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Günther Oestermann, H. Darrel Rutkin, and Kocku von Stuckard, eds., Horoscopes and Public Spheres. Essays on the History of Astrology (Religion and Society, vol. 42) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2005. 290 pp. Index.
Half a century ago, Otto Neugebauer urged that "the study of wretched subjects" is not itself a wretched subject. To students of Judaism this rings a bell: "Nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is a very important science," Saul Liebermann said in introducing Gershom Scholem's lectures on Merkabah Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1957.'...