230 MRS. WALTER MAUNDER, ON ASTRONOMICAL 



(5) Why won't you accept Jude 14, 15 as a quotation from our 

 Enoch 1 What I mean is this : you ask for criticism and opinion and 

 your argument on p. 214 does read a little to me as if you had made 

 up your mind beforehand that this couldn't be ! But however this 

 may be, do the writer of Enoch the justice to remember that it is all 

 supposed to be written before the Flood : the religious institution of 

 the Sabbath, the Law, the Feasts, are all in the future (p. 218). Only 

 in a vision is there any mention of Israel, or Israelite religion. 



(6) One other point. The Bundahish may be the compilation of 

 Vologeses, but such compilations are generally a codification, an 

 arrangement, of previously existing laws, customs, beliefs. The 

 " Grseco-Magian " syncretism began, surely, with the conquests of 

 Alexander the Great ; if Iranian influence be proved in " Enoch," 

 that in my opinion does not prove the book to be post-Christian, even 

 if the Bundahish (as we have it) be of the first century A.D. I cannot 

 believe that " this combination of Greek and Magian thought took its 

 rise under King Valkash " (p. 223). 



Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer, Ph.D., Director of the Armagh Observatory : 

 May I take the opportunity to make a few remarks on the first 

 footnote on p. 209. 



Ptolemy's s}^stem of spheres is described in detail in his 

 " Hypotheses of the Planets." There were forty-one spheres in 

 all, including epicycle-spheres, and eight of these were "moving 

 spheres," one for the fixed stars and seven for the seven planets. 

 The system of spheres was very complicated, as they were not 

 concentric, and nobody would get the idea of either nine or ten 

 spheres from it. It was completely overshadowed by " the Ptolemaic 

 system " of excentric circles and epicycles and was doubtless only 

 designed for the benefit of the weaker brethren, who required some- 

 thing more tangible than a mere mathematical conception of 

 circles. 



Ahmed ben Musa in the ninth century wrote a treatise to prove 

 that there was no ninth sphere. 



The first mention of nine spheres is in the writings of the 

 Brethren of Purity in the tenth century ; it is called the original 

 mover, and a reference is made to the saying in the Koran LXIX 

 " and eight angels carry over themselves the throne of thy Lord." 

 This is next mentioned by Al Betrugi (Alpetragius) at the end of 

 the twelfth century. The idea was evidently derived from 



