Since we’re approaching Christmas, it’s an appropriate time to ask this question.
The three Wise Men supposedly came from somewhere east of Judea, probably from Persia (today’s Iran). They saw the star in the east and traveled toward it.
Wouldn’t they be traveling in the wrong direction? If they were following a star (or comet or nova, etc.) to the east, wouldn’t they be traveling *away from *Judea? Of course the star rose in the east and moved across the sky toward the west. That would make it just like everything else in the sky, nothing remarkable at all. But the story is always about a star “to the east,” never about that same star setting in the west.
Of course they may have circumnavigated the earth, winding up in Judea in time to witness the Crucifixion.
The general theory of course is that much of the birth narrative is fiction, concocted later to create the specialness around Jesus. The Census, for example, does not really fit, but conveniently gets a Nazarean to Bethlehem so he can be born in the city of David and agree with the prophecies. The virgin birth, the wise men, teh nmassacre of the innocents and the flight into Egypt (El Al?) all embellishments to help denmostrate the special nature of the “chosen one”.
“We saw his star in the East” could be interpreted as meaning that the star was in the East, but it could also be interpreted as meaning that we were in the East when we saw the star in some unspecified position.
I’ve also heard the argument that it was actually a bit of technical jargon that Matthew didn’t understand and hence mistranslated, and that what the Magi actually said was that they had seen the star at its heliacal rising (that is, when it came out of the glare of the Sun).
I am not sure about fiction, but it does appear that Matthew, etc did seem to mis remember or stretch details to make them fit into prophesies. Rather than fiction, I prefer to ignore the idea these tales are handed down by the hand of the Almighty and understand they were honest but fallible men.
The massacre of the Innocents is actually quite likely, based upon what we know of Herod, and it might even be backed up by a historical anecdote about Herod.
I read a lovely bit of literalist analysis, noting that it couldn’t be a celestial star and still direct travelers to a specific inn. The analyst came up with a maximum altitude of around 500 feet. Any higher, and it could lead the Magi to a different caravanserai entirely.
Obviously, this depends on taking certain ideas more literally than might be warranted, but it is an interesting example of applying “known knowns” to “unknown unknowns.”
Also, the star appeared to be moving, leading them:
Matthew 2:9 When they heard the king, they departed; and behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was.
Matthew appears to be the only appearance of the star in they synoptic gospels.
Check out Arthur C. Clarke’s excellent short story “The Star,” collected in The Other Side of the Sky, for an interesting (and tragic) theory about the Star of Bethlehem. Warning - spoilers: The Star (Clarke short story) - Wikipedia.
There’s a longstanding theory that the Star in the East was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter appearing in the constellation Pisces. The Magi, being astrologers, would have recognized that Jupiter signifies a king, Saturn a time of crisis, and Pisces governed ancient Israel. From OT scriptures, they could have headed out to Bethlehem. The actual conjunction doesn’t coincide with the best estimated actual time of birth of Jesus, though.
(Source: The Birth of the Messiah by Raymond Brown)
There is (or used to be) a standard show in planetariums that discussed what the star might be; it was hugely popular around Christmas. They go over all the speculations and then throw in a “maybe it was really a miracle” as the kicker. Those working in planetariams called it the “Star of Bethlehem Show,” or “the SOB Show” for short.
This. And this is a common phenomenon for famous people. Everyone from Buddha to Moses to George Washington has myths attached to them.
BTW, the myth making for the story of the magi didn’t stop with the bible. You have no doubt learned that there were three of them, they were kings of various countries, and their names were Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. None of these “facts” are actually in the bible; they are all from later tradition.
This one in particular annoys me, as a magus (or the modern equivalent) myself. Call them magi, or scholars, or wise men, or sages… But they weren’t kings.
I guess everybody has to make money, but anybody who seriously suggests that it was a supernova, or conjunction, or comet, or any other astronomical phenomenon, either doesn’t know much about astronomy, or doesn’t know much about Matthew’s gospel. Or both.
As previously noted, Matthew says the Star led the magi right to the house where Jesus lived. (Not the inn; there is no inn in Matthew’s story, nor a census, nor shepherds in the fields, nor an angelic choir. All of those are from Luke, whose story contradicts Matthew’s in some important details, and differs with most of it). No star, planet, or comet could do that.
In the first place, you didn’t travel at night back then, unless you wanted your camel to step into a hole and break his leg, or you wanted to be robbed. And even if they did, trying to follow a typical planet as it rises east of south, reaches its apex due south, and then sets west of south, would have the magi going back and forth, but further south every night, until they wound up in the Indian Ocean. Or if it were a circumpolar star, they would just zigzag north, until they froze to death somewhere in Russia. And if a star or planet looks like it’s directly over my house, then it looks like it’s directly over every house within a hundred miles of me. There’s no way to see which house a star is “pointing” to.
It’s also passing strange that the Star knew exactly which house Jesus lived in, when shortly before, it didn’t even know his town. The magi had to stop in Jerusalem, and ask which town he was in.
It could not have been a natural phenomenon. If you are rational, you will accept that Matthew made it up, and that he went way overboard. He should have said it was a swan or an eagle, since then all the problems of how can it lead, how can it point out a particular house, and why didn’t anyone else notice it, would all go away.
If you are religious, just accept it as a miracle, like the pillar of fire that led Moses.
This part is incorrect. On a bright moonlite nite, traveling thru the desert is quite do-able, since not only have i read of travelers doing it by camel, but have done it myself on muleback.
Even if you posit bright moonlight, you still have the bandits to worry about. More to the point, why would the magi want to travel at night, which would necessitate sleeping during the day? According to Matthew, they assumed that Jesus had already been born, so it’s not like they were rushing to meet some deadline. And since Jerusalem was far and away the largest city in Judea, all they had to do was take the main road; they didn’t need a magic star to guide them there. The only time the Star was useful was to point out the exact house in Bethlehem, which didn’t happen until after they spoke to Herod.
And why did they speak to Herod, if the Star could lead them to Jesus’ house? Matthew says that God saved Jesus from Herod’s slaughter by warning Joseph to flee to Egypt, and that God also told the magi not to go back to Herod. But if God is communicating with the magi, and giving them a beacon to follow, why didn’t he just tell them not to talk to Herod in the first place, and thereby save all the rest of the male infants in Bethlehem?
The obvious answer is, there were no magi, or slaughter, or Flight to Egypt. Luke directly contradicts the Flight, although he has his own problems with the ridiculous census that forces everyone in the Empire to travel to where his ancestors lived a thousand years earlier.
It is just possible that the star is nothing more than Halley’s Comet, which returned to perihelion in 12 BC, although most scholars place the birth of the historical Christ around 4AD
