by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)
17. As the Magi set out on their way southward from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, probably in the evening, around sunset, they observed the Star appearing to go ahead of them. The Star was up in the sky in front of them and seemed to move forward, leading them (proagō; v. 9). It was probably culminating around this time (i.e., it was at the meridian and hence basically due south). This celestial guidance of the Magi to Bethlehem was not, strictly speaking, necessary, because, after their meeting with Herod, they would undoubtedly have known where Bethlehem was. Probably, however, the presence of the Star at this point functioned to confirm the Magi in their mission and to endue in them a sense that they were being ushered into the Messiah’s presence, thereby heightening their sense of anticipation.
18. The Star, having gone before the Magi on their way to Bethlehem, proceeded to descend and then stand over one particular house on Bethlehem’s skyline. Verse 8 highlights that finding the infant Messiah would have been an enormous challenge. The sight of the Star standing over the structure therefore filled the Magi with extraordinary joy—the Star that had prompted them to make this journey to worship the Messiah was now pinpointing the very place where he was located.
19. Upon entering the house, the Magi were satisfied, when they saw “the child with Mary his mother” (v. 11a), that this was what the celestial sign they had observed in the east had commissioned them to go see. This is demonstrated by their worship of Jesus and the giving of their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (v. 11).
20. What the Star did in connection with its heliacal rising to convince the Magi that the Messiah was born coincided historically with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.
21. The Star’s rising and its role in pinpointing the location of the baby Messiah occurred in the year 6 or 5 BC.
22. Matthew does not inform us what the Star did after it had guided the Magi to baby Jesus.
In light of these points, the question naturally arises: can any hypothesis regarding the identity of this Star accommodate all of this data? We shall now examine the major proposals put forward to identify the Star of Bethlehem.
4
“What Star Is This?”
Evaluating the Major Hypotheses
In this chapter we shall review and evaluate most of the major hypotheses proposed to explain the Star of Bethlehem. In particular we shall consider the views that the Star was: the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7 BC; Jupiter, with the focus on two lunar “occultations” (obscurings) of Jupiter in Aries in 6 BC; a nova or supernova; two meteors; an ordinary star; Jupiter, with the focus on its movements in 3–2 BC; or a combination of some of the above. Then we shall evaluate the position that the Star was a supernatural phenomenon and the proposal that the Bethlehem Star has no foundation in fact.1
Triple Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7 BC
The hypothesis that the Star of Bethlehem was the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC is perhaps the single most popular view. Two notable proponents are David Hughes and Simo Parpola.2
In order to understand the theory, it is important to realize that Jupiter and Saturn are farther away from the Sun than the other naked-eye planets and take longer to complete their revolutions—Jupiter takes 12 years to orbit the Sun, and Saturn takes 30 years. Within the dome of the sky they seem to move at a snail’s pace compared to the inner planets—Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Occasionally Jupiter and Saturn appear, from the perspective of Earth, to come together in the sky. When this happens, the planets move toward each other until they are in the same place in the sky, and then move apart. More rarely the two planets come together three times within a year or so, a phenomenon known as a triple conjunction. This occurs only when Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn are at particular points in their orbits, so that Earth overtakes Jupiter and Saturn at the very time when Jupiter overtakes Saturn.3
In the year 7 BC there was a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn between May and December: the planets came together once in May/June (fig. 4.1), once in September/October, and once in November/December. On May 27–31 and September 26–October 5 they came to within 1 degree, while on December 1–8 they were separated by just under 1 degree and 4 arcminutes.4 This triple conjunction in 7 BC occurred in the zodiacal constellation of Pisces.
Normal Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions occur every two decades or so, while triple conjunctions take place on average every 139 years.5 Triple conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter had occurred in the constellation Leo in 821/820 BC, in Taurus in 563/562 BC, in Virgo in 523/522 BC, and in Cancer in 146/145 BC. The previous triple conjunctions in Pisces had taken place in 980/979 BC and 861/860 BC.
FIG. 4.1 The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on May 29, 7 BC. This was the first of three Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in 7 BC. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl.
Hughes claims that, in ancient astrological thinking, a conjunction of these two great planets in Pisces would have been regarded by both Jews and Babylonians as an obvious sign marking the Jewish Messiah’s birth.6 Most proponents of this theory suggest that the Magi regarded Jupiter as the planet of the ruler of the world and Saturn as the planet representing Palestine or the westland generally.7 Many also claim that the constellation/sign Pisces had a special association with the Hebrews and the last days.
According to Ethelbert Stauffer and Parpola, the conjunction meant that the latter-day king would, during this year, be born in Palestine.8
Parpola claims that the triple conjunction would have had astrological and political significance for Babylonian astrologers. Jupiter was the chief Babylonian god Bel-Marduk’s “star,”9 and Saturn was the “star” of his terrestrial representative, the king.10 As for Pisces, it was the last of the twelve zodiacal signs (Aries being the first) and hence was liable to be interpreted as speaking of “the end of the old world order.”11 At the same time, Pisces was associated with the god of creation and wisdom and hence could also be regarded as portending the nativity of a divinely appointed royal savior.12 In Parpola’s opinion, the Magi were most deeply impacted by the second conjunction, on Tishri 22, 7 BC, when the two planets were “shining at their brightest” (with reference to their performance during each of the three conjunctions) and constituted “a brilliant and suggestive sight.”13 To the Magi it seemed very significant that at that time Marduk’s “star” was “directly above”14 the king’s “star,” appearing to “embrace” it. Since “Tishri was known as the month of Amurru [the West],”15 they concluded that the newborn was to be found in Syria-Palestine. At that point, therefore, they began to head west. Parpola asserts that Mars “joined the conjunction” during its final stage and that this was perceived as a signal of the terrestrial location—since Mars was the “star” of Amurru (the West), the royal figure had to be in Syria-Palestine.16
As regards the day when the Magi perceived that the Messiah was born, Hughes maintains that it was probably September 15, 7 BC, because that was, according to him, when the acronychal rising of Jupiter and Saturn took place (the “acronychal” rising of a planet refers to the planet’s rising in the east as the Sun is setting in the west.)17
With respect to the standing of the Star over the place where Jesus was, Parpola ascribes this to the apparent pause of Jupiter in the sky on November 7 of 7 BC, between the second and third conjunctions.18
As popular as this triple conjunction theory is, it has serious flaws.
First, during the triple conjunction of 7 BC, the two planets never came sufficiently close together to appear as a single entity. Hughes admits that a 1-degree gap—twice the Moon’s diameter, or the width of a little finger at the end of an extended arm—is not particularly close as far as conjunctions go, and that no ancient would have regarded the two planets as a single star.19 By contrast, he concedes, the three conjunctions of 146/145 BC all saw Jupiter and Saturn come closer to each other than one quarter of one degree (equivalent to the Moon’s radius).20 The separation between the planets during the 7 BC triple conjuncti
on constitutes a significant problem for those who identify it as the Bethlehem Star, because Matthew is clear that the Star was a single entity.21
Moreover, we might well ask why the Magi would have responded so dramatically to what was a rather unspectacular phenomenon.
As it happens, we have four copies of an astronomical almanac for the year 7/6 BC from Babylon.22 Babylonian astronomical almanacs were written in the year prior to the year for which their predictions of astronomical events were made.23 Strikingly, the almanac entry for 7/6 BC does not take particular note of the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn. With regard to the general time of the first conjunction, it simply mentions the stationary points of Jupiter and then Saturn in Pisces, without specifying that there would be a conjunction. With respect to the general time of the second conjunction, only Jupiter’s acronychal rising is mentioned, not its stationary point, not the behavior of Saturn, and not the conjunction. Concerning the general time of the third conjunction, the stationary points of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces are mentioned, but not the conjunction.24 Sachs and Walker are therefore, strictly speaking, correct to point out that the 7/6 BC entry does not refer to the conjunctions.25 That does not mean that the Babylonians assigned no significance to the triple conjunction, but it does suggest that they did not regard it as being of momentous significance, at least not in and of itself or in advance.26
Second, both the Magi and the narrator in Matthew 2 refer to the celestial entity as a “star,” but contemporary evidence that a conjunction of planets could be considered “a star” is lacking.27
Third and related to this, as Brown points out, the fact that the Magi reported that they had seen the “rising” of the Messiah’s star is difficult to reconcile with the idea that the Star was two planets.28 In 7 BC, Jupiter and Saturn rose heliacally on different days, when they were more than 5 degrees apart, many weeks before the first of the three conjunctions. The word “rising” is, of course, more naturally used of individual astronomical entities—a star, a comet, a nova/supernova, or a planet—or constellations.
Fourth, the idea that magi at the turn of the ages would have interpreted a simple triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces to signify the birth of a royal figure is very questionable.29 As we noted above, Parpola suggests that Jupiter is Marduk’s star and Saturn is the king’s. According to him, Pisces, as the last zodiacal constellation, introduced the idea of the end of the old age and the commencement of the new age, more particularly the birth of a Savior and King elected by God.30 However, that is an unsubstantiated and tenuous interpretation—there is no foundation for the claim that, to the ancient Near Easterners, Pisces could have conveyed the idea that the end of the age was in view or that a new divinely appointed savior had been born.
Similarly, while there is plenty of evidence to suggest that, in the ancient world, the planet Jupiter was viewed as the planet of the chief God, and that Saturn was sometimes thought to have a special association with the Jews,31 the idea that the constellation Pisces had a particular association with Palestine or the Jewish people is lacking support in contemporary literature.
Astrological geography identified signs/constellations with regions and/or ethnic groups, but different ancient writers assigned different regions/peoples to different signs/constellations. To the best of our knowledge, no writer ever subsumed Israel/Palestine under Pisces.
Moreover, many advocates of the hypothesis that the triple conjunction in Pisces in 7 BC was the Bethlehem Star appeal for support to the commentary on the book of Daniel (The Wells of Salvation, AD 1497) by the Jewish scholar Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508). They claim that Abarbanel’s conviction that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces would mark the coming of the Messiah was shared by the Biblical Magi some 1,500 years beforehand.32 However, the idea that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces would mark the birth of the Messiah belongs to the Medieval period and not to the first millennium BC. Indeed, even according to the principles of Jewish Medieval macro-astrology espoused by these thinkers, the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC was an unimportant one.33
Fifth, the triple conjunction view cannot explain the behavior of the Star at the climax of the Magi’s journey, as described in Matthew 2:9b. The Star was observed to stand over a single house in Bethlehem, pinpointing it as the place where Jesus was. To attribute such behavior to a planet is most unnatural. The apparent pause of a planet in the sky before it reverses direction34 is not visually perceptible within the short window of time available—a single night (Matt. 2:10). Of course, the Magi may have known of this pause in advance by their own mathematical calculations, but it should be noted that they would also have been aware that such a pause was simply the prelude to an apparent reversal of direction. Quite why any magus would have taken this particular pause as disclosing the Messiah’s location is unclear. Moreover, it is not easy to come up with a plausible explanation of how advance knowledge of the pause in Jupiter’s motion might have enabled the Magi to pinpoint one particular building in Bethlehem.
Sixth, the hypothesis that the Star was actually a triple conjunction in 7 BC struggles to come up with a birth date for the Messiah. Hughes suggests that the key moment within the period of the triple conjunction must have been the acronychal rising (the planets’ rising in the east as the Sun was setting in the west) on September 15.35 However, why would the acronychal rising of two distinct planets have been regarded as an astrological indication of a birth? Moreover, as we have already noted, the “rising” of the Star in Matthew 2:2 probably refers to a heliacal rising.
Seventh, the triple conjunction theory cannot account for the Magi’s clear conviction that a ruler who was worthy of worship had been born, nor can it account for their decision to make a pilgrimage to Judea to find him.36 It is hard to believe that the Magi headed to Jerusalem simply because of Mars’s close approach to Jupiter and Saturn and/or Tishri being known as the month of Amurru. Even if they did think that Mars and Tishri were suggestive of the west country, Syria would have been an equally or more plausible destination. Moreover, since Parpola believes that the Magi headed westward in September/October,37 long before Mars’s close approach to Jupiter and Saturn,38 Mars could have played no role in the Magi’s decision regarding direction. Further, needless to say, the proposal that the direction of the Magi’s travel was determined by a perceived association between a month and a region is tenuous at best.
Eighth, the timing of the triple conjunction, in 7 BC, is too early to be a realistic candidate for the Star of Bethlehem. Jesus’s birth is properly dated to 6 or 5 BC.
Ninth, the fact that Herod executed all infants “in their second year or under,” based on when the Magi had said that the Star first appeared, cannot be plausibly explained by this hypothesis.
Consequently, we judge that the popular triple conjunction hypothesis is deeply flawed and should be ruled off the table. The Magi would certainly have looked up to see the triple conjunction in Pisces—it was the most notable predictable astronomical event in 7 BC—and may well have regarded it to be of some astrological significance, but it was certainly not the Star of Bethlehem.
Occultations of Jupiter in Aries in 6 BC
Michael R. Molnar has made a case for the Star of Bethlehem being Jupiter, with the focus on two lunar occultations of Jupiter (that is, two occasions when the Moon obscured Jupiter) in Aries in 6 BC, the first being on March 20 and the second on April 17.39
As regards the March 20 event, shortly before the Sun set in Judea, Jupiter was occulted by the Moon while in Aries. The phenomenon ended a little more than 30 minutes later when Jupiter was low over the horizon in the west. Jupiter can sometimes be visible during the daytime to someone who knows exactly where to look, but not when it is on the far side of the Sun from the perspective of Earth and close to the Sun in the sky, as it was on March 20. Therefore the planet could not have been seen at that time. In addition, the Moon was too close to the Sun to be visible at a
ll on that day. Nevertheless, Molnar states that the ancient astronomers were well able to calculate mathematically the courses of both the Moon and Jupiter and so would have known that they were in conjunction and perhaps even that the Moon was occulting Jupiter.40
The second occultation, on April 17, 6 BC, occurred shortly after noon in Judea and Babylon. The Moon had completed one revolution and was again in Aries and stationed over Jupiter. The occultation lasted for about 50 minutes for those in Babylon (about 75 minutes for those in Judea). Jupiter was invisible in the hours during which the occultation occurred.41 In addition, the Moon, a 28½-day waning crescent, was not bright enough to be seen during the daytime. Significantly, according to Molnar, April 17 was the date of Jupiter’s heliacal rising (its brief reappearance in the eastern sky just in advance of sunrise).42 Consequently, a horoscope drawn up for April 17, 6 BC would, in Molnar’s opinion, have been deemed important by those operating out of a Greek astrological framework. Indeed he reckons that this second occultation would have been regarded as a sign marking the birth of a royal figure in Judea.43 It was this later occultation that stimulated the Magi to travel in search of the Messiah. They arrived in Judea in mid-December of 6 BC.
Molnar reasons that, because the Magi’s estimation of the significance of the Star was so strongly rooted in astrological principles, the people of Jerusalem would not have shared their assessment of the occultations.44
He envisions Jupiter performing the role of the Star in the aftermath of the initial sign.45 As regards the key verse, Matthew 2:9b, Molnar suggests that the Star’s going before the Magi is simply astrological parlance for a celestial entity (in this case, Jupiter) moving in the same direction as the heavens generally, while the Star’s standing over the place where the child was located refers to Jupiter’s apparent stationary status in mid-December of 6 BC, immediately prior to its commencing retrograde motion relative to the fixed stars.46
