Journal of Geomancy vol. 1 no. 4, July 1977

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AN OBSERVATION ON THE BOOK OF JOSHUA AND RELATED EVENTS

by RUPERT PENNICK.

Parts of JOSHUA 4 and 5. AUTHORIZED VERSION.  “And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed ever Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying: Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man. 

And command ye them, saying: Take you hence out of the midst of the Jordan, out of the place where the priests’ feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you. 

And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulders, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel. 

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying: What mean ye by these stones? 

Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord: when it passed over Jordan, and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.”

And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, and carried them over with them down there.  And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood. 

And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.”

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Édouard Dujardin, a French novelist, dramatists and critic published in 1938 ‘Ancient History of the God Jesus’, asked how, if Jesus was a man, his disciples from the time of Paul onward would have treated him as divine. 

“Sociology sees here an irrefutable argument against historicity.  An eagle is not born from a fowl.  A mystery religion cannot spring from a Messiamic agitation.  There is not a shadow of doubt that Jesus, a spiritual being, has played in the annals of history a role far greater than any Galilean prophet would ever play.”

Dujardin goes on to say that as Christians for eighteen centuries have worshipped Jesus as a god, the presumption is that he was always god.  Here Dujardin takes over and develops John Mackinnon Robertson’s theory of a Palestinian cult of “Joshua son of the Father.” The god of this cult, according to Dujardin, was originally a fish or eel venerated as a totem and, like other totems eaten ritually by the prehistoric clan who practised the cult, Joshua is the son of Nun, “fish”, having been himself a fish to begin with.  With the rise of agriculture the cult became assimilated in some respects with those of Canaanite agricultural deities; and on the arrival of Hebrew nomads the god took on the attributes of a lamb.  The central rite of the cult, according to Archibald Robertson, and Édouard {66} Dujardin, was a periodical expiatory sacrifice in which a human victim, representing the prehistoric god-king, was killed, hanged, and at sunset taken down and buried.  This was followed by a day of mourning and then by a ritual meal consisting, according to locality, of fish, bread, or lamb, in which the god was mystically eaten by his worshippers. 

It is significant, as we have already seen, in our biblical quote that the rite took place at one of the numerous Gilgals, or in other words inside the circles or ancient cromlechs, one of which is mentioned in the book of Joshua. 

Not only did Joshua erect the stone circle near Jericho, and kept the passover there, he is also said to have hanged captured kings on trees; the only examples of this kind of treatment recorded in the Old Testament. 

In the New World Transition of the Holy Scriptures we see that twelve stones were erected at Gilgalon the eastern border of Jericho, and twelve others were set up “in the middle of Jordan on the standing place of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the covenant”.  This is in chapter 4, then in chapter 6 we read the famous account of how Joshua the son of Nun captured Jericho.  In chapter 8 we read, “Then Joshua burned Ai and reduced it to an indefinitely lasting mound, as a desolation down to this day, and he hanged the king of Ai upon a stake until the evening time; and as the sun was about to set Joshua gave the command, and they took his dead body down from the stake and pitched it at the entrance of the gate of the city and raised up a great pile of stones over him.”

It is then we read of ‘the stones from heaven’ which fell during the battle of Gibeon, these were obviously meteorites, the straightforward explanation to the crossing of the Jordan dry foot is illustrated by an event in 1927 when a landslide caused by an earthquake stopped the flow of the river for a day.  The fall of the walls of Jericho shortly after was probably caused by an even stronger tremor in the area.  The meteoric shower and the account that “the sun kept motionless and the moon did stand still” gives us further evidence that extreme conditions existed at that time. 

The amazing similarity with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is continued in Chapter 10.  “The five kings have been found hidden in the cave at Makkedah.  At the mouth of the cave Joshua said ‘Roll great stones up to the mouth of the cave and assign men over it to guard them… Then Joshua said “Open the mouth of the cave and bring out these five kings from the cave to me.” At that they did so and brought out to him from the cave five kings, the king of Hebron, the King of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon… Joshua proceeded to strike them and put them to death and hang them upon five stakes, and they continued hanging upon the stakes until the evening.” In the authorised version they refer to the stakes as trees, and the account continues “At the time of the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid, and laid great stones in the cave’s mouth,”

At the end of Joshua’s life, aged 110, he is said to have written ‘Remove the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your hearts to Jehovah the God of Israel.” Then {67} Joshua wrote these words in the book of God’s law and took a great stone and set it up there under the massive tree that is by the sanctuary of Jehovah.  Joshua said, “Look!  This stone is what will serve a witness against us, because it has itself heard all the sayings of Jehovah that he has spoken with us, and it must serve as a witness against you, that you may not deny your God.”

So with the establishment of monotheism the local cults were to be suppressed.  Thus Joshua survives in the Old Testament as a human figure, only his patronymic and a few stories betraying his original status.  In order more effectively to ban the cult the eel was declared an unclean animal and its use as food forbidden.  But in Galilee, and other centres away from the jurisdiction of Jerusalem, the cult of the old eel-god persisted until the conquest of the country by the Maccabees in the 2nd century B.C., and even after that survived in secret among the farming and fishing population, though the killing of the human victim was by now merely simulated. 

It seems obvious from these facts produced by Dujardin that the apostles’ and disciples’ close relationship with fishing and the Sea of Galilee, made their organization with followers of Jesus of Nazareth a fairly simple process.  The long established cult provided the fertilised soil in which the seed of Christianity could germinate and flourish. 

The relationship between standing-stones and astronomy has been exhaustively treated by many authors in the last few years, and there is no doubt in my mind that the standing-stones at Gezer, Taanach, and Tell el-Mutesellim come into the same category as Stonehenge and Carnac.  The astronomical aspect is combined to a greater or lesser extent with the giving of oracles and the offering of libations of blood or oil to the numen residing in the monolith.  The burial of infants at Taanach and Gezer bring to mind the many cases of foundation-sacrifices from numerous places around the world from earliest times to as late as the last century when human sacrifice was common in Alaska.  Here, until 1867, when the country became part of the U.S.A., a slave was blindfolded, and laid down under the place selected for the fireplace and throttled, and four other slaves were also made to stand in the holes for the four corner-posts and felled to the ground with a club.  The importance of astronomy to the establishment of Christianity cannot be doubted and I hope now to explain the forces which combined to create Christ. 

Since Nebuchadnezzar’s time thousands of Jews had lived in Babylon and many of them must have studied at the School of Astrology in Sippar.  It is therefore obvious that a school of astrology was well established in Jerusalem at the time of Herod the Great.  What now led to the journey of the Three Wise Astronomers to Jerusalem at this particular time?  The year which we would now term 7 B.C.  The responsibility for this error of seven years lies at the door of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who made several mistakes and miscalculations.  He lived in Rome and around the year 1286 of the city, he was instructed to fix the beginning of the new era by working backwards.  He unfortunately forgot the year zero which should have been inserted between 1 B.C. and 1 A.D., and overlooked the four years when the {68} Roman emperor Augustus had reigned under his own name Octavian.  We know from Matthew that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king.” We know from numerous contemporary sources who Herod was and when he lived and reigned.  In 40 B.C. Herod was designated king of Judaea by the Romans.  He died in 4 B.C. therefore Jesus must have been born before this date.  What then should lead us to accept the year 7 B.C. as the birth year of Jesus Christ?  It cannot be doubted that the appearance of the “Star of Bethlehem” led to the intensive search by the Wise Men and Herod the Great for “he that is born King of the Jews”.  What then was the “star”?  If we think of a sudden bright light in the sky, we can only reckon with either a comet or a nova.  Origen, one of the Christian Fathers, who lived in Alexandria about 200 A.D. wrote: “I am of the opinion that the star which appeared to the Wise Men in the east was a new star which had nothing in common with those stars which appear either in the firmament or in the lower levels of the atmosphere.  Presumably it belonged to the category of these heavenly fires which appear from time to time, and have been given names by the Greeks depending on their shape, either comets, or fiery beams, or starry hosts, or starry tails, or vessels or some such name.”

Now I believe that this concept of the “Star” as a comet is mistaken.  The first description of Halley’s comet is recorded in the Wen-hein-thung-khao encyclopaedia of the Chinese scholar Ma Tuan-lin.  Altogether the comet was observed for 63 days.  It seems that the comet is not equally visible everywhere and although accurately observed in all its phases in China it is not mentioned in the records of the Mediterranean countries.  It also does not fit in with the date of the “Star” as it appeared in 12 B.C. 

Again, should we consider the “Star” as a new star.  Definitely not because about the turn of the eras the blazing light of a new star is only mentioned for 134 B.C and 173 A.D., thus we may rule out “Novae”. 

To what explanation are we now to turn?  I think the solution to our astronomical dilemma is to be found high above the Moldava in the Hradcyn in Prague where shortly before Christmas 1603, on 17th December sat the Imperial Mathematician and Astronomer Royal Johannes Kepler, observing with his simple telescope the arrival of two celestial bodies on the same degree of longitude – the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter within the constellation of Pisces.  Johannes Kepler suddenly recalled the words of the rabbinic writer Abarbanel, referring to an unusual influence which Jewish astrologers ascribed to this same constellation.  Messiah would appear when there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces. 

Kepler spent months checking his calculations.  Scholar, astronomer and astrologer, he dated the conception of Mary in the year 7 B.C. 

Three centuries later in 1925 the German scholar P. Schnabel deciphered the Neo-babylonian cuneiform of a famous professional institute in the ancient world, the School of Astrology at Sippar in Babylonia.  There he came upon a note about the position of the planets in the constellation of Pisces.  Jupiter {69} and Saturn are carefully marked in over a period of five months.  Reckoned in our calendar the year was 7 B.C. 

Using the planetarium, astronomers have shown that in the year 7 B.C. Jupiter and Saturn did have a conjunction in Pisces, and, as Kepler discovered, they met three times.  Mathematical calculations establish that this threefold conjunction of the planets was particularly clearly visible in the Mediterranean area. 

At the end of February in 7 B.C. Jupiter moved out of the constellation Aquarius towards Saturn in the constellation Pisces.  Since the sun was at that time also in the sign of Pisces its light covered the constellation.  It was not until 12th April that both planets rose in Pisces heliacally with a difference of 8° of longitude.  The heliacal or first visible rising of a star or planet, at daybreak, in this instance proceeded towards conjunction and on 29th May, visible for two hours in the morning sky, the first close encounter took place on the 21st degree of Pisces with a difference of 0° of longitude and of 0·98° of latitude.  The second conjunction took place on 3rd October in the 18th degree of the constellation Pisces. 

The third and final conjunction of 7 B.C. took place on 4th December when the planets Jupiter and Saturn were in the 16th degree of Pisces.  At the end of January in the year 6 B.C., according to our dating, the planet Jupiter moved out of Pisces into Aries. 

In Matthew 2 the Wise Men say “We have seen his star in the east”, in Greek this is “En te anatole” in the singular, but elsewhere “the east” is represented by “anatolai”, the Greek plural.  The singular form “anatole” has a special astronomical significance implying the observation of the early rising of the star, the heliacal rising.  So we may translate “We have seen his star appear in the first rays of the dawn.”

Now we come to another question mark in our astronomical investigation: why did the three Wise Men set out on their Expedition instead of watching the occurrence in Babylon?  I think we find the answer that these astronomers in their dual capacity as astrologer attached a special significance to each star.  According to the Chaldeans, Pisces was the sign of the West, the Mediterranean countries: in Jewish tradition it was the sign of Israel, the.sign of the Messiah.  The constellation of Pisces is at the end of the sun’s old course and at the beginning of the new one.  Jupiter was considered by all nations as a lucky and a royal star.  The Jews had a tradition that Saturn protected Israel.  Now in Jerusalem the conjunction of the two planets must have led the Jewish astrologers to expect the appearance of a mighty king and the arrival of the three Wise Men must have come as no surprise to them. 

The conjunction of 29th May followed by 3rd October, the Jewish Day of Atonement would have been predicted by the astrologers at Sippar.  They probably began the journey about then so that they would arrive in Jerusalem just before the third conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the 4th December 7 B.C.  {70}

So they eventually proceeded to the village of Bethlehem arriving as the planets Jupiter and Saturn appeared to have dissolved into one brilliant star, the ‘Star of Bethlehem’.  What more natural than to find what they searched for, and their gifts must have convinced Mary and Joseph that their son had a very special part to play in the history of the world. 

Finally, to return to our examination of the importance of the ancient cromlechs, especially that at Gilgal, we read in Dujardin’s works that about 26 A.D. Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, founded the city of Tiberias in honour of his overlord, the Emperor Tiberius.  The city was built in Greek style and had a large Pagan population.  Many of the Galilean inhabitants, for the most part fishermen, left the place, migrating to Jericho.  Filled with religious fanaticism by the profanation of their motherland, they assembled in Gilgal to celebrate their three-day ritual drama of death and resurrection.  Simon of Cyrene may have personated the victim.  During the ritual meal some present believed they saw the risen god.  That apparition which Dujardin dates in 27 A.D. was the starting point of Christianity.  The visionaries, among them Peter, James and John, began to spread the news that the Lord Jesus had appeared to them. 

Whether we accept or deny the divinity of Christ, we must agree that the Christian religion could not have been established if the cult had not existed for so many centuries.  The worship of Jesus, the God of the New Order, bears enduring traces of the primitive cult from which it sprang combined with the astrologic prophecy which gave it a universal appeal.  Jesus is represented in catacombs paintings in the form of a fish; then there is the sign of Pisces in which the “Star of Bethlehem’” appeared.  The miracle of the loaves and fishes in the Gospels is a mythical projection of the ritual meal.  Golgotha, the scene of the crucifixion might well be Gilgal shifted to Jerusalem by the Gospel, writers.  Simon of Cyrene carried the cross in the Gospel stories; he was held by some second -century Gnostics to have been crucified in place of Jesus.  There is little wonder that the time was ripe for the New Era. 

The seedhead of Christianity was the Synagogue; of necessity this was so, since the news conveyed by the early followers of Jesus was that in him the promised Messiah, the Christ, had appeared.  The message had to travel over sea and land far from Palestine to reach the widely scattered Jewish communities. 

The geographer Strabo, who lived at the very beginning of the Christian Era, wrote “This people has already found its way into every city, and it would be difficult to discover any place in the habitable world that has not received this tribe and in which it has not made its presence felt.”

The famous pupil of Aristotle, Theophrastus of Lesbos, said “inasmuch as they are philosophers by race, they (the Syrians who are Jews) discuss the nature of the Deity among themselves, and spend the night in observing the stars.”

When Augustus became Pontifex Maximus he had a quantity of Oracles burnt, and his successor Tiberius also instituted a purification of the collection of Greek-orientated prophetic writings such as the Sibylline Oracle because of a popular prophecy that the end of the Empire was at hand.  {71}

No wonder the Emperor feared them when in Book III the Sibylline Oracles prophesied: “But when Rome shall rule over Egypt, though still delaying, then shall the great kingdom of the immortal King appear among men, and a holy king shall come who shall rule over the whole earth for all ages of the course of time.”

The Romans were fully familiar with apotheosis in respect of their rulers, who continued their existence by ascension to heaven.  A comet had given evidence of the assumption of Julius Caesar, and the same was signalised at the death of Augustus when an eagle was seen flying out of his funeral pyre. 

So from all the nations of the Mediterranean came shafts of light which illuminated men’s minds, and produced an interwoven series of stories from which a pattern has evolved over the centuries.  We can pick out a thread here and there which shows us the long line of events which came to the climax of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and which have influenced mankind ever since. 

However in the end we can only repeat the words of Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?”

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BIBLIOGRAPHY.