The scenes with Phoenix and Sun’s route in chapters 6–8 seem to be chronologically localized at the time of summer solstice. The summer solstice is the highest point of the ecliptic. This is certainly the best point to sketch a bird’s eye view of all the gates from which the Sun appears every day. These gates are adjacent to the horizon ( both 3 Baruch ’s cosmology and its Babylonian antecedents do not know the concept of heavenly equator using Earth’s horizon instead). This is also the... read more
