GUEST Jean Ritchie wrote: Liland- If "sun" IS a change, I vote that it's a good one. The whole of that chorus is addressed to the Star: Brightest and best of the suns of the morning, Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid; Star in the east, the horizon adorning, Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

Liland: The imagery Heber was using comes from Job 38:7 (among other texts) where the morning stars are personified as sons of God:

"When the morning stars sang together,

and all the sons of God shouted for joy"

(the normal rules of Hebrew poetic parallelism indicate that the two expressions are to be taken as synonymous).

Jean: Also- the "Son of the morning" was (is?), I think, Lucifer!

Liland: There seems to be a certain amount of competition between the forces of light and darkness (which is which, anyhow?) over their spheres of influence. "This is my Father's world" - "the earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof" - yet Satan is "the Prince of this world" etc. (The potential identity/antithesis of the pair Earth|World is an interesting exegetical exercise.) In the "Russian Carols" thread mousethief brought up an Orthodox text in which it sure looked to me like the hymnodist was giving full credit to Caesar Augustus's claim to divinity (I'm not saying I was reading it right, just that that's how it looked to me.) Anyhow, "Lucifer" etymologically is "Lightbearer", which may make one wonder about Wesley's Christ - "Light and life to all he brings". Remember what Solomon said in 1 Kings 8:12:

"The LORD has set the sun in the heavens,

but has said that He would dwell in thick darkness."

There's a lot of this sort of way-too-convoluted-to-interpret-easily equivalence in both the Biblical text and the Christian symbolic tradition. For me the most mindboggling one, I think, is where the crowd insists that instead of Jesus of Nazareth Pilate should free "Jesus Barabbas"; "Barabbas", as even a nodding acquaintance with Aramaic tells us, means "son of the father". So we have here a pitting of our "real" Jesus against a robber called "Jesus son of the father".

Jean: Loved your song about the five historical ladies- certainly something to think on...

Thanks!

Liland