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[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Biblical – III. Greco-Roman Antiquity – IV. Judaism – V. Practical theology I. History of Religions 1. Term . Astrology is the functional use of quantitative astronomical observations and calculations in the service of a qualitative cosmic and anthropological interpretation of the heavens. Inasmuch as the first of these two elements has not yet been, or is minimally, …

[German Version] I. Ancient Near East and Old Testament – II. Greco-Roman World and the New Testament – III. Early Church I. Ancient Near East and Old Testament The starry heavens were the object of enthusiastic study in the ancient Near East from earliest times. This is ¶ associated with the importance of the star cycles for the calendar and with belief in the divinity of the stars (Astral religion). From veneration of the stars, astral divination or astrology developed in Mesopotamia based on the conviction that …

[German Version] The noun composites “macrocosm” and “microcosm” are not attested in antiquity, but Democritus (frgm. 34 with parr.) describes the human being as μικρός κόσμος/ mikrós kósmos. The notion of macrocosm and microcosm establishes a correlation between the spatial structures of the astral sky, the inhabited earth ( oikumene), and the human body, and extends even to the invisible soul; the defined spaces either display a structural relationship (analogy, correlation, imitation) or they partake of each other or are interwoven and infl…

[German Version] I. Greek and Roman Antiquity – II. Practical Theology – III. Islam– I. Greek and Roman Antiquity ʿΩροσκόπος/ hōroskópos “the watcher of the hours,” was originally a term for the ascendant, then the first 30° section of the Dodecatropos, and finally the position of all the stars at a particular time. The approx. nine Egyptian (between 38 bce and 93 ce) and 180 Greek (from 62 bce until 621 ce) horoscopes have been passed down on stone, papyrus, ostracon, or as graffiti, and also in didactic poetry (as sphragis in Manetho's writings) and in special…

A. Life and work Manilius, of whom nothing else is known, devised his didactic poem Astronomica (‘Astronomy/Astrology’) during the reign of Emperor Augustus and left it, incomplete, during that of Tiberius (AD 14–37). His active period thus coincided with the latter part of Ovid’s career and with that of Germanicus. It is also with the former that his poetic art most readily finds comparison. His ‘world-poem’, Stoic in spirit, attempts to capture the universe as a whole in a poetical microcosmos. B. Reception B.1. Antiquity and Middle Ages The few echoes of Germanicus’ translation …

A. Antiquity to Renaissance A.1. IntroductionAntiquity and the Renaissance were high water marks in the history of A. The cosmological worldview, associated with Graeco-Roman polytheism, was in both periods regarded as a form of surrogate religion. While Christian rulers in the West for the most part condemned A. as heresy and only occasionally engaged with it [18], it lived on in Sassanid Persia (AD 227–651) and India. After the Arabs conquered the then hub of scholarship, Alexandria, in AD 642, A. migrated to Constantinople and Baghdad. During the…

A. Leben und Werk Sein Lehrgedicht Astronomica (»Astronomie/Astrologie«) hat der sonst nicht näher bekannte Manilius noch unter Kaiser Augustus konzipiert und unter Tiberius (reg. 14–37 n.Chr.) unvollendet hinterlassen. Er wirkte also etwa gleichzeitig mit dem späten Ovid und Germanicus. Mit dem Erstgenannten ist auch seine Verskunst am ehesten zu vergleichen. Sein stoisch geprägtes ›Weltgedicht‹ versucht, die gesamte Welt in einem poetischen Mikrokosmos zu erfassen. B. Rezeption B.1. Antike und Mittelalter Die wenigen Anklänge an die Arat-Übersetzung des Germanic…