ABRAHAM, PHILO, JOSEPHUS, AND ASTROLOGY * 276 philosophic school of the Hellenistic Age, and in the second century BCE the great astronomer Hipparchus, and in the first - century BCE, Posidonius, the Stoic philosopher, intellectual giant, and polymath . 6 Jews were not immune to belief in astrology ; it was clearly a subject of debate . On the one hand, in its grandeur it seemed — almost like Albert Einstein in the modern imagination — to solve the equation of the universe . On the other, astrology appeared to deny the fundamental tenet of Judaism : the belief in G - d as creator and master of the universe . It was, as some have said, no less than atheism, pure and simple . 7 Charlesworth has correctly warned that the complexity of the question of Jewish views regarding astrology demands a refined methodology, with each document — whether in Philo, Josephus, other Greco - Jewish writers, Midrash, Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, or Dead Sea Scrolls — Literary data, he insists, shouldexamined an...
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