Using Astronomical References For Biblical Dating Of Noah’s Deluge And The Destruction Of Solomon’s Temple

In recent years, the astronomy teaching community has been called upon to include more cultural aspects of the influence of astronomy across the world in university courses. As an important component connecting the science of predictable sky alignments with historical human events, students studying the history of science and astronomy often find it cognitively challenging to recognize the fact that till the 16th century AD the most fundamental picture of the planetary system had been distorted with the sun considered to be the fourth planet of the earth rather than the center of our modern planetary system. Similarly, students are often amazed in realizing that the vast majority of all professional and knowledgeable astronomers had also believed that planets control the destiny of all human beings,and, in particular, in predicting extreme events. In this presentation, we concentrate on such impacts of astronomers who stood behind the determination of the chronology of the Bible. Having illustrated that the ancient astronomers believed that when the Sun, the Moon, and the first point of Aries form a straight celestial line, important historical events described in the Bible could be revealed, and one could systematically examine the relative positions of these three celestial objects when events would occur and symbolize for the sages the end of an era. We first describe how the largest celestial separation between the sun, the moon, and the Vernal Equinox (VE) was identified by the writers of the chronology to occur in association with the destruction of Solomon’s Temple; and then we illustrate the additional result that such a separation was also made to be associated with a biblical flood.