The Great Christ Comet (73 page)

114
 For a successful defense of the historical credibility of Luke's account of the Presentation of Jesus at the temple (Luke 2:22–24), see Richard Bauckham, “Luke's Infancy Narrative as Oral History in Scriptural Form,” in
The Gospels: History and Christology: The Search of Joseph Ratzinger–Benedict XVI
, ed. Bernardo Estrada, Ermenegildo Manicardi, and Armand Puig i Tàrrech, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 399–417.

115
 Davies and Allison,
Matthew
, 1:245.

116
 Those following a lunar calendar of twelve months (with years totaling about 354 days) must add a leap month every few years to get it back into sync with the 365-day solar year.

117
 Note Davies and Allison,
Matthew
, 1:244; Davies and Allison suggest that the assumption being made by Herod is that the Star's first appearance occurred at the time of the birth of the child.

1
 If you download planetarium software, you will be able to discover what the sky looked like at any particular moment in history, even thousands of years ago. Those unfamiliar with astronomy are often taken aback by this fact. But when we remember that all the celestial bodies, including Earth, the Moon, the stars, and the planets, operate by well-understood set laws and regularities, it makes sense.

2
 David W. Hughes,
The Star of Bethlehem Mystery
(London: J. M. Dent, 1979); and 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), 13–24; cf. A. Strobel, “Weltenjahr, große Konjunktion und Messiasstern, Ein themageschichtlicher Überblick,”
Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt
2.20.2 (1987): 988–1187. Jeanne K. Hanson,
The Star of Bethlehem: The History, Mystery, and Beauty of the Christmas Star
(New York: Hearst, 1994), 51–55, also takes this view.

3
 See Mark R. Kidger,
The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 202; and especially Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 21–23.

4
 Calculations were done on planetarium software, specifically Starry Night
®
Pro 6.4.3, Simulation Curriculum Corporation, 11900 Wayzata Blvd, Suite 126, Minnetonka, MN 55305,
http://
astronomy
.starrynight
.com.
For more on the conjunctions, see Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 139; U. Holzmeister, “La stella dei Magi,”
Civiltà Cattolica
93 (1942): 12–15. “Degree” and “arcminute” are astronomical measurements. A circle is 360 degrees. From the horizon to directly above your head (the zenith) is 90 degrees. There are 60 arcminutes in 1 degree.

5
 Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 131.

6
 Ibid., 213–214.

7
 Ulrich Luz,
Matthew 1–7
:
A Continental Commentary
, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 132, comments that the triple conjunction hypothesis is a reasonable candidate for the Star of Bethlehem because Jupiter could be regarded as the Star of royalty, and Saturn as the Star of Sabbath and the Jews. He refers in a footnote (132n25) to Albinus Tibullus 1.3.18; Tacitus,
Hist
. 5.4; Sextus Julius Frontinus,
Strategemata
2.1.17, ed. Gotthold Gundermann (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888); and Cassius Dio 37.17–18.

8
 Ethelbert Stauffer,
Jesus and His Story
(New York: Knopf, 1960), 36–37; Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 20.

9
 Parpola (ibid., 18) wrongly claims that Jupiter is the “brightest planet.” That distinction belongs to Venus. At the time of the second conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC, Venus was almost two magnitudes brighter than Jupiter.

10
 Ibid.

11
 Ibid.

12
 Ibid.

13
 Ibid., 19.   

14
 It seems to me, however, that during the second conjunction this description is not particularly appropriate.

15
 Ibid.

16
 Ibid., 18.

17
 Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 220. It is, however, worth noting that the acronychal risings of Jupiter and Saturn probably did not occur on the same day or as late as September 15 in 7 BC.

18
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 23.

19
 Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 124, 139, 152.

20
 Kidger,
Star of Bethlehem
, 206.

21
 Cf. Patrick Moore,
The Star of Bethlehem
(Bath, England: Canopus, 2001), 45; Luz,
Matthew 1–7
, 132.

22
 A. J. Sachs and C. B. F. Walker, “Kepler's View of the Star of Bethlehem and the Babylonian Almanac for 7/6 B.C.,”
Iraq
46 (1984): 47, insist that the tablets all hail from Babylon or possibly Borsippa, which is about 11 miles from Babylon.

23
 Ibid., 46.

24
 For a translation of the relevant sections, see ibid., 43–45.

25
 Ibid., 45–46. The almanac mentions the behavior of Jupiter and Saturn in the midst of references to the locations of other astronomical entities like Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Sirius.

26
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 17–18, claims that the fact that the manuscript recording the triple conjunction of 7 BC exists in four copies is extraordinary and highlights the conjunction's rarity and importance. However, Sachs and Walker make the point that it was not uncommon for an almanac to be preserved in more than one copy and they comment that, in the case of the 7–6 BC almanac, it is unclear whether the copies are each original texts with independent astronomical calculations or whether two or more of them were copied from one of the others or from a common original (Sachs and Walker, “Kepler's View,” 47).

27
 See Franz Boll, “Der Stern der Weisen,”
Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde des Urchristentums
18 (1917/1918): 40–43.

28
 Cf. 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), 173.

29
 W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew
, 3 vols., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988–1997), 1:233–234, however, point to evidence that some ancient astrologers—namely, Pseudo-Callisthenes 1:12; and Firmicus Maternus,
Math.
6:1; 8:31—regarded particular conjunctions as hailing a royal birth.

30
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 18.

31
 That Saturn could be regarded by Gentiles in this period as the planet of the Jews may be suggested by the anti-Semitic Roman historian Tacitus (
Hist
. 5.4). This association of Saturn and the Jews is present also in the writings of Augustine (
On the Harmony of the Gospels
1.21–22). Shlomo Sela,
Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 152–153, points out that it is uncertain when precisely the idea was first accepted by the Jews, but that the Babylonian Talmud did refer to Saturn as
Shabtay
(Sabbath). Sela suggests that Ibn Ezra was the first Jewish intellectual to develop the Saturn-Jews association in a macro-astrological scheme (153). Strikingly, Amos 5:25–26 (see also Acts 7:41–43) declared that the Israelites worshiped Saturn (named Sikkuth and Kiyyun in Amos) as their God in the eighth century BC and possibly even during the wilderness years.

32
 So, for example, Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 90, 211; Jean-Pierre Isbouts,
Young Jesus: Restoring the “Lost Years” of a Social Activist and Religious Dissident
(New York: Sterling, 2008), 58–59; cf. Kidger,
Star of Bethlehem
, 206.

33
 The medieval Jewish thinker Ibn Ezra believed that it was a “Great” Conjunction in the sign Leo (205 BC) that had importance with respect to Jesus's birth, while Bar Hiyya associated the following “Great” Conjunction in Virgo in AD 34 with the emergence of Christianity (Sela,
Abraham Ibn Ezra
, 293–294; Josefina Rodríguez Arribas, “The Terminology of Historical Astrology according to Abraham Bar Hiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra,”
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism
11 [2011]: 22, 29).

34
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 19.

35
 Hughes,
Star of Bethlehem Mystery
, 147–148.

36
 Cf. Konradin Ferrari-D'Occhieppo, “The Star of the Magi and Babylonian Astronomy,” in
Chronos, Kairos, Christos
, ed. Jerry Vardaman and E. M. Yamauchi (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989), 46.

37
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 18–19, suggests that the Magi left Babylon on Tishri 22 (coinciding with the second conjunction) and then, a few paragraphs later, he contradicts himself by suggesting that they departed in “early Tishri.” It is all very confusing because Parpola claims that early Tishri corresponds to October, when earlier he stated that Tishri 22 = October 6. Moreover, if the Magi left in early Tishri, then the second conjunction had not taken place and hence they had (according to the hypothesis proposed by Parpola) no basis for going in a westward direction. Probably Parpola meant to write “early October” rather than “early Tishri.”

38
 In truth, Mars did not arrive with Jupiter and Saturn until mid-February of 6 BC, well after the final conjunction in early December of 7 BC. Mars was still a full zodiacal sign away from Pisces in the second week of December. It reached the sign of Pisces only in mid-January.

39
 Michael R. Molnar,
The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 86–96.

40
 Ibid., 86.

41
 As Molnar concedes (ibid.).

42
 Ibid., 89. However, Jupiter's heliacal rising probably took place a week or so after this date—see
Planetary, Lunar, and Stellar Visibility
software (version 3.1.0; November 20, 2006), developed by Rainer Lange of alcyone software and Noel M. Swerdlow of the University of Chicago and available at
http://
www
.alcyone
.de.
It is also interesting to note that the Babylonian almanac for 7/6 BC, which covers the period up to April 19, 6 BC, does not mention Jupiter's heliacal rising, which suggests that it did not occur when Molnar thinks. Molnar's theory is heavily dependent on the idea that the second occultation coincided with Jupiter's heliacal rising, and so the implications of the planet's heliacal rising falling on a day other than April 17, 6 BC, are significant.

43
 Molnar,
Star of Bethlehem
, 89, 96–97.

44
 Ibid., 86.

45
 Ibid., 87–96.

46
 Ibid., 90–92, 95–96.

47
 Ibid., 5.

48
 Ibid.

49
 As Hegedus,
Early Christianity and Ancient Astrology
, 202–203, points out.

50
 Molnar,
Star of Bethlehem
, 102.

51
 Ibid., 92, 96.

52
 Parpola, “Magi and the Star,” 60n1. Note especially one particular ancient Near Eastern omen: “When the Moon occults Jupiter, that year a king will die (or) an eclipse of the Moon and Sun will take place. A great king will die. When Jupiter enters the midst of the Moon, there will be want in A
ḫ
arrû. The King of Elam will be slain with the sword: in Subart[u] . . (?) will revolt. When Jupiter enters the midst of the Moon, the market of the land will be low. When Jupiter goes out from behind the Moon, there will be hostility in the land.” Translation by R. Campbell Thompson,
The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum
,
vol. 2 (London: Luzac & Co., 1900), lxvii, no. 192.

53
 For English versions of these works, see Mark Riley's translation of Vettius Valens,
Anthologies
, at
http://
www
.csus
.edu
/indiv
/r
/rileymt
/Vettius
%20Valens
%20entire.pdf
(p. 3 for the geographical associations of Aries) (last modified January 5, 2011); and Manilius,
Astronomica
, trans. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) (pp. xci–xcii on astrological geography).

54
 Frederick H. Cramer,
Astrology in Roman Law and Politics
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1954), 23; see James M. Scott,
Geography in Early Judaism and Christianity: The Book of Jubilees
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 74–75 table 3.

55
 See Francesca Rochberg,
Babylonian Horoscopes
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998), 109.

56
 It is surprising that the October 2014 multi-disciplinary colloquium on the Star of Bethlehem at the University of Groningen had as its primary purpose the examination of Molnar's theory; see
http://
www
.astro
.rug
.nl
/~khan
/bethlehem
/scientific
-rationale.php
(accessed July 5, 2014).

57
 Moore,
Star of Bethlehem
, 73–74; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “Nova,”
http://
en
.wikipedia
.org
/wiki/Nova
(last modified April 11, 2013).