Zodiac or Ziggurat?
Here’s a challenge to the twelve tribes Zodiac theory…
I put together the chart above for Bible Matrix III based on James Jordan’s chart in his very helpful Behind the Scenes: Orientation in the Book of Revelation. Since the four kingly faces correspond to the four quadrants, it takes the Zodiac and corresponds it to the tribes in Numbers. His explanation of how the Zodiac corresponds to the tribes is very good, but the actual Zodiac seems alien to the Bible, which repeats symbols over and over, and these don’t really get repeated. It feels like a foreign body and it bugged me for days!
So I checked online and found a few other arrangements which were pretty cool, like this one. It follows a pattern which is clever and intriguing but it seems overly complicated and out of character with Scripture. Also, nobody seems to agree on how the other tribes (besides the four faces: ox, lion, eagle, man) should be corresponded. Some even question the main four! What to do?
I started looking at the banners of the tribes. What these were varies a bit but basing them on the blessings in Genesis 49 seemed to bring some order. Once arranged in a cruciform manner, the architecture resembles a ziggurat rather than a Zodiac, which ties it better to Jacob’s dream, and turns the entire construct into a prophecy of Israel’s history!
Ah… that’s better.
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