The bright planet Jupiter is now riding high in the evening sky.  Be sure to take a look on the warm summer evenings.  If you've never before seen Jupiter in the night sky, be sure to check it out in the current Flash animation, The Sky This Month for July, 2008.  You can see the high-resolution Flash movie at our web site:

We've heard from the nice folks at CBD that our homeschool curriculum Signs & Seasons: Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy has been an "above average" seller for them in 2008.  Thanks to everyone who has ordered this curriculum, we hope your family is rediscovering the forgotten Biblical techniques of telling time and navigating by the Sun, Moon, and stars. 

For more information about Signs & Seasons, including customer reviews and a review by the Andreola Family, please visit:
 
CBD's Signs & Seasons page.


Dance of the Planets

 

Have you looked at Signs & Seasons, our Classical Astronomy curriculum?  Check out these Endorsements. 

 

 

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Astronomical Topics

 
Jupiter in Folklore and History
The bright planet Jupiter has always been one of the most conspicuous objects in the night sky down through history.  As studied through telescopes and by space probes, Jupiter has been discovered to be a remarkable world in its own right, a swirling mass of turbulent clouds, ten times the diameter of the Earth, with its own host of satellites.  In these ways, Jupiter is certainly one of the LORD's most remarkable creations.  

And yet many Christians have a problem with astronomy because of names such as Jupiter, since this was the king of the pagan gods of Greek and Roman mythology.  It surely is a sad thing that this pagan name persists after 2000 years of a nominally Christian western culture.  Yet, as we've seen in the other articles in our "Pagan Influences" series,  many notions of ancient pagan culture remain deeply rooted in our modern culture.  One cannot even speak our language without encountering these influences, and the influence of Jupiter is a good example.


The Lingusitics of Jupiter
Originally, the pre-astrological ancient Greeks gave descriptive names to the planets, and called this wandering star Phaethon, meaning "The Bright Star."  Following the conquest of Babylonia by Alexander the Great, the Greek culture became influenced by the Babylonian culture, and thereby incorporated astrology into the study of the sky.  

After this time, the Greeks remaned the planet Phaethon after Zeus, the head of the heathen pantheon, the king of Mount Olympus.  In mythology, Zeus was a cruel god who capriciously toyed with people and visited all manner of suffering upon humanity at his whim.  Many of the early Christian fathers believed that Zeus was a real king who lived in very ancient times and demanded that his people worship him as a god.

In ancient myth, Zeus was a storm god, who tossed lightning bolts out of the sky.  As the centuries passed, the name Zeus generally became a generic term for god.  This was reflected in the inflected Greek language.  In the Greek grammar, various cases of the name "Zeus" include Zeu, Dios, Dia, and Dii. 

The Greek letter "Z" (zeta) had been pronounced as a "dya" or a "j" in various Greek dialects.  This usage found its way into the Roman language, and the generic Latin word for god -- deus -- is related to Zeus.  The feminine form of this word is diva, which means "goddess."  (Remember this the next time you hear a bimbo singer called a "pop diva" in the media!)  These words are also the roots of English words like divine and divinity, part of the Christian lexicon to this day.

The name Zeus found its way into Latin by other paths.  The Romans called this god Zeu Pater, meaning "Father Zeus."  The name Zeus ended up Ioue, or "Jove," and the title Iou Pater became Jupiter.  

We read in the book of Acts that Paul and Barnabas were confused with the gods Jupiter and Mercury after healing a crippled man while visiting the city of Lystra in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey): 

And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.  And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker.  Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. - Acts 14:11-13

The pagans of Lystra didn't stay impressed for long, for they immediately turned around and stoned Paul and Barnabas!  In later centuries, the cities of Lystra and Derbe became important Christian cities and had many memorials to the Apostle Paul.


Pantheism of the Greeks and Romans
Even before New Testament times, the Greeks and Romans were very educated, sophisticated people.  During the era of Greek philosophy in the early centuries before Christ, many no longer believed their own mythology.  The philosophers sought to find allegories in the puerile fairy tales of Greco-Roman myth.  In their writings, the late Greeks and Romans tended to refer to a single god called Zeus or Deus.  However, they were not monotheists but were rather pantheists that believed that Zeus inhabited every nook and cranny of the world.  

This pantheistic notion of God is found in the Greek poet Aratus.  A portion of this passage is quoted in Scripture, which the Apostle Paul used to explain the nature of the true LORD to the Athenians at Mars Hill in Acts 17:

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. - Acts 17:27-29
      
Here's the passage from the beginning of Aratus' Phaenomena that includes the portion quoted by the Apostle Paul:

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus.  For we are also his offspring; and he in his kindness giveth men favorable signs and wakeneth the people to work, reminding them of livelihood.


Jupiter as Viewed by the Early Church
The fourth century Christian father Augustine, bishop of Hippo, noted the contradictions of pagan religion, which on one hand taught the pantheistic view that Jupiter filled the whole world, while, on the other hand, also teaching that there were many gods that controlled various parts of the world.  In his anti-pagan tome The City of God, Augustine wrote:

For they are wont rather to attribute universal existence to Jupiter; whence the saying, "All things are full of Jupiter."  Therefore they must think Jupiter also, in order that he may be a god, and especially king of the gods, to be the world, that he may rule over the gods -- according to them, his parts. 

Noting that the pagan mythology tells of many evil deeds performed by Jupiter, Augustine had this to say:

Verily, if the people call this god Jupiter, in whose power are all the causes of all natures which have been made, and of all natural things, and worship him with such insults and infamous criminations, they are guilty of more shocking sacrilege than if they should totally deny the existence of any god.

As for astronomy, Augustine mocked the pagans for naming the bright planet after Jupiter when it was not even as bright as the evening star Venus:

Since they call Jupiter the king of all, who will not laugh to see his star so far surpassed in brilliancy by the star of Venus?  For it ought to have been as much more brilliant than the rest, as he himself is more powerful.

 
Jupiter, the Modern Planet   
For many centuries into the Christian era, Jupiter shown in the night sky and no one had any idea of the true nature of this celestial body.  Then one day, an astronomer by the name of Galileo Galilei looked at the Bright Star with the newly-invented telescope.  Galilio reported:  

One the 7th of January in the present year, 1610, in the first hour of the following night, when I was viewing the constellations of the heavens through a telescope, the planet Jupiter presented itself to my view, and as I had prepared for myself a very excellent instrument, I noticed a circumstance which I had never been able to notice before, owing to the want of power in my other telescope, namely, that three little stars, small but very bright, were near the planet.

Over the following clear nights, Galileo discovered that these "stars" changed position around Jupiter from night to night.  He eventually arrived at the following conclusion:

I therefore concluded, and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury around the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous other subsequent observations.  These obserations also established that there are not only three, but four, erratic sidereal bodies performing their revolutions round Jupiter.

Galileo was the first to realize that Jupiter was another world, similar to the Earth yet very unsimilar.  In the centuries following Galileo, the planet Jupiter was studied in great detail.  Instead of a wandering star of a god, it was proven that Jupiter is a creation of the true God, a very large ball of gas, much more massive than the Earth yet having a very low density. 

Jupiter was observed to spin very fast, completing a daily rotation in only 10 hours.  Huge storms constantly rage over Jupiter's surface, including the Great Red Spot, large enough to swallow the entire Earth.  Jupiter gives off lethal radiation that would quickly kill a person who would (or could) draw too close. 
 
Many more moons were discovered around Jupiter, each so very different that one would wonder how they could come to be through random chance.  Of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, first seen by Galileo, one is a hot sulphur volcano world, another is a ball of frozen ice, and two are similar to Earth's Moon, only larger.  

Indeed, the reality of the planet Jupiter is much more bizarre than anything dreamed up by an ancient pagan poet.  And this in itself testifies and gives glory to its Creator.  

If you would like to see the moons of Jupiter in 2008, don't run out and buy a telescope!  Instead, find a local planetarium, observatory, or astronomy club in your area.  These groups are always running public programs, especially in the summer, and would be happy to give your homeschool family a peak at Jupiter and other celestial sights.  A list of these local clubs and organizations can be found at the Sky & Telescope web site.