''Oedipus Judaicus'' by William Drummond was first published in 1811 in a limited edition of 200 copies. The book was originally intended for use in a scholastic setting in an attempt to protect Drummond's political career from ridicule. The work is a commentary on a supposed astrological allegory in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

of the Bible, patterned after the ''

Oedipus Aegyptiacus ''Oedipus Aegyptiacus'' is Athanasius Kircher's supreme work of Egyptology. The three full folio tomes of ornate illustrations and diagrams were published in Rome over the period 1652–54. Kircher cited as his sources Chaldean astrology, Heb ...

'' of Kircher. In the book, Drummond seeks possible sources of the Biblical writings, from the Temple of Denderah to parallels with the

Roman god Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the Latin literature, literature and Roman art, visual arts of the Romans, and is a form of Roman folklore. "Roman mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these ...

s, dealing primarily with the 49th chapter of

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...

and the

book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

to draw his conclusions. It contains possibly the first reference to the

Age of Aquarius The Age of Aquarius, in astrology, is either the current or forthcoming astrological age, depending on the method of calculation. Astrologers maintain that an astrological age is a product of the Earth's slow precessional rotation and lasts f ...

in an English publication, but uses a different terminology as the following extract indicates" "Thus the Sun at the vernal equinox passed from the sign of Taurus to that of Aries , which became in its turn the first of the zodiacal constellations ."p.255 The book was reprinted in 1866 and again in 1986, and is again in print.

External articles and references

The Oedipus Judaicus
Entire text at

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Specific 1811 non-fiction books Religious studies books Astrological texts Books about the Bible {{astrology-stub