Talk:Christian views on astrology

Similarities in Christian Symbolism & Astrology

This article needs work but on the whole it’s relevant and necessary! I was wondering, do you have any information the similarities between ancient astrology, the metaphors associated with Jesus` birth and death and actual movements of the earth in relation to the stars?JusticeBlack (talk) 18:09, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sources

This is not OR. Many books on astrology will confirm this. I hope that page is not deleted. Please discuss first if you have any strong objections to it. SmokeyTheCat 09:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

You need to cite some sources though, so for the time being I've tagged the article as unreferenced and OR. At first I was considering sending this to AfD because at present it does appear to be entirely original research ("original research" doesn't necessarily mean it is your original research), but I can see a case for this becoming a worthwhile article about the compatibility of religion and astrology. I would be wary of basing every claim made on writings in astrology books; there needs to be balance with writings from theologians, biblical historians, etc. (even a fairly perfunctory search on Google Books[1] turns up some interesting material that can be considered reliable sources). ~Matticus ^T_C 09:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the information Matticus. When please does "original research" become unoriginal enough to be worthy of inclusion? I will try and find a link or two to give the article more credibility. Thanks for not deleting it immediately.SmokeyTheCat 15:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not always a strictly black-and-white thing so is open to debate, and the merits of each source should be looked at individually. "Reliable sources" are described in more detail at WP:RS - a book or paper by a published, respected theologian, historian, sociologist, etc. makes for good reference material. Astrology books as references could be problematic as I can see editors potentially labelling any modern work that promotes astrology as compatible with Christianity as pushing their (the author's) own agenda or being a "fringe theory", but this can be tackled by writing the article carefully (instead of just writing "These four zodiac signs correspond to the four gospels" as a raw fact, say "In Bloggs and Smith's paper they suggest that these four zodiac signs...", and if possible provide several sources to support the statement or even other sources that dispute it).

If you look at Wikipedia's article about Astrology, in the external links section there are several good references covering the relationships between religion and astrology, and the Google Books search I mentioned before also seems to turn up some good reference material (take a look at these sections in Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity: Essays on Their Interaction and The First Christian Histories for starters). If you base the article on these and other reliable sources, you should be able to put together a good, balanced article that I'm sure no serious Wikipedia contributor could object to.

Anyway, that's just to get you started. I doubt I will be contributing much to the article directly because I'm not all that au fait with astrology, but I do know my way around Wikipedia's policies and citiation conventions, so if you have any questions you are welcome to drop me a message on my talk page and I'll try to lend a hand. ~Matticus ^T_C 17:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Header

Header needs a complete rewrite.

I especially object to saying "astrology receives only fringe support from modern society". Something like a third (or two thirds, I forget the exact number) of londoners believe in astrology. PyroGamer 16:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• PyroGamer: Okay, granted those are certainly non-sourced statements in the header. But introductory paragraphs don't often use references in such places. The thing to remember, which is often ignored on the Wikipedia, is that there are words in blue... links to other articles. I believe the debate over what astrology is belongs on the talk page for astrology in this case. After all, there are some good references in the astrology article (6 and 7) which are typical of the hostility of the scientific community against astrology. The header only describes this as being a common, mundane eye-opened view of reality in our society: it is widely called pseudoscience, like it or not, POV or not, newspaper articles or not. And so... why repeat here the references in the astrology article? Go there. It is the first link! Astrology seems to be the issue with you, not the Christianity part.

• Furthermore, some of these "unsourced statements" are directly related to the content which follows from the Catholic Encyclopedia. So obviously by the turn of the twentieth century, astrology had been through a few cycles of popularity and scientific attack. The important part of this article is not SCIENCE vs. astrology.... it should be RELIGION vs. astrology. You should make your focus that aspect, research it, and report on it here. (Or, rather, make it RELIGION plus astrology, with your documentation to support that.) Will you please ignore me? 18:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• I made an edit just now to the reference mainstream science-based perspective on astrology. The previous version had vague mentions of "Western thinking" and "modern society", a tendentious claim that this is due to "indoctrination" in the scientific method, and no references. I changed this to be somewhat more specific as to who within the Western world takes the empirically-based position, avoid the negative connotations of "indoctrination", and include references. My altered version is mostly copied from the main article on astrology. --Icarus ^(Hi!) 04:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

This needs a whole bunch of work

Below is pasted what used to be under the heading, "Astrology within the Bible" in the article. I yanked it out.

1. This stuff is not within the Bible.
2. If those links are supposed to be references, they need to be made into references so it fits with the normal method used in wikipedia. However, those links do not seem to be scholarly, but they may work if they aren't blatantly commercial.
3. What I feel is lacking is how to jump from a discussion on the magi, who are astrologers, to discussing the Zodiac signs of the writers. That is a major gear switch... there is no similarity to the rest of the article. I am not sure what the zodiac symbols of the books or writers has to do with this, but I am not saying it can't fit in.
4. Further, this entire section needs work done in linking, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and an entire rewrite.
5. The POV must be tainted, because it makes no sense. What an Ox or Aquarius has to do with the Bible is not explained even half-heartedly. The links provided discuss Mark as a man and Matthew as a lion and are of what I consider poor quality because they didn't explain much.

This is a mess, so I have removed it to this place. Please work on it, research and write it better, and connect it with the main article if you can -- just do better than the current transition word "Also" that forces the reader to engulf quite a dramatic change in POV and cohesion with four letters and no help from even one cross-reference to a wiki article, picture, or category. I like to saw logs! 08:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Also from the earliest times the four evangelists of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have had symbols associated with them: Matthew is a Man; Mark a Lion; Luke an Ox and John an Eagle. These correspond to the four 'winds' of Aquarius ( a man carrying water ), Leo, Taurus and Scorpio with an eagle replacing the biblically unpopular scorpion. (The constellation of the Eagle is close to that of the Scorpion in the sky.)[2][3] Furthermore - intentional or otherwise - the Gospels are full of astrological symbols; There a virgin (Virgo); many fishes (Pisces); two of the disciples are twins (Gemini); the sacrificial goat (Capricorn, Jesus's own sign given Christmas day); Cancer, the sideways-walking traitor of Judas etc.

This shows what I am on about. http://catholic-resources.org/Art/Evangelists_Symbols.htm

Fairly uncontroversial. Would anyone object if I added this bit back into the article?  SmokeyTheCat  •TALK• 13:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, did yo notice that the above link doesn't use the word "astrology" in it, nor does it seem to talk about astrology at all. You remember the name of the article? You seem to be looking at symbology and not astrology. You might need to come up with some sources and rethink and rewrite. Bad idea otherwise. I like to saw logs! (talk) 05:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

What we need

This article has needed this for awhile... the counterpoint to the "positive" portrayal of magi... things in the Bible which are against astrology. The Book of Revelation is said to use astrological terms. There are numerous astrological allusions in the OT which could be included, too. There is also Abraham, whom the Catholic Encyclopedia mentions was the inventor of astronomy. There are also some quasi-Christian organizations which use astrology in certain ways. I like to saw logs! 08:13, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I too find it odd that the portrayal of astrology in the Gospel of Matthew is described as positive. If we read the account without pre-concieved ideas, the portrayal is at the very best is ambivelent, at the worst sinister. Unlike the shepards in Luke's gospel who, invited by God's angel, go directly to Jesus, the astrologers are lead first to Harod who commits mass murder of infant boys in an attempt to destroy him (Matthew 2:16). Jesus is saved from the consequences of the astrologers' appearance only by divine intervention (Matthew 2:19--23).

The assertion that the portrayal is positive because the Magi "are the first on record to worship Jesus as God" is perhaps a natural assumption for one who believes that Jesus Christ is God. However there is no reason to suppose that the Magi shared this belief. They describe him not as God, but as "he that is born King of the Jews" (Matthew 2:2). The statement that they "worshipped him" and offering him gifts (Matthew 2:11) is consistent with their belief that he was a future king. (The Greek word which the KJV renders "worshipped" is "proskyneo" which The Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament defines as "to make obeisance, do reverence to, worship." In the Greek Septuagint it is used to describe gestures of respect paid, not just to God, but also to humans such as at Genesis 23:7, 12 and Daniel 2:46. Other Bibles render it as "bowed down to him" and the like.)

So, I think the statement that the portrayal of the astrologers is "positive" goes well beyond a simple neutral POV characterization of the text of Matthew's gospel. If we are to keep the statement that the portrayal is sufficiently positive to create a difficulty for those who believe that astrology is incompatible with Christianity, we need to attribute it to someone and more clearly identify the beliefs which inform his conclusion.

User:Chappell 29 July 2008

We also must observe that it was allegedly God who warned them in a dream. The article as it is written points out positive aspects, as if the astrologers were in the Bible camp. The Matthew account can be read in many ways obviously, but the article can't assume sinister and disparaging views towards the Magi, since the writers of the gospel make no comments that would indicate that they or their profession was somehow anti-God or anti-Christian. They showed themselves pro-Christ by worshipping him or at least treating him like a very great king. The story in the Bible seemed to be written to point out that even the heathen gentile magi were so enthused that they traveled a long way to pay homage.

How can anyone lay aside the shock factor of Matthew's gospel in relating the fact that there was one more group of folks who contributed to Jesus' coming kingdom? Many had heard of recent converts to Christianity by the time Matthew wrote the gospel, but perhaps not many had heard this shocking tale?! Matthew was taking a lot of his stuff directly to Gentiles who would appreciate stories like that. One shocking fact was that these magi were well-behaved model gentiles, beating a lot of people to the door, so to speak. They moved in fast, even before the Egypt thing. And it explains why Herod killed the babies. Basically, the Magi are the whole reason why Jesus went to Egypt and fulfilled all of those ancient prophesies, according to Matthew. All of this puts the Magi in an important and pro-Christ camp. You don't see any Bible commentators saying, "Oh, and those evil astrologers messed up the whole plan of God when they started casting their silly horoscopes." No. Christians worldwide see the Magi as these great and impressive figures... cast into bronze statues now... they represent gift-giving and are the innocent antitheses to wicked Herod.

But my original point was to say that we need some cons... Some evidence against astrology... to balance the article. All I would say is that you can't find any evidence against astrology in the Matthew account without a great deal of bias. Find the cons in other portions of Christianity or other areas of the Bible to balance the Magi episode. Why? Because mainstream modern Christianity doesn't embrace astrology, contrary to the Magi account in Matthew which shows astrology in a positive light. It has been a few hundred years since astrology was popular in Christian circles, so the article needs to explain why. Go research why thinking has changed. What scriptures do modern scholars point to that disparage astrology? I like to saw logs! (talk) 06:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

NPOV, editorializing, synthesising

I support the view that this article has NPOV issues. It seems to me that quite a lot of it violates the best Wikipedia standards. Consider for example the "Astrology within the Church" section.

• It contains excessively long quotes in relation to the editorial content. See When not to use quotations.

• It editorializes. Consider the underlined words in this part: "it is obvious that, at the time of writing, although the Roman Catholic opinion of astrology was not enthusiastic, there was a small amount of leeway provided to make legitimate use of astrology. Perhaps the intent was to allow astrology to be studied by scholars, theologians, and members of the clergy. It is clearly not in support of modern astrology for divination, personal horary predictions, or for supporting superstitions. At the same time, it does not seem to be anathema to Catholicism (see heterodoxy). Indeed, the gist of the article seems to be that astrology is merely anathema to modern scientific reasoning and therefore makes its usefulness in Western Christianity a tenuous one". Review the underlined parts against Synthesis and Words to avoid, particularly Adverbs that editorialize.

I think it's quite appropriate to report the views expressed in the Catholic Encylopedia (although this should be balanced with views from other Christian traditions), but the section goes much further. It needs either heavily editing or removal. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:36, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This is pretty biased.

It tries too hard to make connections between Christianity and astrology. For instance,the word "magi",in greek "μάγοι",means "sorcerers".[4]1.He who practices magic, casts spells, summons supernatural powers or appears to possess them. 2.He who has exceptional skills on a specific thing,example: The young mechanic quickly turned into a magician of information technology. Notes by me: Keep in mind that number 2. mentions a modern figure of speech rather than a meaning. I say modern because I've never seen that expression in older texts. The irony here is that the one who wrote this article used the word "astrologers" which is actually a greek word slightly modified to fit nicely into the english language. My point is,not only the word "magi" doesn't carry such a meaning but if those men were indeed astrologists then we would actually have the word "αστρολόγοι" instead of "μάγοι". If this wasn't enough,keep in mind that we only read that the sorcerers were following the star,the rest are assumptions (studying the stars etc).

Another thing. We see Luke 22:10 also being mentioned in the effort to support this connection but it's simply quoted out of context. Here's Luke 22:10 till 20:14 10He said to them, "Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house which he enters,

11and tell the householder, 'The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I am to eat the passover with my disciples?'

12And he will show you a large upper room furnished; there make ready."

13And they went, and found it as he had told them; and they prepared the passover.

14And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him.

This makes it clear that Jesus Christ didn't enter any "astrological" house but a real,human-made one to eat along with His disciples. All kinds of claims can be supported by taking the quotes out of context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreas Gram (talk • contribs) 23:23, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Cut and Paste?

Much of this article reads like a cut and paste job. Editor2020, Talk 04:31, 5 March 2015 (UTC)