The Life of Tycho Brahe

doubtless encompassed the mathematical sciences; and among the mathematical sciences Astronomy has always excelled: this erudition of Moses may be seen as the most ancient monument of the science of the stars that exists in the Holy Scriptures. An even more ancient one could be had, if it could be proven, as some think, that the history of Job was written by Moses as belonging to an earlier age; ch. 9. for in it Job mentions Arcturus, Orion, and the Hyades; exactly as it would have been necessary for the stars to have been arranged into asterisms by some artifice at that time. But however it may be regarding the time; it can at least be noted here that Job, being a foreigner to the Jews, seems to have drawn his knowledge of God from Him who in Holy Scripture is called the Host of Heaven, since the invisible things of God are understood by nothing more than by those things which have been made and are observed; and rightly does Synesius, calling Astronomy De dono ad Paeon. σεμνήν ἐπιστήμην, a most venerable science, say that it is an elevation to something more ancient or more honorable; namely, ineffable Theology. To be brief, and to pass over that which we read that God gave to Solomon, so that, among other things, he knew the courses of the year and the dispositions of the stars; if anything from the Holy Scriptures expressly proves the antiquity of the observation of the stars and the constitution of some art from those observations, it seems to be what the holy Prophets complained of in their own times, that there were Chaldeans who contemplated the stars at Babylon and calculated the months, so that from them they might announce things to come; that is, from this it is understood that there must have been a very ancient observation and art of the stars among the Chaldeans. As for the pagan writers, one must first speak of the fabulous part of the times, insofar as any truth