Opinion:Victorious Biblical Astronomy Part 5

Isaiah wrote, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” Isaiah 40:22 The verb translated stretches  is a participle showing an active-action in unbroken continuity.  The word curtain  means thin or fine in Hebrew. The root word means to crush, to pulverize, to make into dust, to make fine. Isaiah repeats himself by stating that He spreads  them (incomplete action) like a tent. Tents greatly increase their volume when they are spread out as a dwelling. Isaiah wrote about 3,500 years after creation, yet he states that the heavens were actively stretching and that this spreading was incomplete. Since the speed of light is finite and the universe is immeasurably vast, we see distant galaxies as they were long ago. The most-distant galaxies are often seen shooting out chains of densely packed star clusters. In closer galaxies, the clusters have spread out into diffuse galactic structures.

The reader may think, “The Old Testament genealogies only span about 4,000 years. How could galaxies change shape and expand in just a few thousand years? In this essay I will show that the Bible mentions a close passage, for which there is anecdotal, quantified and visible evidence.

Today the Kishon River in northern Israel is a dry wadi for most of the year. During a battle more than three thousand years ago, the earth and the mountains quaked and nine hundred Canaanite chariots were swept away by a Kishon flash flood. Judges 5:4 - 5 The text says the stars fought from heaven, from their courses they fought against Sisera and the river Kishon swept them away. Judges 5:20 Only six Hebrew words are used in this verse, but two of them are identical: “to engage in battle, to wage war.”  The stars were not brandishing weapons since the verbs show a passive causal action. The word “stars” has roots in two words - rolling and blazing. The word “courses” means paths or highways. Planets are round, shining and move along ecliptic paths. During the Old Testament era, every society believed that planets sometimes engaged in battle. The pagans believed the planets were gods but the Bible says there is no god except the LORD. Should we understand this text the way it would have been interpreted when it was written, as a planetary battle?

In ancient days Venus was said to periodically ravage the earth. A Sumerian poem calls Inanna (Venus) the mountain smasher who causes floods to rush down the mountains. Another Sumerian text mentions Inanna standing in the sky like the sun and moon. Apparently they saw Venus as a crescent disk since several Babylonian tablets mention the horns of Venus. Could the stars fighting from heaven refer to a close encounter with Venus? The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga are the earliest known astronomical records. Several cuneiform tablets preserve the lunar dates when Ninsianna (Venus) disappeared into the sun’s glare during the 21-year reign of king Ammizaduga of Babylon. The diary counts the number of lunar months and days when Venus was absent during each synodic cycle. Venus' orbit was distinctly different during Ammizaduga's reign. The average Venus cycle, as seen from earth, was a few days longer than it is today. The appearances as a morning or evening star averaged 18 days less than today’s orbit. The shorter appearances were offset by disappearances on the far side of the sun that averaged 40 days longer than today.

More than two thousand years later six pages in a Mayan book (the Dresden Codex) concern the Venus cycle. Unlike the Babylonian record, the Mayan synodic period was 584 days. The Mayans even applied a periodic calendar correction to adjust the average Venus cycle to 583.92 days, just as it is today. Like the Babylonians, they also recorded that Venus disappeared on the far side of the sun for 90 days, which is 40 days longer than its modern orbit. The number of days that Venus was seen as a morning or evening star was five days longer than the Babylonian record but 13 days shorter than their average today.

A synchronous relationship between Venus’ rotation and Earth suggests that both bodies affected each other tidally in antiquity. Venus slowly rotates backwards at just the right rate so that the same side faces us each time it passes. We have been observing the surface of Venus with radar for several decades. The Venusian longitude that faces us at inferior conjunction does not drift, but varies a few degrees around a mean value of ~327 degrees. This variation is expected since any particular cycle can vary by +/- 4 days from the mean due to orbital eccentricities. The background stars for the Venus cycle repeat every five cycles, which is almost exactly eight years. If all conjunctions that are separated by eight years are compared (five separate data lists), the surface longitude on each of the lists varies with a standard deviation of less than five degrees. This remarkable resonance suggests that Venus and Earth made close encounters just like the ancients claimed.

The reader may think, but we measure clock-like orbits. If matter changes, clocks and orbits could both change. (We use atomic clocks to define the length of a meter and most other units of measurement even though we can see that all long-ago atoms clocked much slower frequencies.) Angles, unlike seconds, kilograms, meters or laser echos are ancient forms of measurement that are not dependent on the scientific first principle. Claudius Ptolemy used angles to measure the planet diameters 1850 years ago. He even gives the construction details of the instrument he used, of a four-cubit dioptra. His planet diameters are several times what we measure today. He wrote, “Furthermore, we find that the angles themselves are considerably smaller than those traditionally accepted.” In other words, his predecessors measured larger diameters. He wrote that previous astronomers measured the diameter of the luminaries with a water clock as the bodies rose at the time of the equinox. All of his diameters are larger than the modern accepted values. He also measured the maximum elongation of the inner planets and they are too large according to modern measurements. Like all ancient astronomers, his calculated size of the solar system was much smaller than what we calculate today.

The reader may think, dioptras, bronze rings or sighting sticks are too inaccurate to determine the size of the solar system. Consider that the Astronomer Royal, Flamsteed, used a telescope with a micrometer eyepiece to measure the diurnal parallax to Mars when it was in opposition (stopped in relation to the background stars) on October 6, 1672. He measured the angular change in position of Mars against the bright background stars of Aquarius as the earth rotated during the night. On October 1, 1672, Cassini measured the parallax to Mars using two observers (one on an island off South America) as Mars occulted the bright star Psi Aquarius. The Cassini / Flamsteed measurements were in close agreement and showed that the distance to the sun was 7% smaller (140 million kilometers) 330 years ago. A similar parallax measurement made in 1877 showed the sun's distance as 148.7 million kilometers, about 1% less than its presently accepted value. The angular parallax to Mars was again measured at opposition in April 2002. The calculated value of the AU from this parallax was 151.6 million kilometers, which is larger than the accepted value derived with radar. Claudius Ptolemy’s parallax for Mars was between 2 and 2 ½ minutes, about 15 times the modern value. These measured angles suggest that the solar system continues to expand just like galaxies are observed to expand in the distance - spiraling out.

The anecdotal evidence that the solar system was smaller in antiquity are the stories of close passages. A close passage seems to be referred to in the Judges 5 text. The quantified evidence is that all ancient astronomers measured a much smaller solar system using angles. The elementary evidence is that we can see the past optically. We can confirm what Paul wrote that "the creation is in bondage to deteriorate" because we can see that all ancient atoms clocked much slower frequencies than modern atoms. We can also see that all galactic orbits are doing just what Isaiah stated about the heavens. The starry heavens expand - taking up more space like a tent spreading out as a dwelling.

I will show in the next article evidence that supports another catastrophic solar system event mentioned in the Bible. Please consider carefully the assumption that matter does not change its basic properties.