The band of stars seen from the earth as appearing within nine degrees on either side of the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. Concerning King Josiah of Judah, 2 Kings 23:5 says: “And he put out of business the foreign-god priests, whom the kings of Judah had put in that they might make sacrificial smoke on the high places in the cities of Judah and the surroundings of Jerusalem, and also those making sacrificial smoke to Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the constellations of the zodiac and to all the army of the heavens.” The expression here rendered “constellations of the zodiac” comes from the Hebrew word maz·za·lohthʹ, which occurs but once in the Bible, although the word Maz·za·rohthʹ found at Job 38:32 may be related. It is the context that helps make clear its meaning.

The discovery of what may be called the zodiacal zone is generally credited to the early Babylonians. They doubtless observed the apparent yearly path of the sun among the stars, which path is now known as the ecliptic. The astronomers could note that within a zone about 18 degrees wide, extending 9 degrees on each side of the ecliptic, lie the apparent paths of the sun, moon, and major planets, as viewed from the earth. It was not until the second century B.C.E., however, that a Greek astronomer divided the zodiac into 12 equal parts of 30 degrees each; these parts came to be called the signs of the zodiac and were named after the related constellations. The word “zodiac” is from the Greek and means “circle of animals,” since most of the zodiac’s 12 constellations originally were designated by the names of animal or marine life.

These signs today no longer coincide with the constellations after which they were originally named. This is due to what is known as the precession of the equinoxes, which results in a gradual eastward shift of the constellations by about one degree every 70 years in a cycle that takes some 26,000 years to complete. Thus the sign of Aries, in the past 2,000 years, moved approximately 30 degrees, into the constellation Pisces.

Connection With Astrology. The zodiacal constellations were made objects of false worship from early Mesopotamian times onward. Certain qualities were attributed to each of the different constellations, and these were then used in astrological predictions based on the particular position or relationship of the celestial bodies to the signs of the zodiac at any given time. As shown by the text at 2 Kings 23:5, such use of astrology was introduced into Judah by foreign-god priests whom certain kings had brought into the country. Jehovah God long before had prohibited such star worship on penalty of death.​—De 17:2-7.

Astrology was a predominant facet of Babylonian worship. The predictions based on the zodiac by her astrologers, however, did not save Babylon from destruction, even as the prophet Isaiah had accurately forewarned.​—Isa 47:12-15; see ASTROLOGERS.

In modern times the zodiacal signs continue to play an important part in the worship of many people. Interestingly, the signs of the zodiac found their way into some of the religious cathedrals of Christendom and can today be seen in such places as the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, as well as on the cathedrals of Amiens and Chartres, France.