LOL. Facts? Truths? What facts? What truths? Were you there? You have observational data to backup your facts and truth?
No you don’t (and neither do I). So please don’t attempt to take the high ground of “science” when there is no proof either way. We only have a second hand account possibly based on an eyewitness account (Jospeh? Mary?) written 30+ years after the fact.
Whoa. Flashback. Isn’t that what Pontius Pilate said in “Jesus Christ Superstar?” Sorry, continue.
I did not say proof positive, I said beyond a reasonable doubt.
My memory and understanding is that the evidence found in archaeology and history fit my description. In my book, evidence carries more weight than second hand accounts. Again, that is what my reason tells me.
Note that the concept of something appearing in the heavens (read: celestial, like the moon or beyond) and yet being “over the manger” is inherently contradictory. Even something as close as the moon isn’t “over the manger” any more than it’s over anything else, and it certainly wouldn’t be able to “lead” people to any specific location.
So, might there have been a supernova, comet, or similar brightness? Sure. Was it “over the manger”? Only in the sense that it was over everything else, too.
Hence, my theory of a flare is actually the most likely, if you accept the narratives as literal truth.
I’ve always been a bit puzzled about the “east” thing. It says the wise men came “from the east” (vs.1) and then it says they saw his “star in the east”. To me, that sounds like they saw the star in their eastern sky, and then followed it west to find Jesus. Peculiar and illogical, unless I’m misreading. Would “for we have seen his star in the east” maybe have been better translated “for while we were in our own country [to the east], we saw his star”?
It is ambiguous that way, but it gets even worse. From what I’ve heard, the actual phrase in the original could also be translated as “For we saw his star at its heliacal rising”. The heliacal rising of a celestial body is when it first becomes visible shortly before dawn, after having been drowned out by the glare of the Sun for some time. It was a very important phenomenon for ancient astronomers; for instance, the heliacal rising of Sirius towards the end of summer was the signal to the Egyptians warning of the annual Nile floods.
Just to confuse matters: the text is, of course, written using the current vocabulary of Koine Greek, and even technical writers of the period could be rather wobbly. (For example, Hellenistic astronomical writers recorded Sirius as being red. Actually going out and looking at the object in question apparently wasn’t a priority…)
Consequently, I wouldn’t be inclined to press any of the description very hard. All I’d be confident in concluding would be that (according to the narrative) the magi saw something in the sky, they were inclined to think it had to do with Judea, and that with an additional clue from Herod’s scribes they got to the right place. As for where exactly the object was during all of this: I doubt if Matthew cared. Or had the vocabulary available to give a precise description.
On a point of detail: while Matthew has the magi coming to Bethlehem, he doesn’t refer to the manger. That’s Luke. There’s no real indication how quickly after the birth Matthew understands the magi to have got there; the only clue is that Herod has all the boy babies under two years old killed, but (given Herod) that doesn’t say much about how old Jesus would have been at the time. Only that there’s nothing in the text incompatible with the magi arriving more than a year after his birth.
David Hughes’s old The Star of Bethlehem Mystery (1979), which argues that it was the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, says that the consensus is that this ambiguity in the Authorised Version is due to the translation. Apparently the phrase is en te anatole and is singular, which usually wouldn’t refer to the geographical east.
Hughes cites a 1977 paper - which I haven’t read - by David Clark, John Parkinson and F. Richard Stephenson (Quarterly Journal of the RAS, 18, 443) on this point. Their argument is that anatole indeed had a technical meaning, but it refers to the acronychal rising. This is the star rising in the east just as the Sun sets in the west.
Where the heliacal rising comes in in their reading is in the later verse “Then Herod, when he privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.” The verb phainesthai, to appear, apparently refers to it.
Personally though, I tend to agree with Grimpen. Trying to construct any astronomical explanation is an interesting enough intellectual game, but it’s probably reading far too much into what’s inescapably a rather brief text.
If retrograde motion of Jupiter is a regal sign, it’s a pretty weak one. Jupiter goes into retrograde motion nearly once a year, as any ancient astrologer could have told you. In fact, they could even have told you that it was bound to happen about six months after Jupiter played the role of morning star. So seeing Jupiter retrograde six months later would add absolutely no weight to the previous prediction.
I presume I don’t really need to remind everyone that all these theories are purely speculative. We have no idea what year Jesus was actually born (dates range from about 6 BC to about 3 AD), let alone what month. Within a ten year period, someone finds an astronomical analogy that looks interesting and then says, Oh, yeah, that must be IT!
And, as Euty noted in the Staff Report, ‘Some say Leo (the lion) was associated astrologically with the house of Judah, from which the messiah was supposed to arise.’
So which is it - Pisces, Aries or Leo?
With a quarter of Zodiac signs having been identified as the crucial one, that’s a lot of wiggle room. Pick any astrological ‘event’ and there’ll be a one-in-four chance that it took place in a sign that someone has already claimed was significant.
Molnar’s real challenge to the previous theories is not that he’s found a better astrological match (‘better’ in such matters will always be a bit subjective), but rather his claim that others misidentified which Zodiac sign was the one that mattered.
And then there’s the possibility that ancient ideas about the meaning of the Zodiac signs were so varied and flexible - to say nothing of modern interpretations of them - that, with sufficient ingenuity, you can come up with any match you want.
So which is it - Pisces, Aries or Leo?
QUOTE]
Molnar is the only one advocating Aries, so far as I know, and even Euty mentions Pisces–in fact, the reference to Leo was in the paragraph describing the appearance of Halley’s comet in Gemini, with its head towards Leo.
And you think that that, by itself, is a reason to accept the idea at face value?
In fact, Kepler took it from Isaac Abarbanel, but tracing the claim that Pisces=the Messiah back to the fifteenth century proves nothing about what had been thought 1,500 years before then.
Duly noted by me and Molnar…although it is fun to sleuth it.
and…
The other planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn) were also in favorable positions as well as Jupiter being possibly occulted by the Moon. I ran my Sky 6 software for that day and the planets were in about 40-50 degree arc (from left to right, from memory) Mars, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn. It wasn’t just Jupiter by itself, it was all of the planets in the right order, including the Sun and Moon in the right constellation(s) that the Magi took note of.
Sorry, continue.