The Great Christ Comet (84 page)

81
 When the Magi read Isa. 7:14 in light of the celestial sign, they may well have been more inclined to interpret Isaiah's oracle as referring to the nonsexual conception of a virgin girl, since it was widely thought that Virgo was a pure virgin.

1
 Note that this is not where Jesus was born, but where he was some weeks after his birth.

2
 If the Magi journeyed across the desert from Judea back to their homeland, as seems to be suggested by Matt. 2:12, this would mandate that they had traveled across the desert by camel caravan from their homeland to Jerusalem. Otherwise they would have been ill-equipped to make the return journey through the desolate, inhospitable, and dangerous desert.

3
 James K. Hoffmeier,
Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 120.

4
 “Based on comparative travel distances derived from ancient texts,” Hoffmeier,
Ancient Israel in Sinai
, 119–120, 143–144, concludes that ancient travelers generally traveled at 15–20 miles per day. The numbers suggested by scholars on this topic are all rather similar, although some are more conservative—H. Clay Trumbull,
Kadesh-Barnea: Its Importance and Probable Site
(Philadelphia: J. D. Wattles, 1895), 71–74, suggested 15–18 miles per day—and some are more liberal—Graham Davies, “The Significance of Deuteronomy 1:2 for the location of Mount Horeb,”
Palestine Exploration Quarterly
111 (1979): 96, opts for 16–23 miles a day, while Barry Beitzel, “Travel and Communication (OT World),” in
The Anchor Bible Dictionary
, ed. D. N. Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:646, suggests 17–23 miles per day.

5
 My calculations suggest that the two cities are precisely 543 miles apart as the crow flies.

6
 A camel caravan traveling 550 miles that was 15–18 miles closer to their destination at the end of an average day would have taken about 31–37 days, one that made average progress of 16–23 miles per day would have taken 24–35 days, and one advancing an average of 17–23 miles per day would have taken 24–33 days. Cf. Mark R. Kidger,
The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 260.

7
 Roland de Vaux,
Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerd­mans; Livonia, MI: Dove, 1997), 10.

8
 One gets a glimpse of ancient rules of hospitality in Judg. 19:1–9: when prevailed upon to stay with his concubine's father, the Levite “remained with him three days. So they ate and drank and spent the night there. And on the fourth day they arose early in the morning, and he prepared to go” (vv. 4–5). However, the girl's father persuaded him to remain his guest for a fourth day and night and then for a fifth day and night before the Levite finally declined to accept any further hospitality and so left on the sixth day.

9
 By September 29/30, Virgo's lower womb area would have been about 8–9 degrees from the Sun. A very bright coma would have been detectable at that distance from the Sun.

10
 The predawn celestial announcement of Jesus's birth is consistent with Luke's record of the angelic birth announcement to the shepherds who were keeping watch over their flock “by night” (Luke 2:8). The angel made it clear that the Messiah had been born at that very time and would be lying in a manger when they found him in Bethlehem (v. 11).

11
 Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein,
Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.—A.D. 75
(Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1956), 45, whose formula is similar to the one employed by the Bab­ylo­nians in their calculations, start the Babylonian month Tishratu on the evening of October 14, so that Tishratu 1 = October 15 in 6 BC. See the helpful work of Rita Gautschy, “Last and First Sightings of the Lunar Crescent,” at
http://
www
.gautschy
.ch
/~rita
/archast
/mond
/mondeng.html
(last modified February 15, 2013), on first sightings of the new Moon in history, and especially her application of the “Yallop method” for different sites across the ancient Near East.

12
 Ancient Bethlehem was located on a narrow ridge at a high altitude (over 2,500 feet above sea level) surrounded by valleys on all sides, stretching from east to west.

13
 For a useful collection of calculated orbits of historical comets up to the eighteenth century AD, see the first volume of Gary W. Kronk,
Cometography: A Catalog of Comets
, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–).

14
 Astronomers assume an eccentricity of 1.0 when observational data is limited or imprecise. We follow this standard practice. For our purposes, whether the eccentricity is 1.0 or a smidgeon above or below it has little bearing on the comet's course around perihelion time. Note too that when a solar system object's eccentricity is high and its inclination is close to 180 degrees, subtracting the argument of perihelion from the longitude of the ascending node gives us what can legitimately be reckoned the ecliptic “longitude of perihelion” (David Asher, personal email message to the author, May 8, 2013). The longitude of perihelion is essentially the angle between the First Point of Aries (the vernal equinox) and the point of perihelion (although, strangely, it encompasses measurements on two different planes). Different pairs of values for the argument of perihelion and longitude of the ascending node will produce essentially the same longitude of perihelion.

15
 Calvin (
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Part 1
,
http://
www
.ccel
.org
/ccel
/calvin
/calcom31.html
[accessed April 5, 2013]), believed that the Magi arrived in Bethlehem in advance of Mary and Joseph's temple visit.

16
 The view that the Magi arrived in Judea after Mary and Joseph's temple visit is held by many, including Robert H. Stein,
Jesus the Messiah: A Survey of the Life of Christ
(Downers Grove, IL: Inter­Varsity Press, 1996), 53; Darrell L. Bock,
Luke 1:1–9:50
, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994), 235; idem,
Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002), 68–71.

17
 The fact that during the second half of their journey from Babylon to Jerusalem through the Syrian Desert they would have passed through the Harra, a basalt boulder-strewn region, could help explain a slower rate of progress. Lady Anne Blunt and her husband traveled through part of the Harra in December 1878 and recalled that it was slow going. For example, she mentioned that at the end of one day their camel caravan ended up “barely twelve miles from where we began” (Anne Blunt,
A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race
, 2nd ed., 2 vols. [London: John Murray, 1881], 1:69). Later she stated that “That black wilderness had become like a nightmare with its horrible boulders and little tortuous paths, which prevented the camels from doing more than about two miles an hour” (75). By contrast, the first half of the Magi's journey would have been through the Hamad, an area of open desert plains through which faster progress might be expected.

18
 Assuming that the Judeans inserted an intercalary month in the late winter/early spring of 7 BC to ensure that the Passover fell shortly after the vernal equinox. The Bab­ylo­nians inserted their intercalary month in the spring of 6 BC.

19
 Richard Schmude,
Comets and How to Observe Them
(New York: Springer, 2010), 16–17.

20
 Ibid., 7 table 1.2.

21
 David Seargent,
Sungrazing Comets: Snowballs in the Furnace
(Kindle Digital book, Amazon Media, 2012).

22
 See Schmude,
Comets and How to Observe Them
, 20–21, esp. fig. 1.25; also 28–29, including figs. 1.32 and 1.33; cf. John C. Brandt and Robert D. Chapman,
Introduction to Comets
, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 75 fig. 2.7.

23
 Martin Mobberley,
Hunting and Imaging Comets
(Berlin: Springer, 2011), 167–168.

24
 Kronk,
Cometography
, 2:326.

25
 Schmude,
Comets and How to Observe Them
, 39–40; Robert Burnham,
Great Comets
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 103.

26
 Schmude,
Comets and How to Observe Them
, 39–40, including table 1.10.

27
 Nick James and Gerald North,
Observing Comets
(London: Springer, 2003), 23.

28
 Yau et al., “Past and Future Motion,” 314, maintain that Halley's Comet was first discovered at magnitude +4, but Swift-Tuttle at +3.4, and propose that the difference was due to Halley's Comet having a tail at the point of discovery (making it easier to spot). Donald K. Yeomans suggests that generally a tailless comet must attain to +3.4 to become visible to the naked eye (“Great Comets in History,”
http://
ssd
.jpl
.nasa
.gov/?great
_comets
[posted April 2007]). Since the Christ Comet was spotted extraordinarily early, it undoubtedly lacked a visible tail at the point of discovery—therefore it seems appropriate to assume a first sighting at +3.4. In his calculations of the brightness of the Bethlehem Star comet (personal email correspondence on September 28, 2012), Gary W. Kronk assumed discovery at +4 apparent magnitude. A first sighting of the Christ Comet at +4 magnitude would mean that it was slightly less intrinsically bright than the values given in our tables below.

29
 However, David W. Hughes, “Early Long-Period Comets: Their Discovery and Flux,”
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
339 (2003): 1103–1110, suggests that comets were often observed only when they reached an apparent magnitude of +2 (remember that, in the scale of astronomical magnitudes, a lower value means greater brightness).

30
 John C. Brandt and Robert D. Chapman,
Rendezvous in Space: The Science of Comets
(New York: W. H. Freeman, 1992), 221; idem,
Introduction to Comets
, 105; Fred Schaaf,
Comet of the Century
(New York: Springer, 1997), 348; Mobberley,
Hunting and Imaging Comets
, 17; David Seargent,
Comets: Vagabonds of Space
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), 39.

31
 According to the analysis of Schmude,
Comets and How to Observe Them
, 32, and 35 table 1.7, the average value of n is approximately 4 for long-period comets, but closer to 6 for short-period comets.

32
 Ibid., 35 fig. 1.40. Cf. Brandt and Chapman,
Rendezvous in Space
, 221.

33
 Joseph N. Marcus, “Forward-Scattering Enhancement of Comet Brightness. II. The Light Curve of C/2006 P1 (McNaught),”
International Comet Quarterly
29 (2007): 119, 124.

34
 Schaaf,
Comet of the Century
, 349.

35
 My translation of the Greek text in Emile de Strycker,
La forme la plus ancienne du Protevangile de Jacques
(Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1961), 168–170.

36
 Passages in the
Sibylline Oracles
from the second or third centuries AD (which we have already cited) claim that the Star of Bethlehem was so bright that it was seen during the daytime.
Sib. Or
. 12:30–33 speaks of it as a celestial entity so extraordinarily bright that it shone forth in midday: “Whenever a bright star most like the Sun shines forth from heaven in midday, then indeed the secret word of the Most High will come wearing flesh like mortals” (J. J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in Charlesworth,
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
, 1:445).
Sib. Or
. 1:323c–324 describes the Star as brightly shining in the broad daylight (J. L. Lightfoot,
The Sibylline Oracles
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 311):

In addition, Maximus the Confessor (early seventh century) maintained that Matthew's Star could be seen during the daytime (
Philokalia
2:92; see
The Philokalia: The Complete Text
, vol. 2, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware [London: Faber & Faber, 1981], 166–167).

37
 It should be noted that larger celestial objects are easier for the eye to detect (Roger Nelson Clark,
Visual Astronomy of the Deep Sky
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], 12 fig. 2.5).

38
 In our estimations of apparent magnitude here we have not taken allowance of the brightness boost due to the forward-scattering effect. As we shall see in the following chapter, the comet would have been something like 3.5 magnitudes brighter due to this effect at this point in time. When this is taken into account, the comet's surface brightness, assuming n=4, would have been more like that of Saturn.