05-03-2019, 09:57 AM
This will be short for a number of reasons.
I read this book twice before, years ago, when I was online friends with the author's daughter. She had sent me this book for free (twice; I lost it once), and thankfully I take better care of my print books than I have in the past. Since then, he started a website to promote his central ideas and has attributed the book to the organization's name, instead of his personal name.
The idea of a "Christian version" of the zodiac was of great interest to me, and it scratched the itch I had at the time. Revisiting it now, though, proved drudgery. Allen organized the content as well as he could, narratively, combining scripture and history with the Jewish interpretation of constellations, without making it a dry data table of information.
My interest only went so far this time. I can't speak for the sources Allen used for reference, but they undoubtedly mostly came from a Western and Dispensationalist perspective. Knowing this, they would equate Hellenized Judaism with the ancient Hebrew and Near East view of the world, which would be a unmistakable categorical error. Such a logical, cataglogue-oriented view of the constellations and heavenly events would be entirely foreign to the ancient Hebrew. We know this because the view that Allen says came from the Hebrew intellectual pedigree is patterned suspiciously after the thoroughly Western and pagan Roman and Greek zodiac. Like other intellectual pieces that emerged from the Hellenization of near east religious thought, he constellations had a patina of monotheistic meaning painted onto them, nothing more.
The claims made make for interesting reading, but as something that aligns with a heart-led, covenantal, view of the world, I'd give this book a hard pass.
I read this book twice before, years ago, when I was online friends with the author's daughter. She had sent me this book for free (twice; I lost it once), and thankfully I take better care of my print books than I have in the past. Since then, he started a website to promote his central ideas and has attributed the book to the organization's name, instead of his personal name.
The idea of a "Christian version" of the zodiac was of great interest to me, and it scratched the itch I had at the time. Revisiting it now, though, proved drudgery. Allen organized the content as well as he could, narratively, combining scripture and history with the Jewish interpretation of constellations, without making it a dry data table of information.
My interest only went so far this time. I can't speak for the sources Allen used for reference, but they undoubtedly mostly came from a Western and Dispensationalist perspective. Knowing this, they would equate Hellenized Judaism with the ancient Hebrew and Near East view of the world, which would be a unmistakable categorical error. Such a logical, cataglogue-oriented view of the constellations and heavenly events would be entirely foreign to the ancient Hebrew. We know this because the view that Allen says came from the Hebrew intellectual pedigree is patterned suspiciously after the thoroughly Western and pagan Roman and Greek zodiac. Like other intellectual pieces that emerged from the Hellenization of near east religious thought, he constellations had a patina of monotheistic meaning painted onto them, nothing more.
The claims made make for interesting reading, but as something that aligns with a heart-led, covenantal, view of the world, I'd give this book a hard pass.