The Great Christ Comet (24 page)

The Chinese Comet of 5 BC Theory Evaluated

In an excellent contribution to the Star of Bethlehem debate, Professor Sir Colin Humphreys has offered an alternative cometary theory.
18
He points out that, according to the Chinese astronomical records, there was a
hui-hsing
in the constellation Capricornus that remained visible for just over 70 days, beginning in March/April of the year 5 BC.
19
The record is as follows:

Second year of the
Ch'ien-p'ing
reign period of Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty, second month [March 10–April 7, 5 BC], a
hui-hsing
appeared at
Ch'ien-niu
for over 70 days.
20

On the understanding that the
hui-hsing
refers to “a broom star comet” (as noted in
chapter 4
), Humphreys suggests that this comet, which falls within the plausible time frame for the birth of Jesus and was present long enough to permit the Magi to travel to Judea, played the part of the Star of Bethlehem.
21
Sir Colin takes the view that what brought the Magi west was the combination of the
hui-hsing
in 5 BC, the planetary massing in 6 BC, and the triple conjunction of 7 BC.
22
He suggests that the triple conjunction and planetary massing convinced the Magi that the birth of the mighty messianic King of Israel would take place in the near future. “The scene was set: their expectations were aroused for a third sign which would indicate that the birth of the king was imminent.”
23
The third sign was the comet in 5 BC, which told them that the King
had now been born.
24
In Humphreys's view, it was this final celestial wonder, the comet, that was the Star seen twice by the Magi.
25

Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with this hypothesis.

First, while Matthew 2:2 reports that it was what the Star did in connection with its heliacal rising that prompted the Magi to travel to Judea, we have no reason to believe that the comet observed by the Chinese in Capricornus ever heliacally rose. Humphreys argues that what the 5 BC comet did to impress the Magi, it did at the beginning of its apparition, coinciding with the period shortly after perihelion, when the comet would have been at its most impressive.
26
However, although it is true that this comet was at this time in the eastern (technically, southeastern) sky in the hours before dawn, it was way too far from the Sun to have been regarded as heliacally rising. The comet became visible in Capricornus in March/April, but the stars of Capricornus had heliacally risen more than a month beforehand.

Second, the fact that the comet of 5 BC remained observable for just over 70 days constitutes a major problem, for Herod's order that one-year-old infants be slain was based on the fact that the Star had first appeared at least a year beforehand (vv. 7, 16). Of course, Humphreys, although he insists that the birth of Jesus coincided with the comet's appearance, attempts to get around this problem by postulating that, when the Magi told Herod that they had first seen the Star “two years ago,” they were referring to the non-cometary phenomena.
27
However, this simply does not work. After all, Herod asks the Magi not when the first of a number of signs occurred, but “when the star had appeared” (v. 7). And we must assume that the Magi answered his question straightforwardly, speaking of the first appearance of the very same Star that they had reported seeing rise in verse 2. It should also be noted that, according to verse 2, what underlay the Magi's journey to Judea was one thing: their observation of a “star” that they interpreted to be the Jewish Messiah's. Had the apparition of the Star alone been inadequate to get them journeying westward, then we would have expected the Magi to speak of “signs” rather than the appearance of a “star.”

Third, there was obviously something extraordinary about the Star of Bethlehem that prompted the Magi to conclude at the time that it was signaling the Messiah's birth, and to be so sure of this that they traveled 550 miles to Jerusalem in search of the newborn King. However, Humphreys's hypothesis is unable to offer any explanation of why the comet itself was regarded as remarkable or interpreted in messianic terms. One of the few things we know about the Chinese
hui-hsing
is that it appeared in Capricornus, an area of sky with no obvious connection to the Jewish people.

Fourth, there is no evidence that this comet appeared in the western or southern evening sky. Indeed there is reason to wonder if the comet ever left Capricornus. As David H. Clark, John H. Parkinson, and F. Richard Stephenson highlight, a
hui-hsing
in the Chinese records is usually a tailed comet and, when reference is made to one, there is generally some mention of the object's movement.
28
These scholars point out that the Chinese record of the 12 BC apparition of Halley's Comet was probably made by the same astronomers who made the 5 BC record.
29
While the Chinese detailed the 12 BC comet's movements over 150 degrees
through more than 10 asterisms, they make no mention of any motion with respect to the 5 BC entity.
30

It is, however, possible that this Chinese record is incomplete and that the comet was only in Capricornus at the point when it was first discovered.
31
Certainly it is unfair to compare this comet record to that of Halley's Comet in 12 BC, which was perceived to be of extraordinary astrological significance and therefore was included in unusual detail in the
Han shu
.

Nevertheless, there are many examples from 110 BC to AD 100 that detail movement across the constellations.
32
And there are examples where the comet's location in the sky is omitted
33
or is put in more general terms.
34
Quite simply, it was not normal during this period for the Chinese to specify only the initial location of the comet.

It is therefore not at all certain that the
hui-hsing
in 5 BC moved beyond the constellation of Capricornus during the 70+ days of its apparition.
35
Relative celestial stability would be unusual for a broom star cometary apparition, but it is possible when a formerly dormant comet experiences a major outburst due to a fragmentation or splitting event a few weeks after perihelion, when a tail is capable of becoming visible from Earth and its movement within the starry sky might be constrained to one small region of the sky. Had such an outburst happened farther away, it probably would have been described as a
po
, the Chinese term for a tailless comet (a bushy star comet).
36
When Comet Holmes, located far from Earth and the Sun, had its magnificent 2007 outburst (
fig. 5.17
), it remained visible to the naked eye for more than 3 months.

Of course, if the 5 BC comet did not move from Capricornus and hence the morning sky, that would disqualify it from being the Bethlehem Star. After all, the Star of Bethlehem clearly migrated across a broad swath of the starry heavens from the eastern morning sky to the southern evening sky in the space of only a few months. A comet confined to Capricornus would not have been able to guide the Magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem or to stand over a particular house in Bethlehem.

Even if we were to assume that the Chinese record is simply indicating that the comet began its apparition in Capricornus before moving on from there, we have no basis for thinking that it made its way to the southern evening sky, acted in such a way as to guide the Magi toward Bethlehem, or “stood over” one particular house. The Chinese record furnishes very little information about the comet in question. In light of the great ambiguity, we should be very cautious about jumping to the conclusion that this comet was the Bethlehem Star. The mere fact that we have a record of a comet in 6–5 BC does not constitute a firm foundation for identification.

This version of the comet hypothesis is regrettably unsatisfying, therefore. If the Star of Bethlehem was indeed a comet, we must look elsewhere.

A Stronger Case for the Star of Bethlehem Being a Comet

In spite of the weaknesses of the Halley's Comet and 5 BC Comet hypotheses, the evidence that the celestial phenomena that the
Magi witnessed were caused by a comet is overwhelming. I shall now set out a new, stronger case for identifying the Star of Bethlehem as a great comet.

First, the simple fact that the Star was a bright light that suddenly appeared in the heavens can be explained only with reference to a meteor, nova, supernova, or comet.
37
When we also consider that the Star was visible for at least 1–2 years, the possible identifications are narrowed down to two—a supernova or a large, productive, long-period comet like Hale-Bopp. Hale-Bopp became visible to the naked eye 10½ months before perihelion and maintained its naked-eye visibility for a total of 18 months. If the Star was a very large comet as great as or even greater than Hale-Bopp (
fig. 6.4
), it would not be surprising if it was initially spotted many months before perihelion and remained visible for longer than one year. The comet hypothesis does not need to introduce other astronomical phenomena into the picture to explain Herod's decision to kill infants in their first and second years. It can simply accept Matthew's claim that the upper age threshold was set according to the time of the Star's first appearance that Herod had ascertained from the Magi (2:7, 16).

Second, no celestial entity at or around the time of its heliacal rising was more capable of impressing and surprising an ancient astronomer than that of a great comet at perihelion.
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According to Matthew 2:2, the Magi asked the people of Jerusalem, “Where is he who has been born the king of the Jews? For
we saw his star at its rising
and have come to worship him.”

The heliacal risings of stars and planets were certainly not particularly visually impressive, nor were they in any way unexpected. By the first century BC, Bab­ylo­nian astronomers were quite proficient in calculating in advance when most celestial phenomena would occur, including the heliacal risings of stars and planets. This kind of information was included in their almanacs. Moreover, the Magi knew from experience what the heliacal rising of the different planets and stars looked like—the entity faintly appeared over the horizon at dawn, immediately before its light was extinguished by the rising Sun's light. Then, over the following days, it steadily appeared earlier and earlier and in a darker sky.
It is very unlikely that the Magi would have been profoundly impacted by what they
saw
the Star do at the time of its heliacal rising if it was predictable or unexceptional.
39

The Magi evidently observed the Star doing something extraordinary in connection with its heliacal rising many months after its first appearance. This makes excellent sense if the Star at its rising was a great comet that ventured very close to the Sun at perihelion. Such comets, depending on their orbit and the place of Earth on its orbit, may emerge from below the eastern (e.g., Halley's Comet in AD 66, and the Great Comets of 1147 and 1689) or western (e.g., the Great Comets of 1680, 1843, 1882, and 2007) horizon as they separate from the Sun in the aftermath of perihelion. When a comet does this, it is a heliacal rising.
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Such risings may be very striking, because comets are at their most impressive around perihelion time—they are at their brightest, longest, largest, and fastest. Indeed no other entity's heliacal rising can compare in majesty to that of a great comet speeding away from the Sun immediately after its closest encounter with it. In the case of the Star, its early first appearance reveals that it was large and intrinsically very bright and hence had the capacity to put on an extraordinary display at its heliacal rising.

Moreover, the heliacal rising of a great comet would have been an unpredictable and surprising astronomical event. Ancient astronomers could not have confidently predicted what a comet would do in the heavens. Even aside from comets' maverick movements in the heavens, they were uniquely capable of springing surprises on human observers—for example, because of changes in the coma's size, brightness, or form, changes in the tail's length, shape, and orientation, and/or the sudden appearance of an antitail. No astronomical entity had a greater capacity to amaze ancient observers at its heliacal rising than a great comet. This renders a great comet by far the most natural celestial candidate for the role of the Star that rose in the east.