The Great Christ Comet (14 page)

Second, neither a nova nor a supernova moves within the framework of the fixed stars and constellations. Therefore neither phenomenon is capable of explaining the dramatic movement of the Star of Bethlehem, which shifted from the eastern morning sky to the southern evening sky within the space of a couple of months.

Third, an ordinary nova could not have done what Matthew states that the Star did—remain visible to the naked eye for over a year, go before the Magi to Bethlehem, or stand over a particular house in Bethlehem.

As for a supernova, while it could have remained visible for more than a year, its impressiveness would have steadily diminished over that time. Since we know that the Star's heliacal rising occurred the best part of a year after the first appearance, it would be difficult to understand why the Magi were so deeply impressed by the supernova at its rising. After all, not only would its brightness have been greatly reduced from the time of its first appearance, but also its placement in the heavens would, of course, have been exactly where it had been the whole time.

Fourth, ordinary novas were too common to secure the kind of attention and interpretation that the Star received.
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Supernovas are more rare, at least in recent centuries (al
though note that there were two major ones in the eleventh century AD), but why would the Magi have interpreted one to signify the birth of the Jewish Messiah?

We are therefore very skeptical concerning the hypothesis that the Star was a nova or supernova.

Meteors Hypothesis

Sir Patrick Moore was the most prominent champion of the hypothesis that the Star seen by the Magi in the east and then in Bethlehem was actually two separate shooting stars. Meteoroids are essentially debris, mostly from comets but also from some asteroids. The mostly pebble-size or smaller objects orbit the Sun until they are destroyed by it or crash into a planet. To become visible as shooting stars to human observers on Earth, the orbit of meteoroids must cross Earth's orbit when Earth is present. Such is the remarkable velocity of these bits of debris—up to 72 km per second!—that, upon striking Earth's atmosphere, they gradually disintegrate even as they excite the molecules of air, giving rise to glowing streaks of light.
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Such streaks are classified as meteors or shooting stars. They may be short or long and vary greatly in brightness. Especially bright meteors are called fireballs. The very same bright meteor may be visible several hundred miles away.

While some meteors are associated with regular meteor showers, most are not. Those that are not are called sporadic meteors.

Moore believed that the Magi witnessed an especially spectacular meteor in their homeland.
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On rare occasions meteors may be as bright as the Moon or even the Sun; Moore reckoned that one such especially bright meteor was involved in the Christmas story. This gloriously bright meteor, he imagined, rose in the east and traveled through the sky in a westward direction. Although the performance would have been rather fleeting, Moore suggested that the trail left by the fireball or bolide might have been visible for hours afterwards.
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Sir Patrick proposed that another gloriously bright meteor appeared, once again in the eastern sky and once again crossing the sky in a westward trajectory.
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It is not altogether clear what was the purpose of this second fireball, whether to get the Magi to depart on their westward journey or to pinpoint the location of the child in Bethlehem at the end of their journey. Most likely, however, Moore was suggesting that the second meteor was doing the work of the Star when the Magi were in Bethlehem—unless Moore did mean this, his theory offers no explanation of the climactic appearance of the Star.
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Moore admitted that his hypothesis could not be proved, but, at the same time, insisted that it could not be disproved either and claimed that it fared better than other hypotheses.
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However, the hypothesis is easily refuted.

First, this view cannot explain how the Star could have first appeared one year or more before Herod issued the order to slaughter the infants of Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16; cf. v. 7b). If the first meteor occurred then, why did the Magi take so extraordinarily long to get to Judea?

Second, it is difficult to see how a fireball, regardless of how bright, could have prompted magi to think that an important birth had taken place, never mind that of the Messiah in Judea. Evidence that fireballs or bolides were ever interpreted by ancients as marking the birth of a king is notably lacking. As to the question of how the Magi
might have concluded that they should head to Judea, Moore suggested that the fireball pointed westward. But a westward-traveling fireball is hardly sufficient to identify Judea in particular as opposed to Syria, Greece, Italy, or Spain. Perhaps one could hypothesize that the fireball seemed to originate from a constellation that was suggestive of Judea or the Jews. However, Moore did not argue this, and ancients' ideas regarding the relationship between signs/constellations and particular geographical areas were not narrow enough to permit a firm identification with Judea.

Third, meteors are too fleeting to fulfill Matthew's description of the Star as having gone ahead of the Magi until it stood over the house where Jesus was. Moore conceded that no meteor could have done what the Star is said to have done in Matthew 2:9, but he tried to get around this problem by proposing that Matthew was simply exercising poetic license at this point in the narrative.
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However, that Moore was forced to abandon a literal interpretation of Matthew's account, particularly at the point that the Gospel is giving its most detailed description of the Star's behavior, is a serious, indeed fatal, problem for his hypothesis.

Fourth, Matthew is quite explicit that it was the same “star” seen in the east and in Bethlehem. Moore's hypothesis, however, would mean that there were two meteors and hence two “stars.” Certainly it defies belief that the Magi (and Matthew) would have regarded the Bethlehem meteor, coming a long time after the initial one, as identical to the meteor that they had previously seen zipping across the sky back in their homeland.
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We therefore conclude that the two meteors hypothesis is irreconcilable with the description of the Star in the Gospel of Matthew.

An Ordinary Star: Alpha Aquarii

In recent decades a few scholars, in particular Richard Coates and David Seargent, have postulated that the Star might have been an ordinary fixed star, in particular the star Alpha Aquarii.
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This is a very ordinary star—it has a magnitude of +2.95,
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which is not particularly bright. However, according to this hypothesis, what the star lacked in brightness it made up for in astrological significance. Fundamental to this hypothesis is the fact that Alpha Aquarii was known in Arabian tradition as “the lucky star of the king/kingdom,”
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although it is conceded that it was not perceived to represent one particular royal figure.
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In order to explain why one particular annual morning rising prompted the Magi to embark on a journey westward to Judea, proponents of this view propose that some astronomical phenomenon in the relevant year must have seemed to invest the star with great significance. Seargent suggests that there may have been an alignment between a planet and this star.
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Alternatively, he mentions the possibility that an important conjunction or a massing of planets at an astrologically significant moment might have engendered Alpha Aquarii's heliacal rising with special meaning that year.
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Seargent speculates that, in the wake of the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces of 7 BC, the rising of Alpha Aquarii in February of 6 BC would have been regarded as having special importance.
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He claims that Pisces was the zodiacal sign of Israel and the
Messiah and that the “constellation” was associated with “change and new beginnings.”
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According to this theory, during the Magi's short journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, sometime between July and September, this star would have moved in front of them until it crossed the meridian, its highest point (“culmination”), in the south. When an astronomical object culminates, it seems to pause for a while before descending in altitude to the west. Seargent deduces that this pause coincided with the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem and seemed to pinpoint the precise location where Jesus and his mother were.
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However, this hypothesis is uncompelling.

First, we have no evidence to suggest that the name assigned to Alpha Aquarii by the Arabs was the same one attributed to the star by astrologers at the time of the Magi or that this star was of notable astrological significance in the first century BC.

Second, an overview of the history of the star in 7–5 BC shows that there was no conjunction involving the star, and no planetary massing in its vicinity. As for the idea that a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces endowed the heliacal rising of Alpha Aquarii with special significance, one must ask why. The logic of such an association is obscure, to say the least.

Third, there is no foundation for the claim that Pisces was widely regarded as the zodiacal sign of Judea and its eschatological King, the Messiah, at the turn of the ages.
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Fourth, we lack a single scrap of evidence that the star Alpha Aquarii had any messianic significance or that its rising would have communicated that a divine figure had been born. There is no way that the ordinary rising of this unimpressive star could have prompted the Magi to embark on a long journey to Judea in search of the Messiah.

Fifth, this theory requires that the Magi took an inordinate amount of time to journey from their eastern homeland to Judea. At the same time, this hypothesis cannot explain why Herod asked when the Star had first appeared or why the Magi told him that it had first appeared between one and two years beforehand.

Sixth, an ordinary star cannot plausibly be regarded as having stood over one particular house, pinpointing it.

We can therefore safely eliminate this explanation of the Star of Bethlehem.

7–5 BC Combination Hypothesis

Mark Kidger has argued that the Star of Bethlehem was the combination of the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC, the planetary massing of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn within Pisces in 6 BC (a massing is a grouping of objects in the same celestial location), a pairing of the Moon and Jupiter in Pisces on February 20 in 5 BC, and a nova in the spring of 5 BC.
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The nova was the catalyst for the Magi's journey to Judea, but, as an event that takes place once every 25 years or so, only had the impact on the Magi that it did because the celestial phenomena of 7 BC and 6 BC had primed them to expect a definitive final sign of the Messiah's birth.
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Indeed Kidger believes that, in the wake of the nova in 5 BC, the Magi came to regard the triple conjunction of 7 BC as coinciding with the birth of the Messiah.
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As ingenious as Kidger's combination hypothesis is, it too fails to convince. Kidger,
clearly aware of the inadequacies of the triple conjunction and nova theories, believes that together they become strong. Unfortunately, joining together flawed hypotheses does not necessarily create a strong hypothesis. A good number of the objections we raised against the triple conjunction and nova/supernova theories apply against Kidger's combined view—e.g., no one in the first millennium BC believed that Pisces was associated with Judea and the Jews;
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a nova cannot “stand” over a house and is not sufficiently unusual or spectacular to have prompted magi to make a long journey; the 5 BC
hui-hsing
is almost certainly a tailed comet; and 7 BC is too early to be Jesus's birth year.

In addition, the combination hypothesis of Kidger is overly complicated and, more importantly, incompatible with Matthew's account. It is very unlikely that each of the astronomical events mentioned by Kidger would have been interpreted as having a single, unified message regarding the birth of the Messiah in Judea. Furthermore, Kidger's hypothesis holds that the Star of Bethlehem was a selection of unrelated phenomena spread over 2 years, with, for example, the astronomical entity marking Jesus's nativity being the triple conjunction and the celestial guide to Bethlehem being a nova. However, the text of Matthew makes it clear that the Star was one single entity that appeared, heliacally rose, and went ahead of the Magi, finally standing over the house where the messianic child was.

We conclude therefore that Kidger's combination hypothesis is not a plausible contender for the Star of Bethlehem.

Jupiter in 3–2 BC

Over the last few decades a number of scholars, judging that Herod the Great actually died in 1 BC rather than 4 BC, have proposed that the mystery of the Star of Bethlehem may be explained with reference to celestial phenomena in the years 3 and 2 BC.

Ernest L. Martin, in his book
The Star of Bethlehem: The Star That Astonished the World
,
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pointed out that there was a triple occultation (or obscuring) of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, by Jupiter in 3–2 BC—on September 14, 3 BC; February 17, 2 BC; and May 8/9, 2 BC. Regulus, to the ancient Bab­ylo­nians, was The King (LUGAL). According to Martin, it was also the Messiah's Star, and the constellation in which it was found, Leo, was associated with Judah.
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No bright star is closer to the path of the Sun and Moon than Regulus, and so, naturally, it is occasionally occulted by planets such as Venus and Jupiter. However, Martin proposed that the triple occultation of Regulus in 3–2 BC was especially susceptible to the interpretation that a moment of royal significance was about to dawn.
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He was particularly impressed by the first occultation, since it occurred shortly after a conjunction between Jupiter the King Planet and Venus the Mother Planet. In his opinion the oval movement of Jupiter against the backdrop of the fixed stars during the period of the triple occultation was nothing less than a “crowning” of Regulus.
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