April 17th, 6 BC = Birth of Christ...Best explanation yet for the Star of Bethlehem?

Great Debates
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Yup. Yesterday. Happy 2011[sup]th[/sup]. For some, this might have been hacked to death a few years ago. I personally invite those who participated before after reading the Q&A link below, especially DtC and others on the relevance of Matthew and the birth of Jesus.

First, let me get the radar up and running…

Cecil’s mailbag item reply on March 10th, 2000

SD Threads containing “Star” and “Bethlehem”

I’ve been reading a book a second time around by Michael Molnar - “The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi”(on sale at Amazon) , printed in 1999. After all of the threads started about the Star of Bethlehem, I’m surprised that the contents of this book didn’t come up sooner. I blame myself partly because I’ve read the book once before about 5 years ago and didn’t respond to any of these threads since I became a member in 2/03. Anyways, if you read the Q&A on the cite, there is a lot of credible research that this astronomer did when he delved into the bible (Matthew - which I know DtC has a lot skepticism on), astrology and numismatics to find out what motivated the three Magi (probably Zoroastrian priests) to Jerusalem to find the new king. Cecil’s mailbag points to the constellation of Pisces for sign of the new King, but Molnar discovered that the constellation that represented Judea was actually Aries, the Ram. Also as a numismatist, Molnar discovered through a purchase of a Roman coin minted about 6 AD. of a ram overlooking a star, which commerates the Romans of Antioch taking over Judea in AD 6.

Molnar also explains that Jupiter’s retrograde motion explains the second appearance of the “star” in Aries and how Matthew misinterpretated the Greek translation of “stationary” (stopped retrograde motion) with “stood over”. King Herod or the Jewish people (who did not care for astrology at that time although they were expecting a messiah to release them from Herod’s paranoia and cruelty) for that fact missed the “star” because they were unable to follow the signs presented in the Magi’s astrology.

Molnar also drew upon Ptolemy (Tetrabiblios) and Firmicus (Mathesis) for the astrology references regarding Aries and how great the prophecy of Balaam was for such a regal alignment of the Sun, Moon and the planets. He also pointed out the differences between Babylonian and Hellenistic astrologies and what that meant when determining the date of Christ’s birth. The numismatics was a bonus. It clicked together. The location of Bethlehem was not under scrutiny by Molnar, it was just assumed that was the house of David, Herod’s advisors told the Magi where to look and that’s where the Magi went. I guess it could have been Gallilee, Nazareth or Bethlehem.
On the other hand, another book from another astronomer came out about the same time…Mark Kidger, “The Star of Bethlehem”. This book I have not read and I hope that someone here on the Dope has. Kidger actually mentions Molnar in his book, so I assume he wrote the book after Molnar did…but came to different conclusions about what the Star actually was…a combination of events - a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7 BC, a nova in 5 BC and other little things sprinkled inbetween. Since I haven’t read the book and only the reviews, I have no idea what date Kidger came up with. I will seek this book out and read it too.

Now for the debate…Is April 17th, 6 BC the definitive date (or as close as we can figure out)? Can the author of Matthew even be trusted to provide us clues to the actually location and clues to the date that Molnar has concluded? I may be jumping ahead in believing Molnar and his explanation as the most credible since I haven’t read Kidger’s book yet, but I’ve noticed that his book reviews are inferior to Molnar’s when it came to the differences between the two different astrologies. If anything comes of this debate, I do suggest reading Molnar’s and Kidger’s books, because even as scientists, these two had to think like the “scientists” of 2000 years ago, which in of itself is quite interesting.

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Fixed link:

SD Threads with “Star” and “Bethlehem”

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As the Staff Report pointed out, the Star of Bethlem just couldn’t have existed as an actual astronomical phenomenon. We still have astronomical records from ancient civilizations, and there is just no way that none of them would record such a remarkable and unique astronomical phenomenon. It is of course possible if you want to take the Christian perspective that the Star of Bethlehem was a miracle visible only to the Magi. (And, as the Bible say Herod wanted to kill Jesus, a beacon in the sky that pointed out “send your assassins here” would have been a problem.) If it was an astronomical phenomenon, then by definition it would have had to be visible to all.

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Ernest Martin, in studies now used by the Griffith Observatory’s C’mas program, holds that an arrangement of Jupiter & the Moon in Virgo on Sept 3 BC- Rosh Hashanah was probably the sign to the Magi & is described in Revelation 12. (He disputes the traditional date of 4 BC for Herod’s death.)

I’ve also heard of a Mars-Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces in 7 BC.

Basically, there seems to have been enough conjunctions to have gotten Magi attention in that time. However, nothing scientific could really explain the moving star which led them over the house where young JC & his family was- I have no problem regarding that an angelic or perhaps even the Shekinah.

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Well, that’s why Molnar explained that it is an “astrological star”, i.e. Jupiter being occulted by the Moon along with the Sun, Saturn in Aries…also noted that Venus, Saturn and Jupiter “attended” (came before) the Moon and Sun as a positive sign of a leader, and then followed by Mercury and Mars “attending” (followed) the Moon and Sun as they rose from the east (ascending) to midheaven (the noon postition)…all of these were positive signs of a great leader…but missed by Herod and the Jews because they didn’t follow astrology, the Jews were waiting for a visual star, not a symbolic star.

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[Nitpick] Matthew doesn’t actually say there were three magi it just says some “magi from the East” showed up in Judea. Also the word magos means “astrologer” or “soothsayer.” not priest. It was people who tried to predict the future by staring at stars. Matthew also doesn’t say they were kings. [/nitpick]

The phenomenon, such as it is, described in the theory above would not do the things that are claimed by Matthew but it’s really almost a moot point. Matthew’s entire nativity is fiction created from decontextualized fragments in the OT. The birth in Bethlehem, the virgin mother, the slaughter of innocents, the flight to Egypt, all of it. Matthew made it up. There was no reason whatever why Eastern astrologers would know or care about Jewish Messianic expectations anyway. It also would not follow Jewish expectations for a potential Annointed One to be announced by a star. The Messiah is not the Messiah until he fulfills the prophecies. It is not a birthright. There is no magic baby in Jewish expectation.

Trying to find a naturalistic explanation for a mythical event is a complete waste of time.

By the way, setting the birth of Jesus in 6 BCE still conflicts with Luke’s placement of the nativity during the census of 7 CE.

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DtC, Molnar addresses most of your responses in the book, unfortunately, I’m at work and don’t have access to it at this time to review before correctly responding…and I have to stay late for payroll tonight. I should have had the foresight to pick a better day than yesterday to post the OP and I’ve nearly completed rereading the book except for the conclusion. I just want to acknowledge your post and will respond to it tomorrow if not tonight.

As for the nitpicks, you’re right about the Magi…they were not kings, that title was erroneously bestowed upon them as time went by, and I’m actuallly not sure how many there were, so I will only refer to them as Magi. As for the Magi possibly being Zoroastrian priests, the priests were exactly as you described the Magi…the book describes the original Greek term “Magos” (“Magoi” plural) to be a caste of Zoroastrian priests who tried to overtake the throne of Persia , but were beaten and slaughtered by Darius (522-521 BCE). The greek historian Herodotus [Book 3.61 to 3.67] noted that a “magos” was actually a Zoroastrian priest or wise man from Persia, which was noted well before the birth of Christ. By the time Christ was born, the term Magi became more encompassing…someone who is an astrologer, soothsayer or wise man. Tertullian, a christian writer (about 210 AD) wrote that Magi of the East “were almost like kings”, introducing the incorrect notion that the Magi were kings.

Another thing that I totally left out in the OP was that Jupiter was occulted by (or in very close conjunction to) the Moon on that date, although it happened during the day since the Sun was in close proximity to the Moon and other planets, another reason why only the astrologers picked up on this and not everyone else. They knew how to mathematically calculate the conjunctions with little degree for error.

I’ll have to get back to you on the rest.

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[technical hijack]
You can’t save a search. Doing a search and then posting the URL won’t accomplish anything that’s useful for more than a couple hours. The current version of the board software uses searchIDs that expire so rapidly that even the “New Posts” button is almost useless (the searchID it generates will expire long before you get past the 4th or 5th page under most circumstances).

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you want readers of the thread to have access to former threads pertaining to the star, you’re going to have to either post each of the thread links separately or else save the actual search-results web page to your desktop as a html file, upload it to your own personal web space, and then post the link to that.
[/tech hijack]

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Huh…didn’t know that. Thanks for the info, AH3.
Well then, here are the threads that are most relevant to the Star and the Magi…

Micah 5:2 Messianic Prophecy? and Who wrote the Gospels?

Was Jesus born in September or October?

8 questions of Mary & the Virgin Birth…

What’s the deal with the Three Wise Men?

The Truth re Star of Bethlehem

The Star of Bethlehem, redux

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I can’t help but notice the similarities between Matthew’s nativity and the story of Romulus. The two stories are not identical, of course, but the similarities are striking. Romulus is born with a god for a father and a vestal virgin for a mother. The king is tipped off to the presence of a newborn who will take his throne from him. To defend his position he orders the boys (Romulus and his brother Remus) to be killed. The boys end up in a foreign land, safe from the tyrannical king trying to kill them.

The author of Matthew would certainly have been aware of this myth.

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Yeah, but the Exodus account of Pharoah having the baby boys killed to limit the population growth of the Hebrews is also reflected here. Even though there is no extra-Biblical account of the slaughter of the innocents, it’s certainly consistent with what we know of Herod. I see a rather limited slaughter anyway.

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Even the Exodus story is based on an earlier Sauron myth.

There isn’t the slightest evidence for the slaughter and there is no chance Josephus wouldn’t have mentioned something like that if it had happened.

Let’s also not forget that the entire motivation for such a slaughter is depends on Herod believing some Eastern astrologers about an astrological sign (for which there was no prior Jewish expectation or Messianic association) about a “Christ child” which also had no precedent, expectation or significance in Judaism.

What was Herod supposed to be afraid of, exactly? That this baby would take his throne? How?

Matthew’s story is clearly a fiction meant to parallel Moses. He even includes the out of context OT verses to prove it.

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I meant Sargon, of course, not Sauron.

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Whatever the star of Bethlehem was (conjunction, supernova, tale pulled out of Matthew’s rear orifice), I don’t think you can really come up with a naturalist explanation.

As for the visitation of the magi, I can’t help but wondering if it was politically motivated, for Palestine’s eastern neighbors to zing Herod (known for his paranoia).

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There are two possible explainations for the Star Of Bethlehem.

  1. It’s a completely fictional tale with several layers of allegorical meaning.

or

  1. It’s a miracle sent by God that will forever defy scientific analysis
    Any attempt to give a scientific analysis has a basic flaw. It assumes a natural phenomenon that somehow accurately foretold the birth of the King of the Jews. If you want to plead that, then first prove astrology has a scientific basis.
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For an astrological answer (all questions answered) to the mystery of the
Star of Bethlehem please see,
http://www.templeofsolomon.org/pageone.htg/pageone.htm