For Reneke, even the status of the luminary as a star is in question. Definitely worth a read.

Here is another article on the very same topic from several different perspectives. Supernova? Jupiter? You decide.

It’s been a busy, busy month, what with the grading of tests and final exams, but I do look forward to doing some more frequent blogging over the holidays or in the new year.

Wishing you all a joyous holiday season!

This article, in the Vancouver Sun, is the first of a series on the topic of science and religion. Of particular interest is the reference to “the striking similarity between 16th-century Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus’s arguments for the Earth’s rotation and those of 13th-century Muslim polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi”, noted by science historian and Islamicist Dr. F. Jamil Ragep of McGill University.

I’ve just come across this site, which describes the Jewish ritual of blessing the sun every 28 years — at which point, it is traditionally believed, the sun occupies the same point at which it was present at its own creation in Genesis 1:14-15. The next date for this blessing, called Birkat Ha-Hammah, will be April 8, 2009.

There are some fascinating rabbinic and other resources located on the site I’ve embedded above. One of the main textual sources for the blessing tradition is to be found in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakhot 59b, which refers to blessing the sun when it returns to “its turning point”. Another source is found in one of the primary Jewish legal codes, the Shulkhan Arukh, Orach Chayim 229:2.

This ritual, which last took place in 1981, prior to the internet age, will almost certainly be well-publicized, serving as a reminder that astronomy is alive and well in contemporary religious life. That it happens to coincide with the International Year of Astronomy is sweeter yet.

This recent article in the Ottawa Citizen describes some of the controversy surrounding the astronomical moment at which the month of Ramadan is over. This, of course, is signaled by the appearance of the new crescent moon. The question, however, is that of exactly where this first lunar crescent must be sighted — from one’s own city or from Mecca. Furthermore, does the latter option invalidate the primacy of aeons of naked-eye viewing of the new lunar crescent in Islam?

This is ultimately about the question of religious authority, and as such, it summons to mind other similar challenges posed by the matter of first lunar visibility. In ancient Judaism, for example, the new month was once proclaimed first based upon a system in which an initial viewer of the new crescent would light a signal-fire on a mountain or hill-top to notify the next viewer, who would then light another signal-fire, and so on. This practice was disrupted by the deliberate lighting of signal-fires at the wrong time by the Samaritans of the first century. This practice was soon replaced by a system involving witnesses of the new crescent, who would then be carefully interrogated by Jewish authorities. Upon establishing the credibility of given witnesses, the new month would be proclaimed. This matter was, of course, crucial to the timing of important religious festivals such as Passover and the New Year. Later, the fixed, calculated Jewish calendar would come to replace visual observation of the moon for religious purposes — a critical transition within Judaism, to be sure, and one which had its origins in the political nature of calendrics and its reliance upon astronomical viewing.

It is, perhaps, notable, that the small community of remaining Karaites continues to rely on direct visual observation of the lunar crescent, having never adopted the beliefs, interpretations and rituals of Rabbinic Judaism.