Don’t look now, but you’ve got your AD and BC mixed up. 
Interesting thoughts. Though I am an agnostic I think the passage is ambiguous…
“for we have seen his star in the east”
“the star, which they saw in the east”
It could be interpreted to mean:
“for we have seen his star while we were in the east”
“the star, which they saw while they were in the east”
It’s certainly fictitious. But that doesn’t answer the question. Whomever wrote it wanted to write something that made sense to his readers, so the question still stands. Why would someone writing a story about people following a star going east to west say the star was in the east? Matthew includes the bit to fit an Old Testement Prophecy, but there’s nothing in the prophecy that specifies the location of the star in the sky.
I personally always read “in the east” as meaning that they were in the east (i.e. east of Israel) when they saw the star, in which case the OP’s question becomes simply a misunderstanding of intent.
Really, though; if you’re coming at the gospels from a Watsonian viewpoint, then the star is miraculous and trying to explain it scientifically is an exercise in futility, and if you’re coming at it from a Doylist viewpoint, then it’s a work of fiction anyway and trying to explain what the star really was is still an exercise in futility.
This might be one of the few instances in the history of human literature where “A wizard did it” is literally the simplest, most elegant, and most correct answer.
[nitpick]
The Anointed One
…“chosen?” Hard to find somebody who wasn’t.
[/nitpick]
http://www.bethlehemstar.net/setting-the-stage/the-nine-points-of-christs-star/
That is a very in depth site about the Bethlehem star. There is also a DVD that goes for nearly 2 hours.
I think the most straightforward interpretation is that the Magi were astrologers. They saw a star rising in the East (helical rising) which they interpreted as meaning a King would be born in the region of Judea. So they go there and ask Herod, hoping to get more exact directons, but he tries to imprison them.
They escape, but now don’t know where to go, since astrological readings don’t come with anything so exact as GPS co-ordinates, they just know the King is somewhere in the general reason. Then then star physically comes down to Earth and physically leads them to where they want to go. That is, its not in the sky anymore, its floating around to take them directly to Jesus.
err…ignore my previous post. Some reason I thought Herod imprisoned the Magi, not sure where I got that from. Fixed post below
I think the most straightforward interpretation is that the Magi were astrologers. They saw a star rising in the East (helical rising) which they interpreted as meaning a King would be born in the region of Judea (where else was a King of the Jews going to be). So they go there and ask Herod, hoping to get more exact directons. He points them to Bethlehem.
They leave, but now don’t know where to go, since astrological readings don’t come with anything so exact as GPS co-ordinates, they just know the King is somewhere in the general reason. Then then star physically comes down to Earth and physically leads them to where they want to go. That is, its not in the sky anymore, its floating around to take them directly to Jesus.
So the star communicates to the Magi in two different ways. Matthew more or less says this, the star doesn’t lead them directly to Jesus until after they leave Herod. At that point it leads them in a way it wasn’t doing before. But since modern readers don’t think of astrology very much (certainly not in a Christian context) and we think of stars as gigantic suns rather then twinkly bits of light, this interpretation gets missed. Instead, we figure the Star must be in the sky the whole time, and it must be leading them directly the whole time, rather then via astrological mumbo jumbo.
More about that site:
http://www.bethlehemstar.net/setting-the-stage/what-was-the-star/
I’ve watched the DVD and it basically is about Jupiter (the king planet) and Regulus (the king star) and involves the Leo constellation - Judah’s animal (based on Genesis) is the Lion. So they thought that there would be a king in Judah - Jerusalem is in Judah. Then Bethlehem is apparently 5 miles south of Jerusalem and apparently Jupiter was in the south at that time and it also seemed to stop moving for a while. The guy who made that site and the DVD used star software and originally looked at what the sky looked like in Babylon (where the Magi may have originated) in September of 2 BC or 3 BC (can’t remember which). That is when he believes Jesus was conceived. He goes into quite a lot more details in the DVD and those details might be on the site.
http://www.bethlehemstar.net/starry-dance/to-stop-a-star/
Apparently it was in the south of the sky and Bethlehem was south of Jerusalem where Herod was. BTW the guy thinks that Jesus was a toddler at the time.
If that guy used the date of December 25 in any way to guide his hypothesis, then he needs to justify why he chose that date. Christmas wasn’t celebrated, nor its date noted, until long enough after the event that the date was completely forgotten, and the date of December 25 was chosen basically for purposes of marketing, to compete with pagan feasts around the same time of year.
He said that they didn’t know about the December 25th date but it just worked out that the star/Jupiter did stuff then.
False. Actually, by the time the Christians were actually celebrating Christmas, there weren’t many “pagan feats” to compete with. Early Christians didn’t even celebrate the Birth of Jesus, it wasn’t at all common until around 400 years after he died.
*Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods…There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character…Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus diedc was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.9 March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.d
This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.*
And, there weren’t any Roman holidays on that date either. Saturnalia was earlier. Sol Invictus wasn’t celebrated as a holiday. In other words, there was nothing to compete against, really. True, the date was calculated based upon what to us would be rather mystical math, but it was done so in all good conscience, not to 'compete" against anything.
Mind you- many Christian traditions were “borrowed”. But not the date.
Larson absolutely cherry-picked December 25th, just to impress the rubes. This is Answers From Genesis stuff, and it was a lot easier to pull off before free planetarium software like Stellarium was available to check claims like this.
If you do take the time to check it, you’ll see that Jupiter’s retrograde motion actually began on December 28th that year (2 BC, which is at least two years later than scholarly consensus says Herod died, but Larson needs to make Herod’s death later than that in order to make Jupiter’s conjunctions relevant, so he cites some crank who claims Herod died in 1 BC).
Larson fudges all the way through. He acts like it’s a big deal that Jupiter rose in the east, and that it appeared in the sky south of Jerusalem, and that Regulus was in Leo — all of which are true every day of every year. And his rationalization that the Star leading the magi to the house and then stopping over it is Jupiter beginning its retrograde motion is just ridiculous.
Amazingly, if you read the comments, one guy calls Larson on this, saying he’s trying to shoehorn natural phenomena into an ill-fitting explanation of what is obviously miraculous, and all the other Christian commenters defend Larson! They would rather have scientific backing for something that can only be very loosely correlated to what Matthew says, than just accept it as a miracle.
He used “Starry Night”… which according to the software’s site is “The World’s Most Realistic Astronomy Software”.
In his presentations he used the software a lot to demonstrate the path of Jupiter. There was a red line that showed Jupiter go towards and away from Regulus three times in a row. He said that that would be very unusual in the Magi’s experience. He set the software to be from Babylon’s point of view and the software said the exact dates.
BTW earlier in his presentation he said that Kepler wrote 2 or maybe 3 books about the search for Bethlehem’s star but he said that Kepler was looking at about 4 BC.
Yeah he did.
You don’t seem to be aware that Jupiter went back and forth to Regulus 3 times in a row… also for a while Jupiter and Venus were very close together making it the brightest “star” in the sky. It would be quite rare for Jupiter and Venus to have a near conjunction like that.
He uses the software interactively in his presentations… are you saying he fakes the red trails and dates, etc that the software is displaying?
BTW this is what Answers in Genesis has to say:
I’m well aware of it. I wasted an hour reading his website, so I know exactly what he’s claiming.
But you don’t seem to be aware that Jupiter goes back and forth and back like that every 13 months or so. It takes Jupiter 12 years to orbit the sun, and it takes the earth just one year, so the earth catches and passes Jupiter a little less than once a year, which makes it look like Jupiter briefly goes stops and then backs up against the background stars, and then resumes its forward motion again. It happened to do be in Leo that year, so Larson says aha, Judah is the lion, so this obviously points to Jesus. And of course, the magi know this bit of trivia about Judah, but they don’t know the very famous prophecy about Bethlehem.
If it had been in Virgo, he would have related it to Jesus through Mary. If it had been in Libra, he would have said it symbolized the Scales of Justice that Jesus will use on Judgement Day. I admit I got nothin’ for the Crab.
Jupiter has a triple conjunction with some star or other almost every year. But there was a much more spectacular triple conjunction a few years earlier, with Jupiter and Saturn. It even occurred in Pisces, which is supposed to be special to Jesus. You can find lots of websites that will explain why THAT was what sent the magi to Israel.
Not as rare as you might think. This guy calculated that Venus and Jupiter average more than one conjunction a year, with half of them close enough to be interesting, and about 1 in 18 close enough to be truly striking. Besides, what does Venus, the goddess of sexuality, have to do with Jesus? Nothing. What does the date of the conjunction, June 17, have to do with Jesus? Nothing, except in Larson’s chronology. Don’t these questions ever occur to you?
All the planets, and the sun and moon, appear (from earth) to travel in a fairly narrow band in the sky, at different speeds, so conjunctions between some combination of them can’t help but happen several times a year. And all the planets are always in some sign of the zodiac — the zodiac was defined as the constellations that lie along that band the planets travel through — so you can throw the bright stars of the zodiac like Regulus, Antares, Spica, Aldebaran, Castor, and Pollux into the mix. So that’s five naked eye planets, at least six bright stars, and the sun and moon, all moving back and forth along that narrow band. It’s literally impossible to find a year where there aren’t several planets having retrograde motion, or conjunctions, or both, in a zodiacal sign that you can relate to whatever happened that year.
A year before the conjunction Larson used, there was an even better one (May 23, 4BC), when Venus came within a degree of Jupiter, and then a week later, Mars came even closer. And ten days after that, Jupiter was eclipsed dead center by the sun. Obviously, that means that women will go to worship Jesus, but will be chased off by Roman soldiers. But then Jesus will dazzle them with his brilliance. Or something.
The conjunctions and motions he talks about really happened, but something similar happens several times a year. Different planets, different stars, but I’ll bet you a dollar that you can give me any famous person and his birthdate, and I can find some astronomical phenomenon around that time that I can relate to him — especially if I can fudge the date, like he did for Dec 25, and then go back a full 15 months to find other stuff, like he did.
There are all kinds of interesting things going on in the sky almost every night, and really spectacular things every year or two. You would think the ruler of the universe would at least get a comet, or an eclipse, rather than the same retrograde motion that Jupiter does every year. There was certainly nothing unusual enough to make anybody in Persia say (KJV), “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”
Ask yourself, why would anybody in Persia care that the King of the Jews was born? If the King of the Jews was such a big deal to them that they wanted to worship him as an infant, then why were they meeting Herod, who had been King of the Jews for almost 40 years, for the first time? Why didn’t any Persians come to worship, or even meet, Jesus when he was an adult? And just by the way, how come Jesus never actually became the King of the Jews? Did Jupiter make a mistake?
And finally, like those guys on the web page, you are disparaging what Matthew says. He doesn’t say anything about Jupiter or Venus or Regulus, which any educated person in that world of no streetlights would easily recognize from childhood. He says a star led them to Bethlehem and then stopped over a particular house. If that happened, it was a miracle. There is NO POSSIBLE way to get any star or planet to do that.
I stand corrected. Even Answers From Genesis won’t touch it. That ought to tell you something.
But it’s a perfect moment to teach people what a supernova, a conjunction and a comet are, and explain why they might be possible, as well as why they don’t fit into the stores. You end up with an audience that knows more about astronomy going out than they do going in.
In essence, they raise all the objections you mention in you post; the conclusion is that it’s unlikely to be an astronomical phenomenon. from a sceintific and educational standpoint, it is ideal, and it reaches a large audience.
I don’t see any contradiction or inconsistency in the text.
- They saw a star in the east;
- They travelled to Judaea and spoke to Herod;
- The star which they had seen in the east now led them to the child.