> Mankind, with hardly an exception, have not remarked the periods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do not measure them against one another by the help of number, and hence they can scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in number and admirable for their variety, make up time.
A Greek astronomer living at the same time that the Torah was written down would agree that numbers were uncountable. It was a poetic metaphor or hyperbole to mean "uncountably many."
Eg, https://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/books/genesis/genesis1... points out that an Akkadian inscription from around 1280 BCE - which is around the same time that tradition says that the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai (1312 BCE) - says "Thereupon, the land of the Kuti, whose numbers are countless as the stars of heaven"
Or from around 1018 BCE: "In his first year the city of Suru of Bit-halupe rebelled. Assur-nasir-pal captured the city and said, "Öhis heavy spoil, which like the stars of heaven could not be counted, I carried off""
Thus, the account in the Torah appears to be in line with what the Greeks and what others in the Middle East believed - that the number of stars in the sky was beyond counting.
On the other hand, a Greek astronomer after Hipparchus or Ptolemy might have laughed, as their catalogs counted about 1,000 stars. But that was several hundred years after the Torah was written down.
This is what we would expect if the authors of the Torah drew from the general cultural understanding of their era, and does not require some special or hidden connection to a non-human source.
You further posit "who really uses stars as an example of millions, just like sand grains, over and over repeatedly, if they really thought there weren’t that many?"
As I believe I have demonstrated, it wasn't until Hipparchus's star catalogue from about 135 BCE that people in that region of the Earth had the idea that the visible stars might actually be countable. Until then it was used metaphorically to mean "could not be counted."
The Greeks also used the number of grains of sand as a metaphor for "uncountable". For example, Pindar's Olympian 2 ("For Theron of Acragas Chariot Race 476 B. C.") ends "Since the sand of the shore is beyond all counting, who could number all the joys that Theron has given others?"; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... .
There are other metaphors for uncountable. In Olympian 12 the same author uses "I would not know how to give a clear account of the number of pebbles in the sea."
Could you explain what "militant" means? Are you militant? Do you think I am?
Why do you think that?
Plato, who lived until 347 BCE, wrote in Timaeus (39b-d) (quoting https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/physis/plato-timaeus/time.as... ):
> Mankind, with hardly an exception, have not remarked the periods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do not measure them against one another by the help of number, and hence they can scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in number and admirable for their variety, make up time.
A Greek astronomer living at the same time that the Torah was written down would agree that numbers were uncountable. It was a poetic metaphor or hyperbole to mean "uncountably many."
Eg, https://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/books/genesis/genesis1... points out that an Akkadian inscription from around 1280 BCE - which is around the same time that tradition says that the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai (1312 BCE) - says "Thereupon, the land of the Kuti, whose numbers are countless as the stars of heaven"
Or from around 1018 BCE: "In his first year the city of Suru of Bit-halupe rebelled. Assur-nasir-pal captured the city and said, "Öhis heavy spoil, which like the stars of heaven could not be counted, I carried off""
Thus, the account in the Torah appears to be in line with what the Greeks and what others in the Middle East believed - that the number of stars in the sky was beyond counting.
On the other hand, a Greek astronomer after Hipparchus or Ptolemy might have laughed, as their catalogs counted about 1,000 stars. But that was several hundred years after the Torah was written down.
This is what we would expect if the authors of the Torah drew from the general cultural understanding of their era, and does not require some special or hidden connection to a non-human source.
You further posit "who really uses stars as an example of millions, just like sand grains, over and over repeatedly, if they really thought there weren’t that many?"
As I believe I have demonstrated, it wasn't until Hipparchus's star catalogue from about 135 BCE that people in that region of the Earth had the idea that the visible stars might actually be countable. Until then it was used metaphorically to mean "could not be counted."
The Greeks also used the number of grains of sand as a metaphor for "uncountable". For example, Pindar's Olympian 2 ("For Theron of Acragas Chariot Race 476 B. C.") ends "Since the sand of the shore is beyond all counting, who could number all the joys that Theron has given others?"; http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... .
There are other metaphors for uncountable. In Olympian 12 the same author uses "I would not know how to give a clear account of the number of pebbles in the sea."
Could you explain what "militant" means? Are you militant? Do you think I am?