ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
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actions may be ascribed to animals or things, but neither 
.speaker nor hearer really mistake their true relations. Of 
astronomical allusions of this poetical character, there are 
many in the Bible, but there is no confusion of identity. In 
Psalm xix, the writer likens the sun to a bridegroom, coming 
forth from his tent. But the likeness lies only in its splendour ; 
the writer does not consider the sun to be actually a bridegroom, 
and endow him with a bride and children. In the myths of 
the nations surrounding the Israelites, of Baal, of Istar, of 
Merodach, the characteristics, human and animal, divine and 
astronomical, are mingled together in inextricable confusion, 
and it is impossible to say whether Istar is goddess or woman, 
or supernatural cow, or the moon or the planet Venus, or the 
Virgin of the zodiac, or the sun when in that sign, or the 
personification of passion, or of the powers of reproduction, or 
the confusion of any and all of these. This confusion is the 
essential quality of myth, and it leads up to no clearness of 
.thought, to no knowledge, either in science or in religion. 
I have already said that from the point of view of their 
astronomical bearing, it does not matter how we date the books 
of the Bible, since there was no great development of astronomy 
during the whole period covered by them. The constellations 
had already been designed before the earliest book was written. 
The great advances which took place under Hipparchus were 
not made till after the Old Testament Canon was complete. 
But reversing the position we do find that some astronomical 
allusions of Scripture can throw a little light on the dating. 
Thus there are three constellation names in Scripture, Ash, 
Kimah and Kesil. All three terms occur in the book of Job, 
two of them occur in Amos, and one in Isaiah. What do they 
.signify, and from what source do they come ? 
Here we are met with a difficulty. The meaning of these 
names was lost before the Seventy made their rendering of the 
Hebrew Scriptures into Greek; for in one passage they left 
Kimah and Kesil untranslated, and they translated Ash and 
Kesil differently in different passages. The names have not 
been found as yet as stellar names on any cuneiform inscription ; 
indeed, had their significance been known in Babylon, it is most 
improbable that the Alexandrian translators would have failed 
to obtain the necessary information therefrom. But it is clear 
that the prophet Amos and the writers of the book of J ob, and 
of the thirteenth chapter of Isaiah were quite familiar with them. 
The obvious and sufficient explanation of the later ignorance 
respecting them, lies in the terrible catastrophes which overtook 
