The Great Christ Comet (13 page)

Eighth, the timing of the triple conjunction, in 7 BC, is too early to be a realistic candidate for the Star of Bethlehem. Jesus's birth is properly dated to 6 or 5 BC.

Ninth, the fact that Herod executed all infants “in their second year or under,” based on when the Magi had said that the Star first appeared, cannot be plausibly explained by this hypothesis.

Consequently, we judge that the popular triple conjunction hypothesis is deeply flawed and should be ruled off the table. The Magi would certainly have looked up to see the triple conjunction in Pisces—it was the most notable predictable astronomical event in 7 BC—and may well have regarded it to be of some astrological significance, but it was certainly not the Star of Bethlehem.

Occultations of Jupiter in Aries in 6 BC

Michael R. Molnar has made a case for the Star of Bethlehem being Jupiter, with the focus on two lunar occultations of Jupiter (that is, two occasions when the Moon obscured Jupiter) in Aries in 6 BC, the first being on March 20 and the second on April 17.
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As regards the March 20 event, shortly before the Sun set in Judea, Jupiter was occulted by the Moon while in Aries. The phenomenon ended a little more than 30 minutes later when Jupiter was low over the horizon in the west. Jupiter can sometimes be visible during the daytime to someone who knows exactly where to look, but not when it is on the far side of the Sun from the perspective of Earth and close to the Sun in the sky, as it was on March 20. Therefore the planet could not have been seen at that time. In addition, the Moon was too close to the Sun to be visible at all on that day. Nevertheless, Molnar states that the ancient astronomers were well able to calculate mathematically the courses of both the Moon and Jupiter and so would have known that they were in conjunction and perhaps even that the Moon was occulting Jupiter.
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The second occultation, on April 17, 6 BC, occurred shortly after noon in Judea and Bab­ylon. The Moon had completed one revolution and was again in Aries and stationed over Jupiter. The occultation lasted for about 50 minutes for those in Bab­ylon (about 75 minutes for those in Judea). Jupiter was invisible in the hours during which the occultation occurred.
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In addition, the Moon, a 28½-day waning crescent, was not bright enough to be seen during the daytime. Significantly, according to Molnar, April 17 was the date of Jupiter's heliacal rising (its brief reappearance in the eastern sky just in advance of sunrise).
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Consequently, a horo
scope drawn up for April 17, 6 BC would, in Molnar's opinion, have been deemed important by those operating out of a Greek astrological framework. Indeed he reckons that this second occultation would have been regarded as a sign marking the birth of a royal figure in Judea.
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It was this later occultation that stimulated the Magi to travel in search of the Messiah. They arrived in Judea in mid-December of 6 BC.

Molnar reasons that, because the Magi's estimation of the significance of the Star was so strongly rooted in astrological principles, the people of Jerusalem would not have shared their assessment of the occultations.
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He envisions Jupiter performing the role of the Star in the aftermath of the initial sign.
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As regards the key verse, Matthew 2:9b, Molnar suggests that the Star's going before the Magi is simply astrological parlance for a celestial entity (in this case, Jupiter) moving in the same direction as the heavens generally, while the Star's standing over the place where the child was located refers to Jupiter's apparent stationary status in mid-December of 6 BC, immediately prior to its commencing retrograde motion relative to the fixed stars.
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Molnar makes much of some Roman coins which portray a ram looking at a star—he believes that they indicate that Aries is where astrologers would have looked for celestial indications that the Messiah had been born.
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These coins were minted in Syria. Molnar speculates, however, that the coins might have commemorated the Roman annexation of Judea in AD 6.
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However, we find Molnar's hypothesis unpersuasive.

First, it beggars belief that an invisible sign spurred the Magi to undertake a major journey westward to Judea in search for a newborn King. Surely a great, indeed divine, king warranted a more impressive sign than this. Indeed the Magi explicitly claim that they had “seen” the star of the King of the Jews back in their homeland (v. 2). By Molnar's own acknowledgement, neither occultation of Jupiter in 6 BC was visible in Babylonia. Neither the very new Moon nor Jupiter would have been visible at all on March 20. Moreover, Jupiter and the waning crescent Moon would have been visibly drowned out by the noonday Sun on April 17.

Second, there is no conceivable way that an occultation, particularly an invisible one, could be regarded as a “star.”
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Third, a lunar occultation of Jupiter in Aries was not particularly rare. As Molnar concedes, another one followed on April 4, AD 54.
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Why, then, would magi have made the long journey westward to worship the Messiah in 6 BC but not before or afterwards?

Fourth, the fact that Matthew is so favorable in his treatment of the Magi and the Star strongly suggests that his estimation of the Star's significance could not have been entirely dependent on astrological presup­positions.

Fifth, Molnar's theory cannot explain the Magi's conviction that the newborn infant was worthy of worship as a deity.

Sixth, it is difficult to see how Jupiter managed to guide the Magi to Bethlehem and then to a particular location within the town. The claim of Molnar that the standing still is due to Jupiter's becoming stationary
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fails to convince: a change in Jupiter's motion would not have been detectable in the short window
of time when the Magi were in Bethlehem searching for the messianic child. Even if the Magi were relying on advance calculations, these would not have been adequate to enable them to pinpoint a particular town, never mind a house within it. Moreover, identifying the Star's “standing over” with Jupiter's becoming stationary on December 19, 6 BC, creates an unrealistically long journey time for the Magi—some eight months.

Seventh, as Parpola observes, the significance of the astronomical phenomenon described by Molnar is unlikely to have been interpreted in the way suggested by him, for in the ancient Near East a lunar occultation of Jupiter was a bad omen, signifying disaster for a nation or kingdom or death to a king.
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Eighth, Molnar's hypothesis cannot explain why Herod ordered that infants a year old be slaughtered “according to the time that he had ascertained from the Magi” (Matt. 2:16).

Ninth, with respect to what territory the imagery on Molnar's coins had in view, Syria is a much more plausible candidate than Judea. After all, the coins were minted there. Molnar's proposed connection to Judea, namely that the coins might have been commemorating the Roman annexation of Judea in AD 6, is strained.
Moreover, Aries was very closely associated with Syria and a number of other territories. Vettius Valens of Antioch claimed that Aries controlled Syria and the neighboring territories (
Anthology
1.2), while Manilius,
Astronomica
4.744–54, regarded Aries as representing Syria and northern Egypt.
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The connection between Aries and Judea was apparently much less widespread. Ancient astrological writers were divided concerning where Judea fit in the scheme of astrological geography. Claudius Ptolemy,
Tetrabiblos
2.3, did include Judea/Palestine among the lands of Aries, but he also included Syria, Idumea, Gaul, Britain, and Germany. In the first centuries AD, Judea could be subsumed not only under Aries but also under Gemini, Scorpius, or Aquarius.
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Moreover, one ancient text (BM [British Museum] 47494) suggests that the astrologers of Bab­ylon associated the signs of Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius with Amurru (the West).
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In conclusion, we find the hypothesis that lunar occultations of Jupiter in Aries explain the mystery of the Star seen by the Magi to be extremely problematic.
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Nova or Supernova Hypothesis

A nova is a massive nuclear explosion (or eruption) of a still-white-hot, old, dying star called a white dwarf. To put it in simple terms, many stars exist in pairs (or “binary systems”), consisting of a relatively cool star and a white dwarf. In some cases the white dwarf may draw gases such as hydrogen and helium from the surface of its companion star (
fig. 4.2
). These gases, which accumulate in a layer around the white dwarf's surface, are subject to intense compression and heating. In due course there is a great nuclear reaction on the white dwarf that blasts the gases from
its surface. This causes a very bright explosion of light that brightens the star by some 5–15 magnitudes (100–1,000,000 times) over the space of a few days or weeks (to put that into perspective, the Sun is about 14 magnitudes or 400,000 times brighter than the full Moon). The brightness fades over the following 1–3 months. Afterwards, the binary system is restored to its former state.
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On rare occasions, the brightness of a nova may be sufficient to render it visible to the naked eye (e.g., Nova Cygni 1975, which attained to +2 magnitude, approximately the brightness of the North Star, Polaris).

A supernova is an even more massive nuclear stellar explosion. There are two distinct categories: the first type (the binary-system supernova) is essentially a large and very bright nova that entails the destruction of the white dwarf, while the second type consists of a huge star that, having consumed all of its own nuclear fuel, implodes, causing a massive explosion of light and resulting in the star's disintegration. A supernova is a very rare phenomenon but, when one occurs, it is by far the brightest “star” in the sky. The light of a supernova may remain in the sky for months, indeed up to about two or three years.
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A binary-system supernova may be up to 4,000,000,000 times brighter than the Sun (assuming a vantage point the same distance from each) during its peak.
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Examples of binary-system supernovas include SN 1006 (in AD 1006), which became much brighter in the sky than Venus (reaching apparent magnitude -7.5) (and as large as half the Moon), and SN 1604 (Kepler's supernova in AD 1604), which appeared as bright as Jupiter at its peak (magnitude -2.5).
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A huge-star supernova may be up to 1,000,000,000 times brighter than the Sun (assuming a vantage point the same distance from each).
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An example of this kind of supernova is SN 1054 (the Crab Supernova) in AD 1054, the apparent brightness of which climaxed at about the maximum brightness of the International Space Station (magnitude -6).

Those who propose that the Star seen by the Magi was a nova or a supernova
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suggest that such a phenomenon would have been a
celestial sign supremely worthy to mark a royal birth.
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There are, however, a few serious objections to the nova/supernova hypothesis.

First, there is no evidence that there was any nova or supernova in 6 BC or 5 BC. Therefore the theory is highly conjectural. Suitable candidates are lacking in the surviving astronomical records.
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However, the fact that the records are not comprehensive means that this line of argumentation has limited weight. It is much more important that, as Guy Consolmagno emphasizes, supernovas leave remains in their wake—for example, the Crab Nebula is the remnants of a supernova in AD 1054. Unfortunately for the supernova hypothesis, no remnants of a supernova 2,000 years ago have ever been discovered.
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Some have claimed that the Chinese astronomical
hui-hsing
, recorded in the year 5 BC, was actually a nova.
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However, most scholars concur that
hui-hsing
refers to a broom-star comet.
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Normally the phrase refers to tailed comets. Moreover, the location in the sky of the
hui-hsing
, in Capricornus, suggests that it refers to a comet rather than a nova, for that constellation is not where one would normally expect to see a nova, since it is too far from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, where most novas are found.
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In addition, the
hui-hsing
of 5 BC did not heliacally rise. To argue that the
hui-hsing
is the Star, one is forced to claim that the Magi were confused—they believed that they were seeing a star's heliacal rising, in spite of the fact that the object was “far higher in the sky than could logically be expected for a first sighting of a star.”
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