Stars without number

Before electric light the night sky over the Bible lands was truly dark. On a clear, moonless night a few thousand stars can be seen with the naked eye, and the pale band of the Milky Way crosses the sky. Abraham was told to “count the stars, if you are able” (Genesis 15:5), and stars and sand became a byword for numbers beyond counting (Genesis 22:17). Greek astronomers did try: the star catalog of Ptolemy, about AD 150, lists 1,022 stars, sorted into six classes of brightness. Paul notes that “star differs from star in splendor” (1 Corinthians 15:41).

The Greeks called the planets “wanderers”, because they move among the fixed stars, and Jude uses the same word: “wandering stars” (Jude 1:13). Shepherds kept “watch over their flocks by night” (Luke 2:8), and travelers and sailors found their way by the stars. On Paul’s voyage to Rome “neither sun nor stars appeared for many days” (Acts 27:20), leaving the crew lost. The ship that later carried him on had “the Twin Brothers as a figurehead” (Acts 28:11): Castor and Pollux, the Twins of the constellation Gemini, whom sailors held to be their protectors.