by The Great Christ Comet- Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem (retail) (epub)
49 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 104.
50 Because time is required for the dust particles to make their way to and along the tail (Littmann and Yeomans, Comet Halley, 58).
51 Kenneth D. Boa, “The Star of Bethlehem” (ThM thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1972), 66; cf. 35–36.
52 See especially the comment by Suetonius in Nero 36.1—a comet, or hairy star, is “a thing that is popularly perceived to portend the demise of great dignitaries.” Cf. Tacitus, Ann. 14.22.
53 Suetonius, Claudius 46.
54 Suetonius, Nero 36.1.
55 Nicholas Campion, A History of Western Astrology: Volume 1, The Ancient World (London and New York: Continuum, 2008), 239.
56 Cassius Dio 65.8.
57 Ibid., 66.17 (cf. Suetonius, Vespasian 23). Translation from Dio’s Rome, Volume 5, trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster (New York: Pafraets, 1906), 141.
58 The Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures prophesied that the eschatological turn of the ages would see severe tribulation in the world and more particularly in Jerusalem (see, for instance, Psalms 2, 110; Daniel 2, 7, 11–12; Zechariah 14). The people of Jerusalem knew that neither Herod nor his sons, nor their Roman overlords, would quickly and quietly stand aside to let the Messiah take his place as King of kings.
59 Stephenson, “Ancient History of Halley’s Comet,” 244.
60 Justinus, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 37.2.1–3. See Justinus, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus, trans. J. C. Yardley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 234. In addition, R. A. Hazzard (“Theos Epiphanes: Crisis and Response,” Harvard Theological Review 88 [1995]: 426–427; and Imagination of a Monarchy: Studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000], 185) has made the case that, when Ptolemy V was proclaimed Theos Epiphanes in 199/198 BC, it was claimed by the court that Zeus had announced the Ptolemaic ruler’s greatness in advance by sending two comets, one at the time of his birth (210 BC) and one at the time of the boy-king’s accession (204 BC). Hazzard maintains that images of stars/comets on coinage from that period reflect this.
61 Sib. Or. 1.323–324 speaks of the Star as coming from the east, brightly shining even in the middle of the day. Similarly, Sib. Or. 12:30–33 describes it as a celestial body extremely like the Sun, that shines so brightly that it can be clearly seen at noon. These passages, from the second or third century AD, could only be referring to a large daytime comet in the same league of brightness as Ikeya-Seki of 1965 and the Great September Comet of 1882. The Gnostic writer Theodotus (second century AD) speaks of “a strange and new star” (Excerpta ex Theodoto 74).
62 Patrick Moore, The Star of Bethlehem (Bath, England: Canopus, 2001), 67.
63 Fred Schaaf, Comet of the Century (New York: Springer, 1997), 39.
64 F. L. Whipple and S. E. Hamid, “A Search for Encke’s Comet in Ancient Chinese Records: A Progress Report,” in The Motion, Evolution of Orbits, and Origin of Comets, ed. Gleb Aleksandrovich Chebotarev, E. I. Kazimirchak-Polonskaia, and B. G. Marsden (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1972), 152, claimed that the hypothesis that the brightness of a comet steadily decreases over time was supported by the history of observations, basic logic, and the icy nucleus model.
65 Yeomans, Comets, 344–345; one exception is 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which seems to have maintained the same absolute magnitude for at least the last two millennia (Yau et al., “Past and Future Motion,” 314).
66 Schaaf, Comet of the Century, 40.
67 That the Star’s standing as it set is suggestive of a comet located on the ecliptic plane was first pointed out to me by Prof. Mark Bailey, Director of the Armagh Observatory, in April of 2011.
68 Moreover, we know that the 110 BC comet was first seen by the Chinese in the zodiacal constellation Gemini. In addition, orbital calculations of Halley’s Comet’s performance in 87 BC (built on the assumption the Chinese comet of 87 BC was Halley’s Comet) suggest that during the month when the Babylonians first observed the comet it was beside Taurus’s left horn, in Gemini, next to Cancer, and then in Leo and Virgo.
69 A zodiacal comet would have set in the west to west-southwest, the direction of Judea from Babylon, in the middle of the night if the season was early summer or in the first half of the fall. Only in the fall, however, would the ecliptic have been near-vertical in the middle of the night.
70 Moore, Star of Bethlehem, 70.
71 Michael R. Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 17–18.
72 Seymour, Birth of Christ: Exploding the Myth, 102–103.
73 Carolyn Sumners and Carlton Allen, Cosmic Pinball: The Science of Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 31–32. Cf. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 172; Boa, “Star of Bethlehem,” 65.
74 Humphreys, “Star of Bethlehem, a Comet in 5 B.C.,” Tyndale Bulletin, 38–39.
75 My translation. For an excellent modern translation of Tacitus’s Annals, see Tacitus, The Annals, trans. A. J. Woodman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).
76 My translation. Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, Chairemon (Leipzig: G. Harrassowitz, 1932), 62–63, suggests that Chaeremon’s claim was rooted in a prior source. See also Chaeremon: Egyptian Priest and Stoic Philosopher. The Fragments Collected and Translated with Explanatory Notes, ed. Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 12–13.
77 So Wilhelm Gundel, “Kometen,” in Paulys Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft 11.1 (Stuttgart: Druckmüller, 1921), 1148–1149; A. A. Barrett, “Observations of Comets in Greek and Roman Sources before A.D. 410,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 72 (1978): 87–88.
78 Justinus, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus 37.2.1–3.
79 My translation. See A. A. Barrett, “The Star of Bethlehem: A Postscript,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 78 (1984): L23.
80 See Kronk, Cometography 1:15–16, on the comets of 120 BC and 119 BC. Kronk correlates Mithridates’s coronation comet with the 120 BC comet. In his favor is the fact that the Babylonians cover the 120 BC comet’s progress over at least 56 days, which is not far from the 70 days mentioned by Justinus. However, it is probably best to date the crowning of Mithridates to the spring of 119 BC (John T. Ramsey, “Mithridates, the Banner of Ch’ih-Yu, and the Comet Coin,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 99 [1999]: 197–253; Adrienne Mayer, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithridates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010], 29) and hence to associate the 119 BC Chinese comet with the beginning of Mithridates’s reign.
81 Ramsey, “Mithridates,” 198–199. Ramsey also points out that a coin from Mithridates’s reign portraying a comet authenticates Justinus’s claim with respect to one or both comets (213–253).
82 Ibid., 202–253. J. K. Fotheringham, “The New Star of Hipparchus and the Date of the Birth and Accession of Mithridates,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 89 (1919): 162, regarded the first comet as appearing in 134 BC (cf. Yeomans, Comets, 365) and the second in 120 BC.
83 Strikingly, Barrett, “Star of Bethlehem: A Postscript,” L23, appeals to Justinus’s quote in defense of his view that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet that marked a royal birth.
84 Octavius’s Commentarii de vita sua as cited by Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23. See The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 1, trans. John Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1893), 58.
85 Ibid.
86 Cassius Dio 45.7. Translation from Dio’s Rome, Volume 3, trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster (New York: Pafraets, 1906), 8–9.
87 Molnar, Star of Bethlehem, 18.
88 The 44 BC comet has been the focus of extensive debate and study. According to the ancient sources (for a useful collection of them, see John T
. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], 155–177), while a minority may have interpreted the comet as a negative omen (Cassius Dio 45.6.6–7: “Some called it a comet and said that it signified the usual things [that comets signify]” [my translation]—this need not be interpreted to mean that the comet was regarded as a negative omen for Octavian in particular), the vast majority of people interpreted the appearance of the comet as marking the divinization of Julius Caesar. Octavian, while giving lip service to this popular notion (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23; Servius on Virgil, Aeneid 8.681; and Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 9.47), privately regarded the comet as a positive omen for himself (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23) and perhaps even as marking the inauguration of a Golden Age (Servius on Virgil, Eclogue 9.47). On the Golden Age, see Mary Francis Williams, “The Sidus Iulium, the Divinity of Men, and the Golden Age in Virgil’s Aeneid,” Leeds International Classical Studies 2 (2003): 1–29, esp. 20–25, contra Ramsey and Licht, Comet of 44 B.C., 140–142, and 165n14, who claim that Octavian’s propaganda twisted the truth, covering up intensely negative assessments of the cometary apparition. Pliny speaks for the consensus when he asserts that the comet was, “if we confess the truth,” “a positive omen for the world” (Natural History 2.23, my translation).
89 My translation.
90 Ramsey and Licht, Comet of 44 B.C., 135–136n5, also point to the “torch” of 204 BC, which may have been cometary and was interpreted by the Romans as heralding their victory over the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War (Livy 29.14.3).
91 Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, “The Star of Bethlehem—A New Explanation—Stationary Point of a Planet,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 33 (1992): 368.
92 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 68. Cf. Henry C. King, The Christmas Star (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1970), 4.
93 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 15. Also Moyise, Was the Birth of Jesus according to Scripture?, 51n6, who rejects the comet hypothesis on the grounds that “the seventy-seven year orbit [sic] of Halley’s comet would have been too early (c. 12–11 B.C.E.) and we know of no other comet that fits the bill.”
94 It should be borne in mind that, as Timothy D. Barnes, “The Triumphs of Augustus,” Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974): 21–26, and Ronald Syme, The Crisis of 2 B.C. (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1974), 3–34, point out, the decade beginning in 6 BC is one of the most obscure in the entire history of the Roman Empire, due to gaps in our historical sources.
95 E.g., Frank Ramirez, The Christmas Star (Lima, OH: CSS, 2002), 34; “Bethlehem’s Star,” http://www.unmuseum.org/bstar.htm (accessed May 15, 2014).
96 Judith Weingarten, “The Magi and Christmas,” http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2007/12/magi-and-christmas.html (posted December 22, 2007).
97 Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 172; the identical words are used in Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (Groningen: Styx, 2000), 99–100. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 172, does concede that Origen’s statement concerning comets indicates that there was a common conception of comets as bearded stars and that this could “solve this difficulty.” Unfortunately, his subsequent repetition of the argument on p. 612 suggests that he does not take on board the force of this concession.
98 Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 612. Cf. Susan S. Carroll, “The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomical and Historical Perspective,” http://www.tccsa.tc/articles/star_susan_carroll.pdf (last modified February 22, 2010).
99 See Hermann Hunger, F. Richard Stephenson, C. B. F. Walker, and K. K. C. Yau, Halley’s Comet in History (London: British Museum, 1985), 17.
100 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23.
101 Williams, “Sidus Iulium,” 5, points out that Augustan literature tends to avoid using the word “comet,” presumably because comets were generally bad omens. It prefers the word “sidus” (“star”) for the great comet of 44 BC.
102 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.22–23.
103 Natural History of Pliny, vol. 1, 58.
104 Ibid., 55.
105 Ibid., 58.
106 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23 (my translation).
107 Seneca, Natural Questions 7.13.2 (my translation).
108 Ibid., 7.14.4 (my translation); cf. 7.26.2.
109 E.g., Cassius Dio 56.29; 60.35; 65.8; 66.17.
110 Ibid., 54.29; translation from Dio’s Rome, Volume 4, trans. Herbert Baldwin Foster (New York: Pafraets, 1905), 56.
111 Josephus, J.W. 6.5.3 (§289) (my translation).
112 Origen, Contra Celsum 1.58–59.
113 It is also worth noting that sometimes, when comets first appear, only the bright central condensation of the coma is visible, making the comet look very like a star or nova. In addition, in cases where a comet becomes visible when it is far away from the Sun and Earth, its movement within the starry sky may not be detectable by the naked eye for days or weeks, as in the case of Sarabat’s Comet (see Kronk, Cometography, 1:394). Therefore it is very possible that the Magi initially categorized the Christ Comet as a new star or nova.
Chapter 7: “Yon Virgin Mother and Child”
1 Sometimes, of course, the timing of a cometary appearance could be significant in determining its meaning. The great comet of 44 BC was interpreted as an “auspicious” omen, based on the fact that it had appeared during the Games of Venus Genetrix, at the start of Octavian’s reign, in the aftermath of Julius Caesar’s death (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23). In this historical context people interpreted the comet to be the divinized soul of Caesar, and Octavian thought that it was a positive omen for himself.
2 Sarabat’s Comet had an absolute magnitude of between -3 and -6 and a nucleus with a diameter of over 100 km, and it attained to naked-eye visibility when it was still over four times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
3 Hale-Bopp had an absolute magnitude of -1 and a nucleus with a diameter of 40–70 km, and it attained to naked-eye visibility 10½ months before perihelion.
4 The Great Comet of 1811 had an absolute magnitude of 0 and a nucleus with a diameter of 30–40 km, and it attained to naked-eye visibility 5½ months before perihelion.
5 The zodiac features in the apparently first-century BC book of 2 Enoch (long recension) 21:6; 30:6. See Wilhelm Bousset, Die Offenbarung Johannis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1904), 336, 355; R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 2 vols., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1920), 1:315–316; W. K. Hedrick, “The Sources and Use of the Imagery in Apocalypse 12” (unpublished ThD dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, 1971), 44; David E. Aune, Revelation, 3 vols. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997–1998), 2:681. We also find zodiacs on Jewish synagogue mosaic floors from the early centuries AD, including the Galilean Beth Alpha synagogue. A tomb at Khirbet el-Qom, 11 km from Lachish, contains graffiti that may represent the zodiacal constellations Leo, Virgo, and Libra; it is apparently from the eighth century BC (Emile Puech, “Palestinian Funerary Inscriptions,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman, 6 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 5:127–128).
6 My translation.
7 Most of what John describes in Rev. 12:1–5 would have been visible in both Babylon and Judea. The strong allusions to pagan mythology and paradigms may favor the hypothesis that the report that underlies these verses stems from Babylon. However, the Jewish and Biblical perspective reflected in verses 1–5 is consistent with Judean observations. Nevertheless, there was a Jewish community in Babylon too, and we have good reason to believe that some within it influenced the Magi to adopt a Jewish and Biblical interpretation of the Star. Therefore we should leave the question of the provenance of the report underlying Rev. 12:1–5 open, whi
le acknowledging that the case for Babylon, the center of astronomical record-keeping in the ancient Near East, may be slightly more compelling.
8 Euripides, Rhesus 528–533; Ion 1146–1158, specifically 1157; Aratus, Phaenomena 10; see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, ed. Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), 1593.
9 So, for example, Aune, Revelation, 2:679; Craig S. Keener, Revelation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 312.
10 Cf. Jürgen Roloff, The Revelation of John: A Continental Commentary, trans. John F. Alsup (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993), 145.
11 So, for example, Franz Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Johannis: hellenistische Studien zum Weltbild der Apokalypse (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1914), 98–124; A. A. Farrer, The Revelation of St. John the Divine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 139–145; Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch, Social-Science Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000), 155–157; Roloff, Revelation, 145; Tim Hegedus, “Some Astrological Motifs in the Book of Revelation,” in Religious Rivalries and the Struggle for Success in Sardis and Smyrna, ed. Richard S. Ascough (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2005), 77, 83–84; pace, among others, Charles, Revelation, 1:319; George Bradford Caird, The Revelation of Saint John (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1966), 148–149 (who, despite deducing that the woman and the dragon are constellations, states that they have been newly imagined and so cannot be found in any star atlas), and Keener, Revelation, 312.
12 Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 110–111.
13 The Seleucid Empire lasted from 323 BC to 63 BC.
14 H. van der Waerden, Science Awakening II (Leyden, Netherlands: Noordhoff, 1974), 288 and 81 plate 11c. This part of the cuneiform tablet (a copy of an older original) is found at the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the Louvre in Paris: item number AO 6448. Note that Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1995), 41–42n3, suggests that the ears of grain on certain kudurrus represent Virgo. (Kudurrus are second-millennium BC Kassite boundary stones that were sometimes used to record grants of land from the king.)
