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Now this is allegory: these two women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

Thus, again, we discover that biblical characters are not actual persons but allegory for places. We also discover that certain places are allegory for other places:

. . . and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which is allegorically called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. (Rev. 11:8)

Of course, this fact is hidden by some translators, who render the word "allegorically" as "spiritually."

Other early Christians also knew about the allegorical nature of the Bible, but their later counterparts began in earnest the profitable push for utter historicization, obliterating millennia of human study and knowledge, and propelling the Western world into an appalling Dark Age. St. Athanasius, bishop and patriarch of Alexandria, was not only aware of the allegorical nature of biblical texts, but he "admonishes us that `Should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies. '6 In other words, it is a sin to take the Bible literally!

Christian father Origen, called the "most accomplished biblical scholar of the early church," admitted the allegorical and esoteric nature of the Bible: "The Scriptures were of little use to those who understood them literally, as they are written."7 St. Augustine, along with Origen, was forceful in his pronouncement of Genesis as allegory:

There is no way of preserving the literal sense of the first chapter of Genesis, without impiety, and attributing things to God unworthy of him.

Thus, it is understood that there is allegory and symbolism in the Bible. What is also understood is that, despite protestations to the contrary, the stars, sun and moon are described and utilized repeatedly within an allegorical or astrological context by biblical writers. In fact, in examining biblical texts closely, we further discover that various places and persons, portrayed as actual, historical entities, are in fact allegory for the heavens and planetary bodies. In reality, virtually all Hebrew place-names have astronomical meanings.8 So prevalent is this custom of creating .as above, so below," it is obvious that the "chosen" were as enchanted with the heavens as their adversaries and neighbors, such as the Chaldeans, master astrologers jealously reviled by their Hebrew counterparts. Contrary to popular belief, the reverence displayed by other peoples for "God's heavens" is also exhibited by the Israelites, whose very name, as we have seen, is astrotheological. Indeed, from the very beginning, the biblical people were encouraged to study the stars and signs in the heavens, as at Genesis 1:14, which basically describes the zodiac:

And God [Elohim] said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years ...

Despite the negative comments and exhortations found in the Bible against astrology, star-gazing, soothsaying and divination, we discover various passages that clearly refer to these magical arts and their objects of reverence with fondness. In fact, at several points the heavens are personified and appear as wondrous characters whose praises are sung by biblical characters, in precisely the same manner as their Pagan counterparts. The author(s) of Job is one such character, and it is in this book we find unambiguous references to astrology. In Job, "the Lord" personifies the "morning stars"-the "sons of God"and has them "joyfully crying out." In trying to make Job feel small and obey him, the Lord presents a list of his own godly attributes, including the ability to command the happy heavens:

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or