by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)
5 My translation of the Greek text. The fourth-century theologian Ephrem the Syrian wrote concerning the Star of Bethlehem (Ephraem Syrus, Opera Syriaca [Rome: Vatican, 1740], 4), “A star shone forth suddenly with preternatural light, less than the sun and greater than the sun. It was less than the sun in manifest light; it was greater than it in secret strength by reason of its mystery. A star in the east darted its rays into the house of darkness” (as cited by J. B. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Pt. II. S. Ignatius. S. Polycarp. Revised texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations [London: Macmillan, 1885], 82). In addition, the Byzantine scholar John of Damascus (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 2, chapter 7) wrote, “It often happens . . . that comets arise. . . . They are not of the stars that were made in the beginning, but are formed at the same time [as they arise] by divine command and again dissolved. And so not even the star which the Magi saw at the birth of the Friend and Saviour of Man, our Lord, who became flesh for our sake, is of the number of those that were made in the beginning” (John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume 9 [Oxford: J. Parker, 1899], 24).
6 David W. Hughes, Kevin K. C. Yau, and F. Richard Stephenson, “Giotto’s Comet—Was It the Comet of 1304 and Not Comet Halley?,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 34 (1993): 21–32, argue that the inspiration was closer to the time that Giotto painted the scene—1304. They suggest that it was the naked-eye comet C/1304 C1, which appeared for 74 days, from February 3 to April 18, and had a shorter tail than Halley’s Comet in 1301. Of course, it is also possible that no particular comet was in Giotto’s mind.
7 David Ritchie, Comets: Swords of Heaven (New York: New American Library, 1985), 11, notes that many philosophers in the time of Giotto and earlier regarded the Star as a comet (including the Genoese historian and theologian Jacobus de Veragine, author of The Golden Legend).
8 J. Edgar Bruns, “The Magi Episode in Matthew 2,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 23 (1961): 54; Robert S. Richardson, “The Star of Bethlehem—Fact or Myth?,” The Griffith Observer 22 (December 1958): 163–164; Arthur Stenzel, Jesus Christus und sein Stern (Hamburg: Verlag der Astronomischen Korrespondenz, 1913), 73; Jerry Vardaman, “Jesus’ Life: A New Chronology,” in Chronos, Kairos, Christos, ed. Jerry Vardaman and E. M. Yamauchi (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989), 66, 78 table 4; H. W. Montefiore, “Josephus and the New Testament,” Novum Testamentum 4 (1960): 140–146; Nikos Kokkinos, “Crucifixion in A.D. 36,” in Vardaman and Yamauchi, Chronos, Kairos, Christos, 158; A. I. Reznikov, “La comète de Halley: une démystification de la légende de Noël?,” Recherches d’astronomie historique 18 (1986): 65–68; James Fleming in The Advertiser (December 21, 1985), as referenced by P. A. H. Seymour, The Birth of Christ: Exploding the Myth (London: Virgin, 1998), 102; William Phipps, “The Magi and Halley’s Comet,” Theology Today 43 (1986–1987): 88–92.
9 Colin J. Humphreys, “The Star of Bethlehem—A Comet in 5 B.C.—And the Date of the Birth of Christ,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 32 (1991): 389–407; idem, “The Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C., and the Date of the Christ’s Birth,” Tyndale Bulletin 43 (1992): 31–56; idem, “The Star of Bethlehem,” Science and Christian Belief 5 (1995): 83–101; Duncan Steel, Eclipse (London: Headline, 1999), 20–21. The 5 BC comet hypothesis gets a mention by Gary W. Kronk in his monumental work, Cometography: A Catalog of Comets, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–), 1:26.
10 E.g., Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 171–172; Donald A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, rev. ed., ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 111; Simo Parpola, “The Magi and the Star: Babylonian Astronomy Dates Jesus’ Birth,” in The First Christmas: The Story of Jesus’ Birth in History and Tradition, ed. Sara Murphy (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2009), 15.
11 Ho Peng-Yoke, “Ancient and Mediaeval Observations of Comets and Novae in Chinese Sources,” Vistas in Astronomy 5 (1962): 127–225, catalog number 61; Donald K. Yeomans, Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore (New York: John Wiley, 1991), 367. Some believe that this apparition of Halley’s Comet is also mentioned by Cassius Dio as presaging the death of the Roman General Agrippa (54.29): “The star known as comet hung (aiōrētheis) for many days over (huper) the City [of Rome] and finally was broken up into torches” (my translation) (so, for example, Kronk, Cometography, 1:25). However, the comet described by Cassius Dio is unlikely to have been Halley’s Comet. A number of comets have famously split and/or disintegrated: Aristotle’s Comet of 373–372 BC (Ephorus as cited by Seneca, Natural Questions 7.16.2); Comet Biela in the mid-nineteenth century; the Great September Comet of 1882; and Comet West in 1976 (cf. James C. Watson, A Popular Treatise on Comets [Philadelphia: James Challen & Son, 1861], 81). The fact that Dio’s comet was observed to split suggests that it was visible for a long time. Moreover, the extraordinary performance of the comet—hanging over Rome—is partly explained because fragmenting comets typically release extraordinary quantities of dust and therefore become brighter, larger, and longer. It is not uncommon for bright long-period comets to appear around the time of the return of Halley’s Comet (e.g., 1910) (see F. Richard Stephenson, “The Ancient History of Halley’s Comet,” in Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, ed. Norman Thrower [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990], 234; David Hughes, “Apian’s Woodcut and Halley’s Comet,” International Halleywatch Newsletter 5 [1984]: 24–25).
12 Mark Littmann and Donald K. Yeomans, Comet Halley: Once in a Lifetime (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1985), 10–11.
13 James Fleming, as cited by Seymour, Birth of Christ: Exploding the Myth, 102.
14 Kokkinos, “Crucifixion in A.D. 36,” 162.
15 Vardaman, “Jesus’ Life,” 78 table 4.
16 The Greek text can be rendered either way. Those dating Jesus’s birth to 12 BC cannot make sense of either translation.
17 Some scholars, such as Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 172, believe that the 12 BC Halley’s Comet apparition may have played a key role in the development of the Magi narrative: “It is possible that the appearance of Halley’s comet in 12 B.C. and the coming of foreign ambassadors two years later to hail King Herod on the occasion of the completion of Caesarea Maritima have been combined in Matthew’s story of the star and the magi from the East.” That is a rather far-fetched and naive proposal. Inexplicably, Brown fails to devote any attention to the particulars of the apparition of Halley’s Comet in 12 BC to discover the extent to which it was consistent with Matthew’s striking portrayal of the Star.
18 Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem—A Comet in 5 B.C.,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 389–407; idem, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 31–56; idem, “Star of Bethlehem,” Science and Christian Belief, 83–101. It should be appreciated that this position has a history that goes back centuries before Humphreys. One prominent cometary astronomer who has argued for this view is Duncan Steel in his Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 324–332.
19 Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 42–44; Ho, “Ancient and Mediaeval Observations,” catalog number 63.
20 Translation adapted from David H. Clark, John H. Parkinson, and F. Richard Stephenson, “An Astronomical Re-Appraisal of the Star of Bethlehem—A Nova in 5 BC,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 18 (1977): 444; and David W. Pankenier, Zhentao Xu, and Yaotiao Jiang, Archaeoastronomy in East Asia (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008), 23–24.
21 Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 42.
&n
bsp; 22 Ibid., 45–47; cf. Montefiore, “Josephus,” 140–146; Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), 313–319 §§537–549; Steel, Eclipse, 20–21.
23 Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 46.
24 Ibid., 47.
25 Ibid., 45–47.
26 Ibid., 36.
27 Ibid., 48, proposes that the Magi informed Herod of the triple conjunction in 7 BC, the planetary massing of 6 BC, and the comet “about one month previously.”
28 Clark, Parkinson, and Stephenson, “Astronomical Re-Appraisal,” 444.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Gary W. Kronk, in a personal email message to the author (October 23, 2011), wrote, “Although many Chinese records contain an incredible amount of detail as to a comet’s motion, many can be found where only the location of the discovery is given, sometimes being a direction and sometimes a Chinese constellation. . . . The initial location was very important to these astrologers/astronomers.”
32 See, for example, Ho, “Ancient and Mediaeval Observations,” catalog numbers 44, 49, 59, 61, 68, 73, 76, 81, 82, 83, 86.
33 See, for example, ibid., number 65.
34 See, for example, ibid., numbers 48, 55, 69.
35 This has naturally caused some scholars to wonder if this really was a comet (see Clark, Parkinson, and Stephenson, “Astronomical Re-Appraisal,” 443; Kokkinos, “Crucifixion in A.D. 36,” 160n92).
36 On the nomenclature, see Yeomans, Comets, 361.
37 Cf. Werner Keller, The Bible as History, rev. ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980), 360.
38 When the Babylonians and other ancients spoke of a comet’s heliacal rising or setting, they had in mind first and foremost its coma or head.
39 Even when a heliacal rising of a planet or star had astrological or societal importance, it was not the seeing of it that mattered, since such events were calculated in advance. The fact that the Magi explicitly state that they had traveled to Judea because they had seen what the Star had done at its heliacal rising suggests that it was observations rather than calculations that had had the decisive influence on them. Indeed it may well imply that they had been unable to determine reliably or precisely in advance of the Star’s heliacal rising, based solely on mathematical calculations and/or past experience, what ended up happening. Accordingly, that the Magi saw the Star may reveal that they had been surprised by what it did at its rising or at least had been uncertain about what it would do.
40 When a bright comet is positioned just above the Sun at dawn or sunset (usually with the tail upwards), it generally means that the comet is very near the Sun in outer space (Seargent, Greatest Comets, 23, 175).
41 Cf. Steve Moyise, Was the Birth of Jesus according to Scripture? (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), 51n6: “The swift movement across the sky of a comet comes closest to what Matthew describes.”
42 I have rendered the Hebrew “will do” (rather than “is doing”), since the entire content of these verses is manifestly prophetic, speaking of the distant future.
43 It is, however, interesting to observe that a number of scholars, including W. Staerk, Die jüdische Gemeinde des Neuen Bundes in Damaskus (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1922), 28, 65; Berend Gemser, “Der Stern aus Jacob (Num. 24.17),” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 43 (1925): 301–302; Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, The JPS Torah Commentary (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1992), 207–208; and Thomas F. McDaniel, “Problems in the Balaam Tradition,” http://tmcdaniel.palmerseminary.edu/Balaam.pdf (accessed August 1, 2014), maintain that Berakhot 58b’s shbyt is related to the Akkadian cognate šibṭu and means “comet” or “meteor.” If so, the use of the Hebrew word shbt in Num. 24:17 might be double entendre, with Balaam referring simultaneously to a scepter and a comet.
44 For example, Staerk, Die jüdische Gemeinde, 28, 65; Gemser, “Der Stern aus Jacob,” 301–302; I. Zolli, “Il significato di ‘shēbheṭ’ nel Salmo CXXV,” Atti del XIX congress Internazionale degli Orientalisti (Rome: G. Bardi, 1938), 459; Sigmund Mowinckel, He That Cometh: The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism (New York: Abingdon, 1954), 12, 13, 68, 102; Hans-Jürgen Zobel, “šēḇeṭ,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 14, ed. G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, and H.-J. Fabry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 305; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The One Who Is to Come (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 30n21; McDaniel, “Problems in the Balaam Tradition.” Cf. Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21–36, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 190, 199–201 (“meteor”).
45 Kokkinos, “Crucifixion in A.D. 36,” 160; Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 37–38.
46 Josephus, J.W. 6.5.3 (§289). The sword-like comet has been identified as 1P/Halley in AD 66 by R. M. Jenkins, “The Star of Bethlehem and the Comet of AD 66,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 114 (2004): 336–343 (http://www.bristolastrosoc.org.uk/uploaded/BAAJournalJenkins.pdf). If Josephus is referring to two different comets, one like a sword “and” one that lasted for a year, it is possible that the sword-like comet is referring to Halley’s Comet in AD 66. However, if the Flavian historian is referring to a single comet that at one stage of its year-long apparition looked like a sword (“a star . . . , even a comet . . .”), then he was certainly not thinking of Halley’s Comet, since it was visible for less than 2½ months, from January 30 to April 11 (unless we charge Josephus with an unbecoming exaggeration regarding a detail the truth of which Vespasian and Titus and many readers would have known well). Unfortunately, there is some debate regarding the date(s) of Josephus’s comet(s). Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.” Tyndale Bulletin, 37–38, reckons that the sword-like comet Josephus mentions is the one mentioned in Tacitus, Ann. 15.47.1, as occurring in the year AD 64. However, it is probably best to see Josephus’s comet(s) as occurring in AD 65–66, since he is writing about omens in the run-up to the outbreak of the Judean War in AD 66, and since the immediately succeeding context refers to an omen dated to the spring of AD 66.
According to the fourth-century AD Pseudo-Hegesippus (On the Ruin of the City of Jerusalem), in the run-up to the Judean War there was one comet that lasted a year and looked like a sword and indeed was so bright in early spring that it shone on the temple and altar for half an hour each night through Passover week. Josephus also mentions this strange light, but does not make explicit any link to the comet or give any indication that it occurred on successive nights. Pseudo-Hegesippus also claims that there was great division regarding how to interpret the comet—some regarding it as heralding freedom but others perceiving it to announce war (see Wade Blocker’s translation, http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/hegesippus_05_book5.htm [last modified November 25, 2005]). Josephus mentions only his own interpretation—that it was an omen of judgment. Pseudo-Hegesippus states that the year-long cometary apparition occurred “before the people dissociated themselves from the Romans” (5.44). That would suggest that the comet occurred in AD 65–66, climaxing in the spring of AD 66, shortly after Halley’s Comet. Whether Pseudo-Hegesippus is simply interpreting Josephus freely or is drawing on other sources we do not know. Regardless, it is possible that his understanding of the events is essentially correct.
Like Jenkins, Phipps, “Magi and Halley’s Comet,” 88, suggests that Matthew invented the Star of Bethlehem under the inspiration of the dramatic AD 66 apparition of Halley’s Comet. However, it is surely methodologically sounder to consider whether a different comet, one at the time of Jesus’s birth, inspired Matthew’s account than to propose that it was one sometime around when Matthew wrote (before or after AD 70). Certainly, Halley’s Comet in AD 66 did rise heliacally in the east, did make it to the southern sky by mid-March, and was able to set in the west from about March 24 through to April 11 (at which point even the trained Chinese astronomers could not see it any more). To
that extent it bore some similarities to the Christ Comet as described by Matthew. However, by the time Halley’s Comet eventually was able to set in the west in a dark sky at the close of the apparition, the comet was very faint (about fourth magnitude) and rapidly fading, and its tail was exceedingly short (1–2 degrees long, according to Project Pluto’s Guide 9.0) and setting at too sharp an angle to be regarded as “standing over” a place. It is really difficult to believe that any non-astronomers like Matthew were still keeping track of the comet at this stage, when it was so faint. Further, the Star of Bethlehem probably went from the east to the south via the west, unlike Halley’s Comet in AD 66. Therefore Matthew’s description is much too different from the AD 66 Halley’s apparition to have been inspired by it. Moreover, as we highlighted in chapters 2–3, Matthew was not an inventor of stories.
47 Cassius Dio 54.29.8.
48 As cited by Steffan Rhys, “Star of Bethlehem Comet Theory,” http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/12/22/star-of-bethlehem-comet-theory-91466-22528488 (accessed March 26, 2014). This counters the claim of Kenneth Boa and William Proctor, The Return of the Star of Bethlehem: Comet, Stellar Explosion, or Signal from Above? (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 74: “The Gospel says that the Star stood over the place where the child was—and that would have been an extremely hard trick for any comet.”
