k, Venus with Ishtar, etc.), and stars, like other
heavenly bodies, were held by them to be divine, but a specific
divinization of a star or planet does not appear in the known
literature.[1231] The same thing is true of China, where, it may be
supposed, reverence for the stars was included in the general high
position assigned to Heaven.[1232] In the Aryan Hindu cults stars were
revered, and by the non-Aryan Gonds were worshiped, but there is no
star-god proper.[1233]

+716+. In the Old Testament and the Apocrypha there are passages in
which stars and planets are referred to in a way that indicates some
sort of a conception of them as divine: they are said to have fought
against Israel's enemies, and in the later literature they are (perhaps
by a poetical figure of speech) identified with foreign deities or with
angels.[1234] But there is no sign of Israelite worship offered them
till the seventh century B.C., when, on the irruption of Assyrian cults,
incense is said to have been burned in the Jerusalem temple to the
mazzalot (probably the signs of the zodiac) and to all the host of
heaven (the stars);[1235] and there is still no creation of a
star-god.[1236] The early Hebrews may have practiced some sort of
star-worship; there are traces of such a cult among their neighbors the
Arabs.

+717+. The Arab personal name Abd ath-thuraiya, 'servant (worshiper) of
the Pleiades,' testifies to a real cult,[1237] though how far it
involves a conception of the constellation as a true individual deity it
may be difficult to say. It has been supposed that the pre-Islamic Arabs
worshiped the planet Venus under the name Al-Uzza,[1238] but this is not
certain. It is true that they worshiped the morning star, and that
ancient non-Arab writers identified the planet with Al-Uzza because it
was with this goddess that the Roman goddess Venus was generally
identified by foreigners. But Al-Uzza was an old Arabian local deity who
gradually assumed great power and influence, and it is certain that she
could not have been originally a star. It must, therefore, be considered
doubtful whether the Arabs had a true star-god.

+718+. A well-defined instance of such a god is the Avestan
Tistrya.[1239] His origin as an object of nature appears plainly in his
functions--he is especially a rain-god, and, as such, a source of all
blessings. Alongside of him stand three less well defined stellar
Powers. The Greeks and Romans adopted from Chaldean astro