by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)
The overwhelmingly celestial nature of verses 1–5 obviously begs the question of why. Why does John offer his readers an astronomical version of Jesus’s birth narrative? As much as scholars of the Apocalypse have noticed how peculiar the celestial framing of these verses is, they have never been able to explain it. Nor have they been able to shed light on why verses 1 and 3 specify that the scenes of the drama recounted in verses 1–5 constitute “signs” (“a great sign appeared . . . another sign appeared”).
Quite simply, the only plausible explanation of the celestial and portentous nature of the messianic birth scene in Revelation 12:1–5 is that John is consciously recalling the heavenly wonder that attended Jesus’s nativity. In other words, what we read in these verses is an account of the marvel that coincided with the Messiah’s birth and that prompted the Magi to travel to Judea to worship the newborn King of the Jews.7 This astronomical marvel establishes the narrative framework for the whole chapter of which it is a part.
Accordingly, what we find in these verses is the key to unlocking the mystery of the Star of Bethlehem.
The Celestial Woman Virgo
The Greek word translated “sign” (sēmeion) in verse 1 may also mean “constellation,”8 as a number of scholars have pointed out.9 In this context a double meaning seems very likely—the “sign” is an empirical phenomenon disclosing some theological truth and it also concerns a stellar constellation.10
It seems clear who the heavenly woman crowned with twelve stars is. Since the Sun and Moon traverse the heavens along the ecliptic, the fact that they are here respectively described as clothing the woman and as being under her feet makes it clear that the female is positioned along the ecliptic and is therefore one of the zodiacal constellation figures. The only zodiacal female is Virgo the Virgin, and hence it is unquestionably she who is in view here.11 Just as Virgo was often portrayed with wings, so the woman in John’s vision is given wings in verse 14. Moreover, just as Virgo was typically envisioned by the ancients as a virgin of childbearing age and indeed often as a mother, so also the celestial woman in Revelation 12 is a young maiden who gives birth to a child. In addition, the fact that the serpentine dragon is said to have “stood before” the woman (v. 4b) supports this identification. As we will see below, the multiheaded serpentine dragon is the constellation figure Hydra, which is located immediately to the south of Virgo and rises in the eastern sky on her left side (on the right side, from an observer’s perspective). We concur with the claim of Stephen Benko regarding the woman of Revelation 12: “Any Greek or Roman reading such a description would have thought of the constellation Virgo (parthenos, virgin), . . . who was represented as a woman holding an ear of corn and having wings.”12
Virgo was the largest zodiacal constellation and the third largest of all the constellations after Argo Navis and Hydra. The constellation consists mostly of rather faint stars spread over a wide area. The brightest star is Spica, a stunning first-magnitude star halfway down the constellation, close to the ecliptic. Spica is actually in the top twenty of the brightest stars of the night sky. The next brightest stars in the constellation are the third-magnitude Porrima (γ), Vindemiatrix (ε), and Auva (δ), and the fourth-magnitude Zavijava (β). (Modern readers who wish to get a good view of Virgo are advised to look at it shortly after dark in April–June.)
The constellation was called AB.SIN (the Furrow) by the Mesopotamians, Parthenos (Virgin) by the Greeks, Virgo (Virgin) by the Romans, and Bethulah (Virgin) by the Jews.
The Mesopotamians and Greeks depicted the constellation as a young maiden who carried an ear of grain in her left hand. We have a sketch of the Furrow (Virgo) from Seleucid13 Babylonia, in which she is doing precisely this (see fig. 7.2).14 The ear of grain was particularly closely associated with Spica and reflects the fact that historically the constellation, and Spica in particular, was linked to the start of the grain harvest. Often Virgo was believed to hold a palm branch in her right hand. Greeks and many in the ancient Near East imagined her to have wings.
FIG. 7.2 The Furrow (Virgo) holding an ear of grain. Based on a Babylonian astrological cuneiform tablet from Uruk which is now preserved in the Louvre Museum (AO 6448). Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl.
The constellation was associated with a number of different virgin goddesses in the centuries surrounding the birth of Jesus, including Ishtar/Asherah, Athena, Demeter, Atargatis, Tyche, Dike, Justa, Astraea, Juno, and Isis.15 As Dike, Justa, and Astraea, Virgo was presented as an innocent and pure virgin so exasperated with humanity that she left the earth for the starry heavens. Pseudo-Eratosthenes16 states that Hesiod identified her as Dike, daughter of Zeus, who became so weary of human injustice in all its forms that she departed for the mountains and ultimately ascended into the heavens. Hyginus claims that the celestial virgin Astraea became the constellation Virgo.17 According to Apuleius,18 Psyche spoke of Juno as being worshiped “as a virgin who travels through the sky on the back of Leo.” However, Isis (who called herself “The Great Virgin” in a hymn to Osiris) was the predominant identity of Virgo in our period19 and it is as Isis that Virgo is portrayed on the Dendera Zodiac (a famous, probably mid-first-century BC, sky map carved on the ceiling of the Hathor temple at Dendera, Egypt).20
Strikingly, Virgo was widely regarded as a virgin and yet, paradoxically, often also as a mother. Tim Hegedus points out that,
Mother goddesses were not incompatible with Virgo in ancient Greco-Roman religion. According to Frances Yates, “The . . . virgin is . . . a complex character, fertile and barren at the same time.” . . . For example, . . . the figure of Isis holding her son Horus was identified with Virgo. Virgo was also associated with various other mother goddesses in antiquity, such as Juno, Dea Caelestis, Ceres, Magna Mater, Atargatis, and even Ilithyia, the Greek goddess of childbirth. . . . As Boll concludes, “. . . alles ist eins” [“everything is the same”].21
Theony Condos comments that, in identifying the constellation as a maiden, the Greeks were probably indebted to the Babylonians, who associated it with the virgin aspect of the Great Mother Goddess.22
Those who deny that Virgo is in mind in Revelation 12 claim that the twelve stars on her crown (Rev. 12:1: “and on her head a crown of twelve stars”) represent the twelve zodiacal signs or constellations (excluding Ophiuchus).23 However, even if we accepted that Virgo was being presented as having the twelve zodiacal constellations/signs on her head, that could be explained in another way, namely, that she encapsulated and represented the entire zodiac.24 At the same time, as we shall see shortly, a careful study of the stars in the uppermost region of Virgo reveals that there is a much better way to understand her twelve-star crown.
The Placement of the Figure Virgo within the Constellation
How did the ancients in this general period conceive of Virgo relative to the stars of her constellation? We have evidence of at least four versions of Virgo.
The first version of Virgo was described by the second-century BC Greek astronomical writer Hipparchus. Beginning at the bottom of the constellation, he regarded her feet as corresponding to the stars μ (Mu) and λ (Lambda) Virginis, her shoulders (evidently the lower part of the shoulders) as γ (Gamma) and δ (Delta) Virginis, and the top star in her head as ξ (Xi) Virginis. This conceptualization of Virgo is unquestionably the most bizarre—it requires Virgo to have an extraordinarily long neck and/or massive head. Indeed, in Hipparchus’s analysis, the distance from the top star in her head to the star in her right shoulder is the same as the distance from her left elbow to her left foot!
A revised version of Hipparchus’s Virgo is found in the second-century AD Almagest of Ptolemy. Although Ptolemy largely followed Hipparchus, he perceived the need to make modifications. Ptolemy freely admitted that he was exercising some creative license in his portrayal of the great celestial woman:
We do not employ the same figures of the constellations that our predecessors did, just as they did not employ the same figures as their predecessors. But in many
cases we make use of different figures that more appropriately represent the forms for which they are drawn.25
Ptolemy went on to give Virgo as an example of his innovative reimaginings of the constellations: “For instance, those stars which Hipparchus places ‘on the Virgin’s shoulder’ we place ‘on her side,’26 because their distance from the stars in her head seems too great for the distance from the head to the shoulder in his constellation of Virgo. And so, by making those stars to be on her sides, the figure will be agreeable and appropriate, which it would not be if those stars were drawn ‘on her shoulders.’”27
However, in decreasing the size of Virgo’s neck and head, Ptolemy introduced a new problem: Virgo’s torso and arms became disproportionately long—the distance from the star on her left side (γ) to her left hand (α) is greater than the distance from her left hand (α) to her left foot (λ). Quite simply, maintaining Hipparchus’s placement of Virgo’s head could not produce a properly proportioned constellation figure—measuring from just above Virgo’s right buttock (which in a normal human body would be roughly halfway between the top of the head and the bottom of the feet), in Ptolemy’s Virgo it is 29 degrees to the top of her head and yet only 18 degrees to her right foot (and 17 degrees to her left foot).
A third version of Virgo existed in the ancient world, around the time of Jesus’s birth, which did not entail her having an extraordinarily long neck or elongated upper body (from the waist upwards). The first-century BC work Poetica Astronomica, by Hyginus, and the first/second century AD work Catasterismi, by Pseudo-Eratosthenes, portrayed Virgo in rather more vague terms than Hipparchus or Ptolemy, but nevertheless in readily identifiable terms. These two authors described Virgo very similarly. According to Hyginus, she had 19 stars, and, according to Pseudo-Eratosthenes, she had 20 stars. The faint star that they associate with the Virgin’s head is 16 Virginis (mag. +4.96). Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 9, stated that Virgo was regarded as headless. The headless version of Virgo is actually easy to explain astronomically, because, as Pseudo-Eratosthenes himself went on to point out, there is only one faint star in the region of sky where Virgo’s head was perceived to be (16 Virginis).28 The shoulders are δ (Auva) (mag. +3.37) and γ (mag. +3.43). The elbows are σ and ψ (both mag. +4.75). The hands are α (Spica) (mag. +0.96) and ζ (Heze) (mag. +3.34). Her feet are μ (mag. +3.84) and λ (mag. +4.5). With respect to the wings, ε (Vindemiatrix) (mag. +2.84) and ρ (mag. +4.87) are on the right wing, and β (Zavijava) (mag. +3.56) and η (Zaniah) (mag. +3.87) on the left wing. The six faint stars that make up her dress, that is, the hem of her dress, are υ (mag. +5.12), φ (mag. +4.78), ι (Syrma) (mag. +4.06), 106 (mag. +5.4), 95 (mag. +5.43), and κ (mag. +4.15), all of which are fourth- or fifth-magnitude stars—dim, but well within the range of naked-eye observation in good atmospheric conditions.29 This solution incorporates most of the major stars in the relevant part of Virgo in a natural way and is very probably correct.
Therefore Hyginus and Pseudo-Eratosthenes represent a view of Virgo that is very similar to that of Hipparchus from the feet (μ and λ Virginis) to the shoulders (δ and γ Virginis), but has the head much lower down and a body with more reasonable proportions. According to their assessment, the stars ξ, ν, ο, and π were not a part of Virgo’s body, but were above the head.
FIG. 7.3 Virgo as represented by Greek astronomers from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl.
FIG. 7.4 An artistic re-creation of Ptolemy’s representation of Virgo. Plate 21 in Richard Rouse Bloxam, Urania’s Mirror (London: Samuel Leigh, 1825), a set of drawings accompanied by A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy, by Jehoshaphat Aspin. Image credit: oldbookart.com.
A fourth version of the constellation figure was also prevalent around the turn of the ages. Teukros (Teucer) of Babylon portrayed Virgo as a goddess sitting on a throne.30
Teukros is an important representative of Babylonian astrology at the time of Jesus’s birth; indeed he is the only Babylonian astrologer of the time that we know anything about. Specifically, Teukros of Babylon describes the sign of Virgo as “a certain goddess seated on a throne and nursing a child. Some say that she is the goddess Isis in the Atrium nursing Horus.”31 Although restricting a large constellation figure like Virgo to a 30-degree zone (to get it to work as a zodiacal sign) naturally results in distortion, and so cannot accurately capture the underlying constellation figure, Teukros nevertheless gives us a good sense of how she was envisioned and a general idea of her proportions. In his description of the sign of Virgo, Teukros locates Spica two-thirds of the way down.32 His Virgo, and that of the Egyptians, is oriented parallel to the ecliptic33 and seems closest to that of Hyginus and Pseudo-Eratosthenes, except that Virgo is imagined as sitting on a throne, presumably with her legs and feet parallel.34
FIG. 7.5 Isis with Horus, her child. From the Late Egyptian period (7th–4th century BC). Image credit and copyright: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
Strikingly, a Jewish zodiac wheel from the sixth century AD, discovered at the Beth Alpha synagogue, portrayed Virgo as seated on a throne dressed in a long gown that reached down to her ankles, and wearing royal red shoes.35
Likewise Antiochus of Athens (from the first or, more likely, second century AD) envisioned Virgo as a woman holding a child, and hence probably as seated.36
So, it would seem, there were at least four portrayals of Virgo in the centuries around the birth of Jesus: three envisioned her standing and one imagined her sitting. Ptolemy, Hipparchus, and Pseudo-Eratosthenes and Hyginus represent versions of Virgo standing, and Teukros of Babylon and the Dendera Zodiac represent the version of Virgo sitting on a throne, holding an infant. Hipparchus has Virgo’s head high, as does Ptolemy, but Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Hyginus, and Teukros (and Egyptian art) reflect a conception of Virgo in which her head is lower, at or near 16 Virginis rather than at ξ, ν, ο, and π Virginis. Happily, there was widespread agreement regarding the level of Virgo’s groin and legs.
How does Revelation 12:1–5 compare with these visualizations of Virgo?
It is important to give due attention to the fact that Revelation 12:1 regards Virgo as wearing a “crown”37 of twelve stars.38 If we take on board that the generally acknowledged maximum naked-eye visibility in ideal conditions, such as those that would normally have prevailed in ancient Babylon and Jerusalem, is up to and including the sixth magnitude, that is, up to +6.5, it is remarkable that there are precisely twelve stars of up to +6.5 magnitude in the relevant part of Virgo. These 12 stars are 10 (mag. +5.93), 11 (mag. +5.71), 7 (mag. +5.34), HIP58809 (mag. +6.37), π (mag. +4.62), ο (mag. +4.09), 6 (mag. +5.56), ν (mag. +4.03), 4 (mag. +5.28), ξ (mag. +4.81), ω (mag. +5.21), and HIP6756 (mag. +6.15). These stars form a conical shape that is reminiscent of a tiara, mitre, or tall royal crown (fig. 7.6). Strikingly, an image of Virgo next to Leo on a relief on the ceiling of the portico of the Temple of Khnum at Esna in Egypt portrays her with a tall crown of Egyptian style (fig. 7.7).39
FIG. 7.6 Virgo’s crown: the 12 stars form a tall cone shape, which makes for a very natural ancient tiara or tall crown. The name of each star is in bold, and its magnitude value is in parentheses. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl.
FIG. 7.7 Virgo as represented on the ceiling of the Esna Temple in Egypt. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl, based on a photograph by Shaun Osborne (2012).
The tall crown was the most common style of crown in the ancient Near East, worn by royalty in, among other places, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and Parthia. It was used before and after the time of Jesus’s birth. Indeed Musa, from 2 BC to AD 4 queen of the Parthian empire, in which Babylon was located and from which the Magi hailed, is pictured on coins wearing such a tall crown (fig. 7.8). Up to now, the 12 stars have not been correctly identified, probably because scholars looking for them have been presupposing the portrayal of Virgo found in Ptolemy.
FIG. 7.8 Musa, queen of Parthia from 2 BC to AD 4 (the time of Jesus’s childhood), as featured on t
he back side of a coin. Image credit: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc., http://www.cngcoins.com. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
FIG. 7.9 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (7th–6th century BC) as portrayed on the damaged Tower of Babel stele (The Schøyen Collection, MS 2063). Note the tall crown. Image credit: Sirscha Nicholl, based on photographs by The Schøyen Collection (www.schoyencollection.com).
With a crown on Virgo’s head, Revelation 12:1’s constellation figure evidently contrasts with that of Hipparchus and Ptolemy but is similar to that of Hyginus, Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Teukros, and Egypt.
In addition, both of Virgo’s feet are envisioned in verse 1 as being above the Moon. The Virgo of Hipparchus, Hyginus, Pseudo-Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy had her left foot at λ Virginis and her right foot at μ Virginis. In certain years, depending on the angle of the Moon’s orbit relative to the ecliptic plane of Earth’s orbit, the Moon may pass through this area of sky. In the years 7 to 2 BC, at times when the Sun was in Virgo, the Moon ventured under λ Virginis in 7–5 BC (in the other years it was too far south of the ecliptic to be plausibly regarded as in any way under her feet). It seems therefore that Revelation 12:1 is portraying both of Virgo’s feet as being in the vicinity of this star.
With the crown and feet identified on the star map, we know the boundaries within which we are to fit Virgo’s body from her forehead to the end of her legs, that is, between the crown and the area around λ Virginis. Revelation 12:1 would seem to concur with the widespread view regarding the level within the constellation where her groin and legs were. With respect to the upper body of Virgo, verse 1 reveals that she is being viewed in terms very similar to the Virgo of Hyginus and Pseudo-Eratosthenes and the Virgo of Egypt and Babylon.
