I am not talking about all of the stars in the Pleiades cluster. I am only talking about the stars that are visible from the earth to the naked eye.
BTW: I dont remember now where it was that I read it, but Plutarch once talked about a devise that the Romans used to make it easier to see the spectacles that were presented in the Coliseum when you were sitting in the nosebleed section of the seats. This devise must have been remarkably like binoculars or a telescope. So even if the Bible is not supernaturally informed on matters like astronomy, what we think we know about ancient technology and thus ancient history and thus the world of the Bible may be way off the mark.
And yet seven were visible to Hesiod, the same seven that are visible to the naked eye
today, namely, the seven labeled in the earlier diagram I provided. There was no special knowledge required for Amos to tell the Israelites about the seven stars of Pleiades, certainly none more than was required of Hesiod to not only count the stars but name them - and they are the same stars we observe today, so none of them have been extinguished.
However, it would be good to refocus on the central topic: how much would the
scientific validity of a
particular interpretation of Scripture warrant its
theological validity? I say, not much, if at all. For scientific knowledge is gained and verified by observation of the natural world; but why should any such observation qualify one for the collection of
spiritual knowledge? After all, the Muslims can find esoteric interpretations of their Qur'an that lend themselves to "confirmation" in modern scientific discovery. Should that be reason to believe that God is Allah, not Yahweh?
Or consider the Dogon story:
In Mali, West Africa, lives a tribe of people called the Dogon. The Dogon are believed to be of Egyptian decent and their astronomical lore goes back thousands of years to 3200 BC. According to their traditions, the star Sirius has a companion star which is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50 year elliptical orbit around the visible Sirius and is extremely heavy. It also rotates on its axis.
This legend might be of little interest to anybody but the two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germain Dieterlen, who recorded it from four Dogon priests in the 1930's. Of little interest except that it is exactly true. How did a people who lacked any kind of astronomical devices know so much about an invisible star? The star, which scientists call Sirius B, wasn't even photographed until it was done by a large telescope in 1970.
The Dogon stories explain that also. According to their oral traditions, a race people from the Sirius system called the Nommos visited Earth thousands of years ago. The Nommos were ugly, amphibious beings that resembled mermen and mermaids. They also appear in Babylonian, Accadian, and Sumerian myths. The Egyptian Goddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is also linked with the star Sirius.
Ah, the dilemmas.
