674 JASTROW— HEPATOSCOPY AND ASTROLOGY [December 4, 



the Orient to the Occident. Astrology in Babylonia declines as 

 astronomy grows, for the very reason that astronomy is an outgrowth 

 of astrology, representing the evolution of a science, by the break- 

 ing away from attachment to a religion and a cult. In Greece 

 astronomy arises as do other sciences through the growth of the 

 spirit of investigation. There was so far as we can see no religious 

 tradition out of which or in opposition to which astronomy took its 

 rise. There is no antecedent astrology from which astronomy 

 emerges as the butterfly from the chrysalis. Therefore, astrology 

 coming to the Greeks as a novel conception, with all the force of an 

 apparently practical application of a scientific theory, suggesting 

 the possibility of a direct communion with the arbiters of human 

 fate — the conscious goal or unconscious hope of all religions — it was 

 capable of being assimilated to the already firmly established astron- 

 omy. Astrology as further developed by the Greeks became merely 

 one of the phases of astronomy, as is shown by the synonymity 

 of the two terms, da-TpoXoyta and aarpovofxia'^ — a condition which 

 persisted till mediaeval scholasticism, which distinguishes merely 

 as a matter of definition between " natural astrology " or theoretical 

 astronomy and " judicial astrology " or divination through the stars 

 as the application of the theory to human life. 



Lastly, if another suggestion be permitted, the " Chaldaeans " 

 whom we encounter so frequently in Greek and Roman writers 

 acting as " diviners " on such various occasions, appear to be indeed 

 Babylonian barfi-prlests or the disciples of these priests who, because 

 of the decline of faith in astrology in the centers in which it arose, 

 left their homes to seek their fortunes elsewhere. As with the 

 growth of astronomical lore, the hold of the old system of astrology 

 was loosened, the occupation of the &am-priests was gone. Their 

 condition was not unlike that of the Levites who, as the priests of the 

 local sanctuaries in Palestine, were deprived of their standing and 

 livelihood with the decline of these sanctuaries through the gradual 

 concentration of Jahweh worship in the central sanctuary of Jerusa- 

 lem. These Levites wandered to Jerusalem where, according to the 

 Priestly Code, provision was made for them by assigning them to 

 posts as assistants to the kdhanini — the legitimate priests of the cen- 



" See Bouche-Leclercq, 0. c, p. 3, note 2. 



