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The Language of God in the Universe
The Language of God - Yah's Nature Revealed Through His Creation
By Helena Lehman Pillar of Enoch Ministry Books
Copyright © 2006 Helena Lehman
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-9759131-0-7
Chapter One
Mazzaroth, The Starry Witness
"Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season? Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs? Do you know the ordinances of the heaven? Can you set their dominion over the earth?" - Job 38:31-33 (NKJ)
In the above quotation from the New King James Version of the Bible, the Hebrew word "Mazzaroth" is used as Yahweh is speaking to the righteous man Job from out of a whirlwind. The word "Mazzaroth" is compound; it is made up of two separate Hebrew words "Mazzara" and "oth." "Mazzara" means the constellations as a whole, i.e. the Zodiac. As explained in the Introduction, "oth" means a sign or beacon. In effect, the Mazzaroth refers to a starry beacon of constellations running through the night sky. The central beacon constellations are the twelve major signs of the Zodiac. These are located along the plain of the ecliptic. This is the celestial band in the sky that the Sun appears to pass through each day.
Many may ask: Where did the constellationand star names originate, and who decided to divide the sky into twelve segments or signs? The truth is that no record outside of the Bible exists that can fully answer this question. Both the names for the constellations, and the concept of the Mazzaroth or Zodiac seem to predate all ancient civilizations. No archeological evidence exists that proves conclusively that any one culture invented the Zodiac.
One source indicates that Adam's third son Seth actually named the most prominent stars in the various constellations. However, as will be shown a bit later, the Bible makes it clear that God both created and named the stars. It is therefore entirely possible that Yahweh introduced mankind to the Mazzaroth soon after their creation. Jewish tradition places Adam's creation in autumn, when the Sun was in Virgo and when Aries was the first constellation visible at night on the eastern horizon along the ecliptic. Being a righteous man, Seth would surely have known this. Since man's history probably began when Aries was prominent in the night sky, this may be why all ancient calendar years began when the Sun and Moon were in Aries. Since Yah was Adam's first fully sentient companion, it is likely that Yah introduced Adam to the Mazzaroth as an aid in teaching Adam about the universe he inhabited and the planet he had dominion over.
Seth and his kin believed in the concept of a special Creation by a Supreme Being. The Book of Genesis tells us that Seth addressed this Supreme Creator God by the title "Elohim." This was before the time of Seth's son Enosh, who was the first to call the Supreme God by His true name "Yahweh" or "Yah." Since Seth and his kin were devout believers in Elohim, it is probable that they would only have recorded the meanings given to the stars by God alone. They also would have known that Yahweh assigned images and meanings to the star constellations as seen in a twelve-fold division of the heavens viewed from Earth's perspective. Yahweh did this to ensure that the message of the heavenly tablets or Mazzaroth would be easy for men and angels to remember.
Some scientists scoff at the idea of any pictorial messages being encoded in the sky due to the fact that the stars we see in each constellation are often tremendous distances from one another in relation to the Earth. In addition, they cite the fact that the stars in our sky are moving and their positions shift in space over vast amounts of time. However, they fail to acknowledge that every individual star, planet, moon, comet and asteroid that we can see is part of the Milky Way Galaxy alone. The only other objects we can see in outer space are the nebulous star clouds that form our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant clusters of galaxies in certain constellations. Furthermore, the configurations of the stars in our skies have not appreciably changed over thousands of years. Therefore, the view of our current night sky is very similar to the one Adam and Eve saw from the Garden of Eden over 6000 years ago. In addition, the stars that form the constellations of the Zodiac are relative neighbors amid the incredibly vast distances to be found between all the galaxies in the known Universe.
The Great Antiquity of the Mazzaroth
As already mentioned, the symbols and meanings associated with the forty-eight constellations of the Ancient Zodiac appear to have been fully developed in all ancient civilizations at a very early time. This suggests that the Mazzaroth is as old as human civilization. There is also another piece of hard evidence that the Mazzaroth was deciphered and understood not long after Adam and Eve were created. This evidence can be found in the oldest depiction of the forty-eight ancient constellations of the Zodiac ever found. It is called the Dendera Zodiac and it was discovered in a chapel to the Egyptian god of the dead known as Osiris. This chapel was built on the rooftop of the Temple to Hathor at Dendera, Egypt. The existing temple complex there dates to about 400 BC. However, the sky being depicted in the circular Zodiac reflects the much earlier date of 4000 BC. This corresponds closely with the date that Biblical Chronology gives for the beginning of mankind's history in 4003 BC. The Biblical Chronological Time Chart that appears oil pages 12 and 13 shows how my beginning date for mankind's history was determined. This handy chart also shows how many of the ancient historical dates given in "The Language of God" book series were derived.
The Dendera Ceiling Zodiac is commonly attributed to the Ancient Egyptians. This would seem to make sense at first, since the Ancient Egyptians had a star-worshipping religion. They counted their years in weeklong increments, ten-days to a week. Each new week was heralded by spotting the helical rising of the main star in each of the thirty-six decan constellations at dawn. The Egyptians saw their year as three hundred and sixty days long with twelve thirty-day months, to which they added a five-day week to make up the Solar Year.
The importance that the Egyptians placed on all forty-eight constellations of the Zodiac is clear at the Temple to Hathor at Dendera. There, the circular Zodiac can be found in the rooftop chapel to Osiris. In addition, there is another similar representation of the Zodiac in the same temple complex. It is below, in the Temple to Harbor - on the stone ceiling beams in the hypostyle hall. It is called the square Zodiac at Dendera to differentiate it from the circular ceiling Zodiac, and it utilizes symbols that are nearly identical to the circular Zodiac.
The Ancient Egyptians used the constellations as markers for measuring their year, as well as for keeping their religious observances on time. The most significant star in Ancient Egypt was Sirius. In the Zodiac of Dendera, the star Sirius was called "Seir," meaning "Prince." The name Sirius is derived from Seir, which may have been the primeval name for this extremely bright star. Later, however, it was re-named Sothis or Sopdet and became associated with Isis/Hathor. Since it marked the beginning of the Ancient Egyptian year, the helical rising of Sirius always accompanied much religious fanfare.
In the Bible passage quoted at the beginning of this chapter, Yah says to Job: "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?" Yah therefore acted as if the godly man Job was familiar with the constellations of the Mazzaroth. Job also mentions several constellations during an earlier discourse with his friends (Job 9:9). It is therefore possible that Job was familiar with the principles of astronomy as laid down by the patriarchs Seth, Cainan, and Enoch prior to the Great Flood.
Enoch is attributed with writing the Book of 1 Enoch, a book that I quote from extensively in this book series because I believe it is canonical - with good reason. For example, 1 Enoch is considered a god-breathed part of the religious canon held sacred among Ethiopian Christians. It was also highly regarded among the Jewish sect called the Essenes at Qumran, where many fragments of 1 Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. 1 Enoch was also in wide circulation in the early Christian communities before the time of Constantine.
Portions of the Book of 1 Enoch were quoted from, and discussed as legitimate Scripture, among some of the early Church Fathers. In fact, several New Testament writers either quote directly from the Book of 1 Enoch, as in Jude 1:14-15, or allude to Enoch's teachings, as in 2 Peter 2:4-5. So why, if this book was considered Scripture, did it disappear altogether in the West for over fifteen hundred years? This mystery is fully addressed and explained in Books Three and Four of this book series, though part of the reason why will be mentioned in a moment. In all the accounts of Enoch that have come down to us from ancient Judeo-Christian source texts such as the Bible, Book of Jubilees, Book of Jasher, and 1 Enoch, Enoch is depicted as an intelligent, compassionate, and righteous man who understood the workings of astronomy, and who also was a powerful prophet for Yah. In Enoch's book, a large section is devoted to explaining the structure of the Universe, our Earth, and other scientific and astronomical phenomena - in highly allegorical terms. It also explains the spiritual condition of the beings that inhabited the unusual world men lived in prior to the Flood. 1 Enoch also contains many startlingly accurate prophecies about the spiritual future of mankind - many of which are discussed in Book Four of this series. It is therefore probable that anything Enoch wrote would have been considered sacred by Enoch's descendents, and inspired by the Holy Spirit. As such, Enoch's writings would have been passed down to Noah for safekeeping during the Flood.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Language of God in the Universe by Helena Lehman Copyright © 2006 by Helena Lehman. Excerpted by permission.
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