The Great Christ Comet (4 page)

Certainly, if we were to judge the accuracy of Matthew's text according to how well it matches the various proposals regarding the Bethlehem Star offered in recent centuries, we might be tempted to concur with these negative assessments. The respected New Testament scholar Raymond Brown made the following statement:
“
Really no one, including the astronomers, takes everything in the Matthean account as literal history.
Matt[hew] says that the magi saw the star (not planets, not a comet) of the King of the Jews at its rising (or in the East), and that it went before them from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and came to rest over where the child was. In recent literature I have not found an astronomical proposal that fits that literally.”
18

Of course, we should not excuse a low view of the accuracy of Matthew's narrative about the Magi and the Star on the ground that no astronomical hypothesis has yet succeeded in explaining all of its details.

As we shall see in the following chapter, Matthew's Gospel should be classified as an ancient Greco-Roman biography with a definite interest in historical accuracy. If Matthew, our major source regarding the Star, cannot be trusted in the little information that he gives us about it, then the quest for the historical Star is doomed to failure. Everyone in the debate should accept that the
preferred hypothesis is the one that matches Matthew's account most closely, and the ideal hypothesis is the one that fits it perfectly. Hence the more any hypothesis is in tension with the data in Matthew's Gospel, the more it should be regarded as inferior. Only when we begin with Matthew's account, interpret it straightforwardly and sympathetically, and resist the temptation to veer away from it in order to accommodate a pet theory can we rescue the discussion from the mire of endless speculation.

Matthew's Account of the Magi and the Star

We must now turn our attention to the Gospel of Matthew's account of the Nativity and, in particular, the Magi and the Star. We find this in Matthew 1:18–2:23. According to Matthew, an extraordinary astronomical phenomenon caused some magi from the east to make a long journey west to Judea in order to welcome the newborn King of the Jews. Remarkably, when they arrived at their final destination, Bethlehem of Judea, the Star pointed out to them the house where the baby Messiah and his virgin mother were staying:

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child
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and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi
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from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising
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and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel.'”

Then Herod summoned the Magi secretly and ascertained from them
what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising went before them until it came and stood
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over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked
23
by the Magi, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were in their second year or under,
24
according to the time that he had ascertained from the Magi. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,

weeping and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children;

she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.

So many questions fill the mind of the reader. What was this “star”? What was so striking about it? What convinced the Magi to make their trek westward? How could the star appear in the east, guide the Magi to Judea in the west, and then lead them southward from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and finally pinpoint the very place in Bethlehem where the Virgin Mary and her holy son were? There can scarcely be any doubt that the Star, if it really did exist, was the most extraordinary astronomical phenomenon ever seen by humans.
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Moreover, if it occurred and coincided with the birth of Jesus, then it would constitute a
dramatic corroboration of Jesus's claim to be the Messiah.

Overview of the Book

In this book we shall first consider Matthew's Gospel and its account of the Nativity, in particular the story of the Magi's visit to Bethlehem (
chapters 2–
3
). Based on this, we will draw up a suitable set of facts that candidates for the role of the Star of Bethlehem must be able to explain satisfactorily. Thereafter we shall consider the main hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the Star (
chapter 4
) and make our own case that one particular astronomical phenomenon lies behind the story of the Magi's Star (
chapters 5–
6
). Following that, we shall attempt to extrapolate a more precise picture of the celestial phenomenon witnessed by the Magi in their homeland (
chapter 7
) and on what basis they came to the conclusion that it signified the birth of the King of the Jews (
chapter 8
). Next, our focus shall turn to the task of building a profile of the particular celestial entity known to us as the Bethlehem Star, based on the Biblical text, and, in light of this, draw on modern astronomical knowledge to discover as much as possible about it (
chapters 9–
10
). Finally, after considering the entity in relation to its astronomical counterparts (
chapter 11
), we shall conclude our study by telling the story of the main participants in the story of the Magi and the Star from the point at which the Massacre of the Innocents occurred (
chapter 12
).

2

“We Beheld
(It Is No Fable)”

The Testimony of Matthew's Gospel

Before we examine closely the well-known account of the Star of Bethlehem (in the following chapter), it is important to introduce the source in which the story is found, the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew's Gospel is a beautifully written and structured theological narrative about Jesus's life and ministry—particularly his words and deeds—and his death and resurrection. It is this Gospel that has given us the most familiar versions of the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes (“Blessed are . . . , for they shall be . . .”).

Authorship

Although the author of Matthew's Gospel is technically anonymous, early church tradition (most notably the early second-century AD church father Papias) unanimously attributed it to Jesus's disciple, the former tax collector, Matthew. The attribution seems reasonably secure: if Matthew did not pen the Gospel, it is difficult to imagine how it came to be associated with him. He was, after all, it would seem, a relatively obscure member of the early Christian movement.

Date

Matthew wrote his Gospel around the year AD 70, most likely shortly before or after that year. Certainly Matthew was noticeably interested in including sayings of Jesus that foretold the destruction of Jerusalem (which occurred at the hands of the Romans in AD 70) (Matt. 22:7; 24:15). That he did not write much before AD 70 is suggested by Matthew's heavy use of Mark's Gospel, which is probably dated to the mid-60s AD, during Nero's persecution of Christians in Rome. Accordingly, it seems that Matthew penned his Gospel about three or four decades after Jesus's ministry in Galilee and Judea and about seven or eight decades after Jesus's birth.

Sources

The disciple made extensive use of sources, not just Mark's Gospel (which, according to the early church fathers, consists of traditions
proclaimed by the apostle Peter), but other materials too, some of which were also used by Luke and others of which were not. With respect to chapters 1–2, Matthew evidently was drawing largely upon stories preserved by the family of Jesus, most naturally Mary, and subsequently safeguarded by the apostles.

Jewish Nature

The Gospel is strongly Jewish in nature, emphasizing that Jesus was the son of David, the Messiah who fulfilled the Hebrew Scriptures and was engaged in ministry to the “lost sheep” of Israel (Matt. 10:6; 15:24). Matthew wrote as a Christian Jew strongly critical of his fellow Jews who had rejected Jesus as their Messiah.

Key Emphases

The Gentiles

At the same time, Matthew's Gospel emphasizes that the invitation to enjoy the salvation secured by the Messiah has been extended to the Gentiles. The Gospel climaxes with Jesus sending the disciples to preach the good news to all the nations (Matt. 28:18–20). It also records Jesus's healing of a Roman centurion's servant (8:5–13) and the exorcism-at-a-distance of a Gentile woman's demonized daughter (15:21–28). Matthew's mention of Jesus's high praise of this soldier and woman is striking. The Gospel's inclusion of the story of the Magi's journey to see the baby Messiah fits with this editorial emphasis.

Fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures

Matthew emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. Not only does his Gospel associate Jesus with Abraham and David by means of the genealogy (Matt. 1:1–17), but it also portrays Jesus as reenacting the exodus (2:15), and presents him in terms of the temple (12:6), Israel in the wilderness (4:1–11), Moses (2:20; 5:21–22), David (12:3–5), Solomon (12:42), and Jonah (12:40–41). More importantly for our purposes, Matthew commonly claims that particular Old Testament texts have been fulfilled. The Gospel often uses one somewhat formulaic phrase: “This took place to fulfill what was spoken. . . .” We see this in Matthew 1:22–23, which declares that Mary's conception of the Messiah through the intervention of the Holy Spirit occurred in fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14:

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us).

But the Gospel also introduces Old Testament quotations in other ways. For example, when the Magi visit Jerusalem, seeking the King of the Jews, Herod the Great inquires of the chief priests and scribes concerning the location of the Messiah's birth. Their answer becomes the means by which Matthew makes the point that Jesus's birth in Bethlehem was a direct fulfillment of an oracle by the prophet Micah, in Micah 5:2.

Genre

One key concern for those engaged in the quest for the historical Star is the genre of Matthew and the attendant matter of the Gospel's historical reliability.

The Gospels are biographies of Jesus. In that the Gospels are written about a single individual, this may seem to be stating the obvious. And so it was, until the early twentieth century. At that time many Bible scholars abandoned this approach in favor of the view that the Gospels were more like popular folk literature based on oral traditions, and so had little historical value as regards the life of the
historical Jesus. However, the works of David Aune
1
and Richard Burridge
2
in the last three decades of the twentieth century caused most New Testament scholars to return to the view that the Gospels are biographies—not modern biographies, but ancient Greco-Roman biographies or
bioi
, like Plutarch's
Lives
.
3
We may speak of the Gospels as historical biographies with theological agenda.

Burridge pointed out that, with respect to their opening, size, narrow central focus, and essential chronological structure; coverage of ancestry, great deeds, virtues, and death; and respectful tone, emphasis on the final years, continuous prose narrative, combination of different subgenres, use of different sources, display of the subject's character, apologetic and polemical nature, and goal of preserving the memory of the subject, the Gospels are all strongly reminiscent of ancient
bioi
.
4
The similarity is strongest between the Gospels and the biographies from the same general period, like those of Plutarch (late first century AD) and Suetonius (early second century AD).
5

Ancient Greco-Roman biographies, like ancient Greco-Roman histories
6
and indeed modern biographies and histories, could vary in their historical reliability.
7
However, “Biographies were normally essentially historical works.”
8
While ancient biographies tended to be one-sided in their assessment of their subjects, they were “still firmly rooted in historical fact rather than literary fiction. Thus, while the Evangelists clearly had an important theological agenda, the very fact that they chose to adapt Greco-Roman biographical conventions to tell the story of Jesus indicates that they were centrally concerned to communicate what they thought really happened.”
9

Biographies written about subjects who lived in the recent past, relative to the time of writing (e.g., those by Tacitus and Suetonius), especially those penned in the early empire, were generally marked by a greater concern for factual accuracy.
10
In such cases, biographers were expected to reject implausibilities and to seek to write what was true. The Gospels, penned within fifty years or so of Jesus's ministry, fall into this category.

That the Gospel writers were determined to produce an accurate account of Jesus's life is especially clear in the opening of one of them, the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:1–4). This prologue is very much in the mold of Thucydides, Polybius, and Josephus. Luke clearly claims to be writing history conforming to the highest standards of Greco-Roman historiography: he depended on eyewitnesses, personally investigated everything from the beginning, and strove for historical accuracy. The very nature of early Christianity, founded on the historical claim that Jesus rose from
the dead, explains why the Gospel writers were so committed to restricting themselves to traditions that they were convinced were historically accurate.

Most Biblical scholars today would agree that the Gospel writers believed that what they were writing was historically accurate and worthy of acceptance, and that the first readers of these literary works would have approached them with the expectation that they were describing what had actually taken place in history.
11

The production of literary Gospels was obviously intended to ensure that the testimony of the eyewitnesses was not lost to the Christian movement or susceptible to contamination in the aftermath of the disciples' deaths.

That the Gospels are Greco-Roman biographies that present the testimony of the authorized eyewitnesses who preserved the Jesus tradition has recently been powerfully argued by Richard Bauckham in
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
. He writes, “The kind of historiography they are is testimony,” which, he goes on to say, is “a form of human utterance that . . . asks to be trusted.”
12
The natural question to ask is whether the traditions recorded by the Gospel writers merit this trust. In other words, were the writers of the Gospels correct in their claim that what they wrote was historically accurate?

Historical Reliability

Contrary to what many have claimed, we have every reason to believe that the stories about and sayings of Jesus that we find in the Gospels were stably transmitted and not embellished or corrupted over the decades. The key factor is that, up until the time when the Gospels were written, the traditions were preserved and guarded by a circle of eyewitnesses,
13
chief among whom were the apostles.
14
That the traditions were passed on faithfully, without contamination or innovation, is strongly suggested by the fact that the Jesus tradition preserved in the Gospels is not what we would have expected had it been shaped in the early decades of the Christian movement. For example, it is remarkable that in the Gospels there is no saying attributed to Jesus regarding circumcision, and that the main title employed by Jesus for himself is “Son of Man,” which was not popular among the first Christians. Writing in AD 50–54, Paul cites from the Jesus tradition in letters to his churches (1 Thess. 4:15–17a; 1 Corinthians 7, 11–12, 15), revealing that by that time he had in his possession a written collection of Jesus material that he wholeheartedly trusted. That the stories about and teachings of Jesus were quickly committed to writing is hardly surprising in view of the fact that Jesus's followers esteemed him as Messiah and Lord and would obviously therefore have been eager to conserve and safeguard what they knew and remembered about him.

Bauckham draws on psychology of memory research to assess whether the Gospel traditions were the kind that would tend to be accurately preserved in the memories of the eyewitnesses.
15
He points out that the stories were related to unusual, indeed often unique, events, and that they were vivid and extraordinarily consequential for the eyewitnesses, and that they would have been profoundly emotional for them and frequently rehearsed by them, beginning very shortly after the events.
16
On this basis, he concludes that “the
memories of eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus score highly by the criteria for likely reliability that have been established by the psychological study of recollective memory.”
17

An Appropriate Approach to the Gospel of Matthew

What, then, should be our attitude to the testimony of the Gospels? Bauckham points out that “Trusting testimony is indispensable to historiography. This trust need not be blind faith. In the ‘critical realist' historian's reception and use of testimony there is a dialectic of trust and critical assessment. . . . For most purposes, testimony is all we have.”
18
The reader is therefore put in the position of having to judge whether to trust or distrust the testimony offered by the eyewitnesses. The correct way to read the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies is therefore to approach them not with a radically suspicious mind-set that assumes that every story or saying is unreliable unless proven otherwise, but rather to approach them with a sensitivity to their historiographical claim to be testimonies, with an appropriate level of trust in the credibility of the witnesses. The judgment of whether particular testimonies are to be trusted or not must be based on “internal consistency and coherence, and consistency and coherence with whatever other relevant historical evidence we have and whatever else we know about the historical context.”
19

Many stumble over the extraordinary nature of the events described in the Gospels. Many stories in the Gospels are rejected as unhistorical by critics because they have exceptional elements in them. However, as Bauckham writes, “We must beware of a historical methodology that prejudices inquiry against exceptionality in history and is biased toward the leveling down of the extraordinary to the ordinary.”
20
As for the charge that the fact that those making such extraordinary claims were biased undermines their credibility, in truth their bias should engender confidence in their testimony:

The testimony of involved participants is especially valuable in the case of exceptional events. . . . The degree of commitment to their testimony such witnesses usually have should not in itself arouse our suspicions; in more ordinary cases we usually take such commitment as a reason for taking especially seriously what a witness has to say. It is by no means irrational to take the risk of crediting the testimony of involved and committed participants to the extraordinary and the exceptional in history.
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