Reflected in Heaven: Biblical and Roman Evidence for a Motif, Shared in Antiquity, about Material Features of the Metropolis of the Chosen People Being Reflected in a Constellation in Heaven. Part One: Cassiopeia in Isaiah 49:16; the Heavenly Jerusalem; t

Abstract

Hypotheses from the scholarly literature concerning separate textual items — namely, the early medieval rabbinic (and in 1982, Wiesenberg’s) interpretation of Jerusalem’s walls being engraved as though on the palms of the hands of God in the sense that Jerusalem is always remembered by Him (Isaiah 49:16) in relation to the constellation of Cassiopeia (cf. al-Kaff ‘the hand palm’ in Arabic); and Vinci and Maiuri’s proposal that the ascription of only seven hills to Rome within the Servian Wall, and the very plan of those walls, were intended for them to correspond to both the number of stars in the Pleiades, and the layout of respectively those hills and stars, with the Palatine hill corresponding to the star Maia (whose name was tabooised, under the death penalty, in the context of reference to the foundation of Rome) — are brought together here and in Part Two. We propose that there was in antiquity a motif by which, a people would consider its metropolis (its orography in the case of Rome, the city walls in Jerusalem’s) as being reflected in heaven in a constellation. This was comforting,
as the eternal city would endure as long as the firmament (a biblical expression indeed). Cf. the motif of the heavenly Jerusalem corresponding to the earthly Jerusalem, and besides, the motif of a city having seven hills (e.g., Constantinople and Jerusalem) is staggeringly widespread, mostly (probably exclusively) because of Rome’s Seven Hills. The lunar mirror hypothesis is a different manner in which reflection of features of the Earth were believed to be reflected in heaven: hence (see Pert Two), a mapmaker drew the southern tip of Africa with a bifurcated contour because of a feature of moon spots. In Part One, we also discuss Cassiopeia in relation to Andromeda, herself a character sometimes related to the Queen of Sheba (herself related to the demoness Onoskelis). Andromeda in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, in a genetic aetiology, apparently influenced a rabbinic tale.