As we consider the Star of Bethlehem one of the most endearing and yet mysterious aspects of the Christmas story. I say mysterious because it is only mentioned in one of the four New Testament Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew, and even there, it occupies a mere 8 verses, providing tantalizingly few clues as to its nature. That has not stopped people from speculating on what it might have been.
These speculations accelerated with the dawn of modern astronomy when Galileo, in the early 17th century, became the first to turn a telescope to the heavens. And since then, as we’ve begun to understand the nature of the contents of the universe and the cosmos, there has been an ever-increasing number of people who have tried to associate the Star of Bethlehem with various naturalistic phenomena. We’re going to look at several of those theories, measure them against the biblical and historical evidence, and see which, if any, of them really hold up. I’ll give my conclusions at the end, so let’s begin by looking at the relevant biblical and historical evidence.
"After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, ’Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the East and have come to worship him.’ When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ’Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him.’
After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the East went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him."
From these few verses, we can extract 9 or 10 clues. Let’s take a look at the first one: this little phrase, "We saw his star." Now, if you look at an interlinear Greek New Testament, that phrase is right here. For those of you who have studied Koine Greek, the word for this translated "star" is right here in Greek. It’s the noun astera, which is a first declension noun in the nominative case, singular. And that’s a very critical point because we’re talking here about one star, astera, singular, not plural. We’ll come back to that later. What is that? It’s an English derivative of the Greek word for star, aster. Can you think of any other English derivatives of asterism? Disaster. The ancient concept of maladies being associated with signs in the heavens. And so, disaster, disastrous. But the little key on your computer keyboard or typewriter with the little star—every time you touch that, I want you to think of the Greek word aster that we find in Matthew chapter 2.
So, the first clue is that there was a star, singular.
The second clue is this: "Magi from the East came to Jerusalem." So the second clue is that Magi traveled to Jerusalem. This clue indicates that the Magi came to Judea or Jerusalem. Why would that have been? And it’s interesting that there was an expectation in that day, not just in Judea but outside of Judea, to the east in what was called Mesopotamia at the time, of a king being born in Judea.
Let’s look at a few of the secular historians who commented on this. The first is the 1st-century and early 2nd-century Roman historian Suetonius, whose most famous work—indeed, the only work that survives—is De Vita Caesarum, which is Latin for "The Lives of the Caesars." That work has been translated into English for many years, and we typically refer to it as The Twelve Caesars. In that work, he makes this statement, and if I can translate this loosely: "An ancient and subtle persuasion prevailed throughout the East that the Fates had decreed someone to proceed from Judea who should attain universal empire." Here is a pagan Roman historian commenting on the perception that a world ruler was going to emerge from this little postage stamp-sized nation of Judea.
Then we see Tacitus, who was also a late 1st-century, early 2nd-century Roman historian and senator. He was a contemporary of Suetonius, though a little older. He wrote two works that survived: The Annals and The Histories. This quote is from the Annals. A loose translation is: "It was contained in the ancient books of their priests that at that time the East should prevail and that someone should proceed from Judea and possess dominion."
There are also Old Testament references to a ruler originating from Judea. There’s the famous star prophecy in Numbers 24:17-18: "A star will come out of Jacob, a scepter will rise out of Israel; he will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the sons of Edom will be conquered." But the key is that first phrase: "A star will come out of Jacob."
Early 3rd-century Christian theologian Origen said this about the prophecy: "But with respect to the appearance of a star at the birth of Jesus, there is a prophecy of Balaam recorded by Moses. To this effect: There shall arise a star out of Jacob and a man shall rise up out of Israel." Origen was referring to this Numbers 24 star prophecy spoken by the prophet Balaam.
Then we see in Daniel 9:25, "No one understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the Messiah, the ruler comes, there will be seven sevens and sixty-two sevens." You do the math, and that brings you to the time of Christ.
So, there was this perception in the pagan world, as well as among the Jewish people themselves, of a Messianic ruler arising at this very time in history. I might point out that the correspondence of these facts will never be the same again. No pagan historian is looking for the emergence of the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament today. All of the conditions were perfect at the time of the original Nativity.
There was an expectation of a new king among the Jews, as well as among the Assyrians and Babylonians, due to the Diaspora—the captivity of the Jewish people following the destruction of Assyria in 721 BC, and of Babylon’s destruction of Judah 150 years later. The point is, many of the scholarly Jews were sent to Assyria and Babylon, where they were able to communicate with others regarding these prophecies. Furthermore, remember that Abraham himself came from the Chaldees, which is what we would call Babylon. It ultimately became the territory of Babylon and then Mesopotamia. This explains why the Magi came to Judea, of all places, when they felt that a king was about to be born.
Now, the next clue is the one that asks, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?" This is the clue indicating that what prompted the Magi to travel was the birth of the Messiah.
This is the fourth clue: they saw his star while they were in the East. Here’s the interlinear Greek New Testament again, and these are the key words right here: "We have seen his star in the east." Most scholars interpret that to mean while they were in the East, they saw the star. It’s not that they saw a star in the eastern part of the sky.
The fifth clue is this: Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star appeared. The star, apparently in this account, appeared suddenly. Then, Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
The sixth clue is this: Herod apparently did not see it, at least not originally.
Then, look at these clues: Magi from the East came to Jerusalem. Herod called the Magi secretly and then sent them to Bethlehem.
After they had heard the king, they went on their way. On coming to the house, they saw the child.
What do we see here? The seventh clue: there were long periods of time involved here with gaps. So, we see from these verses that there were long periods of time separated by gaps. This was not a continuous action. We look here at Mesopotamia, which is probably the area where the Magi originated—somewhere in that region in the Fertile Crescent—and they came down here to Judea. Now, there are two ways to get there: one is going across the Syrian Desert, which is the shortcut—500 miles. But very few people survived that trip. So, almost everybody took the long route up the Euphrates Basin and then down the Mediterranean coast. That about doubled the trip to nearly 1,000 miles, but it was much more likely that you would survive that journey.
So, we’re talking about a trip of almost 1,000 miles that Magi from the east would have traversed to get to Judea. And what’s the point here? It took a long time.
The next clue: they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. The eighth clue: the star preceded them to Bethlehem. The star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was in Bethlehem. If you know your Bible geography, there’s Jerusalem, and there’s Bethlehem. The star they had seen in the east went ahead of them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. If you were to look at a map, Bethlehem is actually south of Jerusalem by about 6 miles. The point is, stars don’t move north to south; they move east to west. That’s a very important clue.
In the same passage, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped. The ninth clue is that the star stopped over the place where the child was, which is a very interesting clue. And then there’s one additional clue, a tenth clue, which is not really contained in Matthew 2, but we can kind of extract this from other verses.
That is this: we go back to Numbers chapter 4, and it says this in the first three verses: "The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, take a census of the Coathite branch of the Levites by their clans and families. Count all the men from 30 to 50 years of age who come to serve in the work in the tent of meeting." That was the age when priests were allowed to function, from ages 30 to 50. At age 50, there was mandatory retirement. There was no age discrimination law.
Luke chapter 3 is interesting. Verse 23 says, "Now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry." So was John the Baptist. They were following in that priestly tradition of beginning priestly ministry at age 30.
John 2:19-20: "Jesus answered them, ’Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews replied, ’It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you’re going to raise it in three days.’" This is one of the most significant verses in the New Testament when dealing with chronology because we know from pagan historians that this incident occurred at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry when he was 30, and that the temple was begun in the year 20 BC. So, this incident, because of the reference to "it’s taken 46 years to build this temple," means that Jesus’ ministry had to have begun in the year 26 AD. If Jesus was 30 when he began his ministry, that means he was born in or about 4 BC. Does that correlate with Luke chapter 2? In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Well, we know that Quirinius was governor of Syria for two terms: one was from 6 to 4 BC, and one was from 6 to 9 AD. So, this fits well within the chronology of a birth date for Christ of 4 BC. We also know from recent archaeological discoveries over the last 20 years that Herod died in 4 BC. So, all of these facts seem to be supporting a Nativity account in 4 BC, plus or minus a year or two.
To recap the 10 clues we’ve just extracted: the first nine are from Matthew 2, and the tenth clue is from the dates in these other verses of Scripture that we’ve looked at.
So now let’s go ahead and look at the various explanations that have been cited to describe what the Star of Bethlehem actually was, and we’ll see whether they fit the biblical and historical evidence. These are not listed in any particular order, so don’t assume that I’m starting with the most commonly cited argument. However, the first explanation for the Star of Bethlehem is that it was a comet.
As many of us know, a comet is simply a large ball, sometimes several miles in diameter. Comet Holmes is probably about 2 miles in diameter, while Comet Halley is about 10 miles in diameter. Comets are essentially giant snowballs made of ice, rock, and dust. As they traverse their orbits around the Sun, those with parabolic or elliptical orbits—some of which are periodic—repeatedly orbit the Sun with a very precise period of time. The hyperbolic orbits pass our way basically once. If you were to look at an image of hyperbolic orbit, you would see the gas tail and the dust tail. As comets approach the Sun, solar radiation vaporizes the ice and ionizes it, which causes the white tail. The dust is also stripped away but does not ionize, forming a darker, bluish tail. An interesting thing about comets is that their tail is always pointed exactly away from the Sun. Incidentally, someone mentioned that we may be able to see two comets shortly. In fact, I checked, and there are about 25 comets visible right now along the ecliptic. Most of them are 15th, 16th, 18th, or 20th magnitude, but there are comets all over the place up there.
Above is a picture of Comet Holmes that I took, which was featured in a newspaper. In this image, we see the typical elliptical orbit of a comet as it approaches the Sun. That’s when the radiation from the Sun ionizes some of the ice, forming the gas tail, as well as the dust tail. As the comet continues along its orbit, the tail actually precedes it, which is what strikes people as so unusual. The word "coma," of course, comes from a Greek word meaning "hair," and it refers to the flowing hair behind the head of the comet.
Now, here we see Dante in the 7th circle of Hell in his great work The Divine Comedy. This is from the first book, The Inferno, where he is traversing the circles of Hell with Virgil. He is currently in the 7th circle. One of the first people he meets there is called the Usurer, who turns out to be Reginaldo Scrovegni, identified by name. He was a merchant in Padua, notorious for his corruption, and he had died by the time Dante published his work. However, his son, Enrico, was still living. Enrico read Dante’s Inferno and saw his father listed as the Usurer in Hell, in the 7th Circle. Horrified, Enrico, who also had a reputation for corruption, began a life of penance because he didn’t want to end up where his father was. He engaged in many acts of charity, including commissioning a chapel next to his estate in Padua, Italy. This chapel is still known today as the Arena Chapel because it was built on the site of an ancient Roman arena. The word "arena" comes from the Latin word for sand, as the floors of gladiatorial arenas were covered with sand, which is how they got their name.
The Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy, built in the 14th century, is a stunning example of art and devotion. Now, Enrico didn’t want to just build a chapel; he wanted to adorn it with artwork. So, he commissioned the greatest painter of the day, the Italian artist Giotto, to paint a series of frescoes lining the walls of the chapel, with each fresco depicting a scene from Scripture. Among these is a depiction of the adoration of the Christ Child by the Magi. In this particular fresco, the Star of Bethlehem appears prominently at the top, and it strikingly resembles a comet.
Why might that be? Well, it’s interesting and somewhat odd that someone would depict the Star of Bethlehem as a comet in the year 1305. But in fact, one of the appearances of Halley’s Comet was in 1301, just a few years before Giotto painted his picture. No doubt it was a dramatic object in the evening sky. It’s estimated that year the comet’s tail probably spanned 60% of the sky, with the tail stretching about one-third from the horizon to directly overhead. That was an enormous tail for a comet. What a spectacular apparition that must have been. It clearly had an impact on people, and many suspect that’s why Giotto portrayed the Star of Bethlehem as a comet. There were many other notable appearances of the comet, including one in 1066.
Just a few months before King Harold of England, the Anglo-Saxon king, was defeated by William the Conqueror in the Norman Conquest, there was a comet that preceded the Battle of Hastings by a few months. In retrospect, this comet was seen as an omen portending the destruction of England and its conquest. Another interesting example is the oldest known appearance of Halley’s Comet, for which we have historical evidence—this was in November of 164 BC. I’ll return to that in just a minute.
But here’s something interesting: in 1985, the European Space Agency and NASA launched a joint project called the Giotto probe, named after the painter. Its purpose was to examine Halley’s Comet during its return in 1986. It came within about 250 miles of the comet at its closest approach. Some of the Giotto data shows it was actually about 350 kilometers from the nucleus. The comet’s nucleus was peanut-shaped, about 10 miles in diameter, made up of ice-encrusted dust particles, very porous, ejecting about 3 tons of matter every second from seven jets. The ejecta was 80% water and 10% carbon monoxide.
The earliest known reference to Halley’s Comet is found on a Babylonian tablet dating back to 164 BC. The inscription details events occurring between September 25th and 28th of that year, though, of course, it doesn’t use the modern BC dating system. If it did, it would be an obvious forgery—a point that often intrigues audiences, even if younger students might not grasp the humor behind it.
In 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 made history by colliding with Jupiter. The comet, pulled apart by Jupiter’s immense gravitational tidal forces, broke into several large fragments that struck the planet’s surface. The impact sites, visible from the bottom upward, illustrate the comet’s disintegration and the subsequent collisions. Observations, likely captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, show the aftermath of the impacts. Due to Jupiter’s rapid rotation—completing one rotation approximately every 10 hours—the debris from the collision quickly spread across the planet’s horizon.
Now, what kind of power was transferred by those chunks of comet? Let me just describe the main chunk—not looking at the other eight major chunks, but the largest one. The energy of that main piece was equivalent to a Hiroshima-sized 12 kiloton atomic bomb exploding every second, 24 hours a day, for 175 years. Would we want that chunk hitting us? Unbelievable. One bomb was enough, but one every second, 24 hours a day, for 175 years? And that was just the main chunk.
Well, let’s take a look at the comet explanation using our 10 criteria. Is it a star? A fixed point in the sky? No. Would it have caused the Magi to travel to Jerusalem? Well, maybe. Would it herald the birth of a king? Possibly. Would they have seen that comet while they were in the East? Yes, they could have seen a comet in the East. Does a comet appear suddenly? Yes. Would it be possible for Herod not to have seen it? Probably not. Is a comet characterized by long duration with gaps? No. Would it have preceded the Magi to Bethlehem? I said yes there, but that should be no. Would it have stopped at Bethlehem? No. Was there a comet between 6 BC and 4 BC? Yes.
Okay, but on balance, this is really not a likely candidate. So, let’s move on to one final thought here: comets were viewed as evil omens at the time of Christ. As I said, we get our word “disaster” and “disastrous” from the Greek word “aster,” meaning star. The idea was that catastrophes were associated with these types of celestial events.
Let’s now take a look at candidate #2: the meteor. Meteors are just very transitory celestial phenomena. They streak across the sky, and most of you have probably seen one or more of these—blink and you miss them. How many times have I had people in my driveway, looking through a telescope, and one person sees a comet or a meteor, but nobody else does? Then they ask, "Where was it?" Well, it’s right there, but by the time they turn and look, of course, it’s gone. So, meteors are very transitory and fleeting.
Would a meteor be the kind of thing that would have caused the Magi to travel 1,000 miles? Obviously not. Would a meteor fit the definition of a star? No, it’s not fixed. Would it have brought the Magi to Jerusalem? No. Herald the birth of the King? No. Would they have seen it while in the East? Yes. Do they appear suddenly? Certainly. Would it be true that Herod would not have seen it? Probably yes, because he wasn’t looking in the right place at the right moment. Is it characterized by long duration with gaps? No. Would the meteor have preceded them to Bethlehem? No. Would it have stopped at Bethlehem? No.
Did it occur between 6 BC and 4 BC? Certainly, thousands of them did. It’s estimated that about 8 billion meteors impact our atmosphere every day, and the vast majority of them are incinerated, of course.
And they just walk down to the surface as micrometeorite dust. That’s why when you wash your car and leave it in a parking lot for a few hours, and then come back out, the car is just covered with fine dust. The majority of that dust is micrometeorite dust. It’s the remnants of meteors that have incinerated in the upper atmosphere.
Now, let’s look at #3, Nova. The term "Nova" comes from the Latin word for "new." Here’s probably one of the better explanations of what’s going on: a Nova is a sudden eruption of a star, becoming many times brighter, possibly thousands or even millions of times brighter, over a relatively short period of time. You start out with a white dwarf star, which is a very compact star, not much bigger than our Earth, very dense. It was once a much bigger star, but as it used up its nuclear fuel, it began contracting.
There wasn’t enough fusion to withstand the inward force of gravity, so it crushes down to about the size of Earth. At that point, the electrons are literally in contact with each other. If the star is no more than two or three times as massive as our sun, and when the electrons come into contact with each other—if you’ve studied quantum mechanics, you may understand the Pauli exclusion principle—it’s at this point that the electron orbits interact, generating a tremendous resistive force that prevents any further contraction. In fact, this is the very force that explains why your feet are resting on the floor instead of falling through it, or why I’m standing here rather than sinking through the surface of the Earth. It’s the Pauli exclusion principle. Electrons won’t occupy the same orbit, and that’s what keeps elements separate.
This principle explains the entire periodic table of elements, based on the discovery of Wolfgang Pauli in the 1920s. We see this principle at work in a white dwarf star. It prevents the inward contraction if the star is small enough initially, and the resistive force of those electron orbits counteracts any further contraction caused by gravity. This continues until the star gets up to 8, 10, 15, or more times the mass of our sun. If the star is large enough, it will eventually collapse into a neutron star or, if it’s massive enough, a black hole. But in the Nova stage, the star is not large enough to collapse into a neutron star or black hole. It stays as a white dwarf.
What happens next is that if the white dwarf is in a binary system with a red giant star, some of the red giant’s outer atmosphere crosses what’s called the Roche lobe, which is the point where the gravitational pull of the white dwarf begins to capture material from the red giant. Some of the hydrogen and helium gas from the outer atmosphere of the red giant accretes onto the surface of the white dwarf and begins to build up. At a certain point, the temperature of the white dwarf triggers a rapid fusion or detonation of that gas. This causes a flash where the star suddenly increases in brightness thousands of times over the course of just a few days. A star that was once almost invisible to the naked eye is now one of the brightest objects in the sky. This is a Nova reaction.
An example of a nova is a star that was previously so faint it could only be observed with a large telescope, but after a nova explosion, it becomes one of the brightest objects in the sky. This sudden brightness is caused by the explosive event on the star’s surface. Research on novae, including their light curves, is also detailed in publications like the Astrophysical Journal. The fact is, all Novas have light curves, which track how they peak in brightness and then return to their pre-Nova brightness level. The point here is to measure how many days it takes for the star to return to its original brightness. On average, this takes about 50 days. In fact, astronomers classify Novas based on that light curve, typically from 40 to 80 days. But the key point is this: it’s a relatively short period of time. It’s not the months it would have taken for the Magi to travel that thousand-mile journey around the Syrian desert, up the Fertile Crescent, and down the Mediterranean coastline.
Now, a supernova is just a massive Nova—a much more powerful explosion. The mechanism triggering it is quite different as well. Here’s a very common example: the first object in the Messier catalog, M1, the Crab Nebula. This was formed after one of the greatest "4th of July" celebrations in history, on July 4, 1054, when a star erupted. Now, let’s look at the known supernovae in our galaxy. Astronomers estimate we should expect about three or four supernovae per century. The last one was in 1604. We’re 15 or 20 years overdue. Some of them may have already happened on the other side of the galaxy, beyond the Milky Way, that we can’t see. We don’t know about 10 or the year 1006. These are the last known supernovae. In 1054, the Crab Nebula in Taurus was a daytime object for 23 days. I want you to remember this because I’m going to return to it later. There is no Western, what should I say, record that describes that supernova. It is only described in Chinese records. Even though it was a daytime object for 23 days, you wouldn’t think that would have gotten somebody’s attention? How about this, 1572?
There’s a 500-year gap, and then we have Tycho’s star, discovered by Tycho Brahe in the constellation Cassiopeia. Then, just a few years later, we have the 1604 Kepler supernova in Ophiuchus. That’s the last known supernova in our galaxy. Every night, astronomers are discovering these things in other galaxies, and that’s a very interesting pastime for amateurs. There are many amateurs out there who are engaged in very dedicated searches for supernovae. It was not a daytime object, but it was as bright as Jupiter at night. It occurred, and we’ll come back to this in a minute, during the conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. And that’s a very important point. A recent supernova occurred in the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, in 1987. In the days leading up to the explosion, the area of the galaxy appeared relatively dim, but after the eruption, its brightness increased by about a billion times. The light curve of this and several other known supernovae shows how the brightness changed over time. Looking at the days on the graph, you can see the rapid rise to peak brightness and the gradual decline over the following 40 to 60 days.
These are relatively transitory events, not as brief as a meteor, but they are not the several months that would be necessary to get the Magi, like I say, up the Fertile Crescent and down the Mediterranean coast to Judea. So, on balance, if we look at our 10 criteria, would a supernova or nova be considered a star in the sense that it’s a single fixed object in the heavens? Yes. Would it have led the Magi to Jerusalem? Possibly. Yes. Herald the birth of a king? Yes. Would they have seen it while they were in the East? Yes. Would it appear suddenly? Absolutely. Herod did not see it? Unlikely. Long duration with gaps? No. Would it have led them to Bethlehem? No. Would it have stopped at Bethlehem? No. Was there a nova or supernova in 4, 5, or 6 BC? Yes. Chinese records indicate there was a supernova in 5 BC. But, on balance, again, that is just not an adequate explanation.
So, we come now to what has probably emerged as the most popular theory or explanation for the Star of Bethlehem: a planetary conjunction. Now, we need to get our definitions straight here between an inferior and a superior planet. Many of you know that an inferior planet is one that’s closer to the sun than we are. How many of those are there? Two. That’s right, Mercury and Venus. Superior planets are planets farther from the Sun than the Earth. And to the ancients, there were three of them: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. A conjunction is when two of those three superior planets come into close proximity in the sky.
They never really are superimposed one on top of the other; it’s a matter of being very close in the sky because they are not coplanar in terms of their orbits around the Sun. And so we begin here with Tycho Brahe, the famous Danish astronomer who spent 20 years on that island of Hven up there, examining and charting the skies. This is a pre-telescope astronomer. He died just a few years before Galileo created a telescope and pointed it to the heavens. So he’s kind of the last of the great pre-telescope astronomers, but he is most known for these meticulous charts that he kept of the heavens. He died under mysterious circumstances, and it’s still being debated what caused that death. But at his death, through a long series of events, his assistant, the brilliant mathematician Johannes Kepler, got possession of those charts, and over the course of five years, literally locking himself in a room studying those charts, he was able to formulate the three laws of planetary motion. What a great intellectual achievement!
Isaac Newton, a few decades later, would take especially that third law of planetary motion and adapt it to create a tool that we use to this day, 400 years later, as the major measuring stick for the mass of objects in the universe, including galaxies 10 billion light-years away. All based on Kepler’s third law of planetary motion as modified by Newton. It’s a very simple equation, P² = r³, but that equation is a phenomenal tool of astronomy, and here’s the originator of it. Now, here’s what happened in Kepler’s case. We see here in December of 1603, he observed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn right here. This is where these two superior planets came close to each other. That’s a fairly common event; over the course of 20 years, that happens at least once. That was in December of 1603. But that conjunction was followed by a massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars 10 months later. A massing is where all three of those superior planets come close together. A conjunction is two; a massing is three. On October 9th, 1604, here they are, the night that happened. The very next day, October 10th, 1604, right in the middle of those three planets, he discovers a new star. That was Kepler’s star, the last supernova ever detected from planet Earth in our galaxy. He, of course, didn’t have any idea what it was, other than it was a spectacular object, as bright as Jupiter in the sky, which is the brightest object in the sky other than the Sun, Moon, and Venus. Kepler deduces that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, followed by a massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, produces a new star. And then he takes those charts of Brahe, and he is able to calculate that a triple— not just a single, but a triple— conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurred in 7 BC, followed by a massing of those three superior planets in 6 BC. Let’s take a look at it. This is exactly the way the sky looked in January 7 BC. We’re looking at Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. Now, here they are coming closer together in February 7 BC. Now we’re in March, and look at our two superior planets here. Of course, Uranus was not visible to the ancients; at least they didn’t know it was a planet.
In 7 BC, several key astronomical events unfolded. On April 7th, there was a significant event, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on May 7th. Over the next few months, the planets began to move closer together again. By August and September, they were almost aligned once more. Then, on October 3rd, there was another conjunction, the second of the year, caused by retrograde motion. As the months continued, the planets began to separate, but by December 4th, they came together again for the third conjunction of 7 BC. After this triple conjunction, there was a notable massing of planets. While Mars was not yet visible, it entered the scene in February of 6 BC, joining Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation Pisces.
So Kepler deduced that this triple conjunction and massing produced a new star in 6 BC, just like the conjunction and massing he had witnessed in 1603 and 1604, which produced that new star. The new star formed back in 6 BC was none other than the Star of Bethlehem. What a brilliant deduction! Kepler began a cottage industry of explaining the Christmas star. But was he correct? As great as this theory was, it is completely erroneous. He went to his grave not knowing it, just like the prospector who was found with a skeleton in Nevada, holding a bag full of fool’s gold in one hand and a note that he had scribbled saying, "I died rich."
Now, let’s take a look at the planetary conjunction. Would that meet our definition of a star? A single fixed star? An astara? Of course not. Would it have brought the Magi to Jerusalem? Possibly. Heralded the birth of a king? Possibly. Would the star have been seen in the east? Yes. Would it have appeared suddenly? No. It takes months and years for these things to develop. Would Herod not have seen it? Highly unlikely. Would it have been characterized by long duration with gaps? No. Would it have led the Magi southerly to Bethlehem? No. Would it have stopped at Bethlehem? No. Did it occur between 6 BC and 4 BC? Yes, as we’ve seen in 6 BC. So on balance, once again, that simply doesn’t cut it in terms of the biblical and historic evidence.
So, the planetary conjunction is ruled out also by the use of that noun "astara," meaning a star. "Planetace astara" means a wandering star in Greek, from which we get our word "planet." This is the Greek word for wanderer or wandering.
OK, so a wandering star refers to those planets that move more rapidly than the background stars. We see an example of that in the New Testament Epistle of Jude, in verse 13. It’s the only one-chapter book in the New Testament. In verse 13 of Jude, we see planetai—wandering stars—referring to planets. And that’s exactly the terminology that Matthew would have used if he was referring to multiple stars in a conjunction.
Well, the sixth explanation of the Star of Bethlehem would be that it’s a myth. The word "myth" comes from the Greek muthos, which originally simply meant "a story." Today, in English, the word myth has many connotations, most commonly a false story, a story with no historical basis, but one that is used to teach or to provide some moral lesson.
But that’s not the sense in which the word myth is used in biblical studies, which is a scholarly discipline. The word myth doesn’t necessarily connote a false story but rather a story that has a divine component—the intervention of God—or a story dealing with a deity. That is called a myth. It may be historically accurate, it may not be, but that’s irrelevant. C.S. Lewis once said that the life of Christ is a myth, but it is also a fact, and I think that explains the difference well.
But a lot of critics today take the more popular view of myth as meaning a false story with no historical or empirical validation. We saw that in the December 2000 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine. For those of you who subscribe, they posted an article titled "A Christmas Story: The Star of Bethlehem Explained." Well, do tell, after all these years, somebody’s going to explain it. And of all things, who is this? An undergraduate student at Michigan State studying physics and math? Give me a break. So he gives his explanation, and I sent a lengthy letter to the editor. We’ll see if it gets published. This guy engages in what I believe is questionable historical analysis, along with several flawed assumptions based on what I call an anti-supernaturalistic bias. In other words, here’s a guy who doesn’t believe in miraculous events. Well, if you have problems with that, you have problems with the Christian faith, don’t you? Christianity is premised on the miraculous: on a triune God, on the virgin birth, on the birth of the God-man, the Theanthropos, Jesus Christ, on the miracles of Christ, and on the resurrection of Christ. If you have problems with the miraculous, you’ve got problems with Christianity. There’s no question about it. But that bias is really on display in that article. Let me just mention the five, actually six, false assumptions and errors that he makes, which I’m going to comment on.
The first one is that the story was written not by a contemporary writer of the event described, but rather by an apologist 100 years or more later—more than a human lifetime after the fact. So he’s saying the Gospel of Matthew was written probably around the year 100 AD, not by anyone who was familiar with the nativity story.
The second point he makes is that he misstates the reign of Quirinius, the year of the census recounted in Luke 2. Many people disputed that there ever was such a census until a bronze plaque was discovered in Turkey that contained the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Deeds of the Divine Augustus), which is a Latin inscription detailing the greatest accomplishments of Caesar Augustus, the emperor at the time of Christ’s birth. He died in 14 AD, and there were ancient references to the fact that he created this list of his greatest accomplishments. Fragments of this list were found, but not the entire thing. When this bronze plaque was discovered, it had virtually the entire Res Gestae Divi Augusti on it, including the ninth item, which mentioned the census. This is yet another example where archaeology continually validates and corroborates biblical narratives. And there are three or four other items like this. I’ll take a look at them individually in this context.
So, as I said, the first assumption is that the nativity story in Matthew was written not by a contemporary of the events, but by an apologist a century later, around 100 AD. Now, let me share my own experience. When I was a student at Harvard Law School, it’s very close to Harvard Divinity School—just a two-minute walk. So, I decided to take some courses there. I took several courses at Harvard Divinity School from the chairman of the New Testament Studies Department, Dieter Georgi, a German theologian who was here in the United States. We became good friends, and I met with him in his office. I have no problem with that. Most Orthodox Christians don’t have a problem with that, but he had a problem with it. And that’s the only flimsy basis for dating Matthew. Incidentally, there were fifty students in that class, and we had no assigned textbook. Instead, we had about 30 books on reserve in the library with readings we had to do. If you looked at each of those books on the last day of class, you would see my name 20 or 30 times in each one, having checked them out—maybe two or three other students in the entire class did the same. Once I did my homework, I read that material, immersed myself in all of the sources, and studied the original accounts and ancient manuscripts. I came to the radical conclusion, at least for that class, that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew, probably around the middle of the 1st century, about 50 AD.
As a result, the dating of Matthew is significant. If it happened in 50 AD, as I concluded, then it’s significant because there were eyewitnesses to the story who were reading Matthew’s Gospel. How could he have included something that was obviously fabricated and false, which would have discredited his entire message and the gospel of salvation he was trying to communicate? It is unthinkable that this would have happened. That’s why the date is so important. If you’re going to pick out one passage and argue that because Jesus prophesied the destruction of the temple, it means this gospel couldn’t have been written before the destruction in 70 AD, you’re missing the point as far as I’m concerned.
Now, here’s the second flawed assumption: He misstates the reign of Quirinius as 6 AD. As we’ve seen, the historical evidence shows that he served two terms—one from 6 to 4 BC, with a census associated with that, and a second term from 6 to 9 AD. He makes a big point in this article about Mithra being born under several of the same circumstances—miraculous stars, Magi, shepherds, a virgin birth. You see, that’s Mithraism, the secret cultic religion. And in fact, those characteristics were associated with Mithraism. But the author of this article doesn’t point out that Christianity preceded Mithraism. There are polemics from the 2nd century by theologians such as Justin, who criticized Mithraism for lifting entire doctrines straight from Christianity and inserting them into their religion, including the miraculous star, Magi, shepherds, and the virgin birth. That’s where these came from. It wasn’t Christianity borrowing them from Mithraism; it was the other way around. This can easily be validated by the historical record. The author of that article didn’t take the time to do his homework. He makes a statement that all of this has caused critical scholars over the last century and a half to consider the star as lacking historical merit. He also claims that today’s authors proposing an astronomical explanation for the star are two centuries behind in biblical scholarship. The rebuttal: He ignores the conclusions of leading theologians today, who are Orthodox and accept the possibility of the supernatural.
Lastly, he says there are no other historical references to the Star of Bethlehem, so it must have never happened. Well, we’ve already addressed that point when I noted that the supernova of 1054, visible on July 4th as a daytime object for 29 days, was not mentioned by any European chroniclers. Does that mean it never happened? Obviously not. Some may disagree with me, and that’s fine, but that’s all part of the fun of exploration—looking at the evidence and coming to your own informed conclusions.
Now, let me conclude with this last possibility, which is that the Star of Bethlehem was what the Bible, I believe, is actually describing: a miraculous apparition. To our knowledge, one of the first to come up with this conclusion was John Chrysostom of Antioch, writing around the year 480. He was a contemporary of Augustine. He believed that the star was a miraculous apparition. Here’s a direct quotation: "How then, tell me, did the star point out a spot so confined, just the space of a manger and shed, unless it left that height and came down to stand over the very head of the young child? And at this, the evangelist was hinting when he said, ‘Lo, the star went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.’"
So, if you look at a miraculous explanation, it certainly is consistent with each of these 10 clues that we’ve examined this evening, which leads me to conclude that it is the best theory in terms of the biblical references and historical evidence. The concept, think of it this way, of a miraculous light visible only to a few people — I think of the Shekinah glory, which is mentioned several times throughout the Old Testament. It comes from a Hebrew word that means "habitation" or "dwelling," and this refers to those relatively rare experiences in the Old Testament where God’s presence dwelled among human beings, and we beheld His glory as the Shekinah glory of God, usually associated with light. We see this in Exodus 40: "Then the cloud covered the Tabernacle, and the glory of the Lord filled it, and Moses was not able to enter the Tabernacle because the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle."
Now, it’s interesting to compare the Star of Bethlehem account in Matthew 2, which talks about the star they saw in the East that went ahead of them until it stopped. So, here’s a mobile event: It goes ahead of them, guides them, and then stops. Compare that to the Shekinah glory of Exodus and the Old Testament. In Nehemiah 9:19–20, we read, "By day, the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor did the pillar of fire by night shine on the way they were to take." Or how about Deuteronomy 31:15? "Then the Lord appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent." And then in Exodus 14: "The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen." And the Angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them. So, here it is moving before them and then standing behind them, going ahead of them and stopping over the place where they were. Very similar descriptions.
We also see the Shekinah glory described in the book of Acts in the New Testament, during the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. A great light from heaven shone down on him. Was that recorded by European chroniclers or the Chinese? No, it was a very limited experience. Only a few people saw it: Saul and those with him in his small entourage when Jesus appeared to him and said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Could that explain the Star of Bethlehem? A glimpse of the Shekinah glory, visible only to those people God intended for it to be seen by? Those who accept the miracle of the incarnation have no problem believing that another miracle in the heavens guided the Magi to Bethlehem. Let me conclude with this thought. Light, whether we see it in this room or from the stars, is a form of electromagnetic radiation. There are many different kinds of electromagnetic radiation besides visible light, but they’re all described by two functions: their frequency and their wavelength — how far apart the wave peaks are from one crest to the next, and how quickly those crests pass by the same point. That’s their frequency.
So, any type of electromagnetic radiation can be described by its frequency and its wavelength. But if you multiply frequency times wavelength for all types of radiation, it always equals the speed of light. Now, here are some of the major types of radiation: gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, microwaves, VHF/UHF, shortwave radio, and long-range radio. Now, the interesting thing is that visible light is just a tiny sliver of this spectrum. I’ve exaggerated it here just so we can see where it falls, which is between ultraviolet and infrared. But let me zoom in on this a bit more, just to describe how little we actually see. If you take a ream of paper — 500 sheets, two inches thick — and pull out one sheet, that sheet is about four thousandths of an inch thick, or 110 thousandths of a meter thick. One sheet of paper is 100 times thicker than the wavelengths of visible light. The longest radio wave has a wavelength of 19 million miles. That’s the longest wavelength for all forms of radiation. Our eyes can only see wavelengths in comparison to one one-hundredth the width of a piece of paper, in a spectrum that spans millions of miles. Why? What you’re seeing right now are forms of radiation, visible light, that fit within one one-hundredth of the width of a piece of paper. So the bottom line is this: We only see a fraction of the entire spectrum — about one quadrillionth.
The Spitzer Space Telescope uses infrared light to reveal a completely different view of the universe compared to what we see with visible light. First, we see the universe as it appears in visible light. Then, the Spitzer telescope shifts to infrared, showing how dramatically the universe looks when viewed through an infrared lens. This difference highlights just how much of the electromagnetic spectrum remains unseen by the human eye—about one quadrillionth of it.
I often think of 2 Kings 6:15-17, where the servant of the man of God, Elisha, got up early one morning and saw that an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "My Lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked. "Don’t be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so that he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
Could that explain the Star of Bethlehem? Light visible only to a few, coming from God Himself — just a little bit more of the electromagnetic spectrum than our human eye is normally able to behold. Could that be an explanation for the Star of Bethlehem? Well, the great thing about this feature of the Nativity story is that each one of us has the privilege to study the evidence and come to our own conclusions. I just hope that these comments will be helpful to you and make your enjoyment of the Christmas season the best ever this year.
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