The Great Christ Comet (25 page)

Third, the fact that the Star moved rapidly within the framework of the fixed stars and constellations is explicable only if it was a comet. Aside from meteors and the Moon, no celestial entity other than a comet in the inner solar system is capable of covering the celestial territory that the Star did over such a short time frame.
41

The Magi saw the Star do something special in connection with its heliacal rising in the eastern sky. Some 30–40 days after this sign in the east was completed, they saw the Star appear in the southern sky, going before them in the direction of Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Comets, particularly those with a small perihelion distance, that are making their final approach to the Sun or receding from it may progress quickly through a significant portion of the sky. A comet with orbital elements within certain ranges could have heliacally risen in the eastern sky and, shortly thereafter, shifted to the western evening sky, and then migrated to the southern evening sky on schedule to usher the Magi to Bethlehem and point out the location of the house where baby Jesus was.

Prograde and retrograde comets with relatively narrow inclinations and with small perihelion distances may, around perihelion time, shift over a fairly short period of time from the western evening sky to the eastern morning sky and/or from the eastern morning sky to the western evening sky.

If the comet's perihelion is the other side of the Sun from Earth's perspective, a prograde
comet with fairly low inclination would be on the east side of Earth (and hence in the eastern sky) shortly before perihelion and on the west side of Earth (and hence in the western sky) after perihelion. If, however, that comet on its approach to the Sun passes through the Earth-Sun line, it would be on the west side of Earth before that point, then the east side, and finally, after perihelion, the west side again. If the comet cuts through the Earth-Sun line around perihelion time, the pattern would be west-east, and, if it does so after perihelion, then the pattern would be east-west-east.

On the other hand, if a retrograde comet narrowly inclined to the ecliptic passes perihelion on the other side of the Sun from Earth's perspective, it would appear in the west before perihelion and in the east after it. If such a retrograde comet cuts through the Earth-Sun line before perihelion, the pattern would be east-west-east. If it does so after perihelion, the pattern would be west-east-west.

The Star of Bethlehem's dramatic rapid movement within the framework of the fixed stars therefore strongly favors its identification as a comet.

Fourth, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) associated the Messiah's birth with a comet, most notably, as we have seen, in Numbers 24:17–19, where the seer Balaam prophetically declared, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter [
shbt
] shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth. Edom shall be dispossessed; Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed. Israel will do
42
valiantly. And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivors of cities!” In light of the parallelism of “star” and “scepter,” the identification of the astronomical entity heralding the birth of the Messiah as a comet is most natural. The Bab­ylo­nian Talmud tractate
Berakhot
58b strengthens this interpretation, for in it Rabbi Samuel refers to a comet (in Aramaic) as “a scepter [
shbyt
] star.”
43
Origen correctly concluded that Balaam's oracle about the star in Numbers 24:17 was prophesying that a cometary apparition would mark the birth of the Messiah. That Balaam was speaking of a long-tailed comet scepter is accepted by a good number of modern scholars
44
and is represented in the
New English Bible
and the
Revised English Bible
(“a comet [will] arise from Israel” [NEB, REB]). Significantly, it is now widely accepted that when the Magi in Matthew 2:2 speak of having seen “his star at its rising,” they are alluding to this ancient oracle of the Mesopotamian seer, implicitly claiming that what Balaam prophesied about the scepter-star has recently come to fulfillment.

Another important oracle that prophesied that the Messiah's nativity would be attended by a comet was Isaiah 9:2: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” That the Messiah's birth is in view is clear from verses 6–7. As we saw in the last chapter, the only plausible identification of the great celestial light that
would shine in the deep darkness is that it is a great comet.

Fifth, if the star were a comet, this would shed light on the peculiar behavior of the Star at the climax of its apparition, coinciding with the final phase of the Magi's journey.

Notably, according to Matthew 2:9, the Star seemed to go ahead of the Magi, first to Bethlehem. Thereafter the Star went through a phase of “coming” (recall our discussion in
chapter 3
). Then, presumably within a half-dozen hours or so of their arrival in Bethlehem, the Star was stationed over one particular house, standing over it and thereby pinpointing it as the place where the messianic child and his mother were located. The Star's going on ahead of the Magi to Bethlehem, in the south, when it was at its culmination (highest point), would have made it seem that it was moving on a basically horizontal plane. The “coming” seems to indicate that the Star's movement thereafter was a downward one. The Star's standing over a particular house strongly implies that it was setting essentially upright behind the structure, from the Magi's perspective, looking like it was about to enter it.

A bright-tailed comet that appears at sunset reasonably high in the sky and far from the western horizon is better qualified to serve as the Magi's celestial guide from Jerusalem to the Messiah's house than any other astronomical entity. Some comets are so close to Earth that they can move at considerable speed through the sky over a matter of hours. But a comet does not need to be moving noticeably against the backdrop of the fixed stars and constellations to function as a guide. A comet's brightness and size make it stand out in the sky and draw attention to its movement through the dome of the sky as it follows its normal daily course through the heavens. A tailed comet moving toward the south or south-southwest, the same direction as the Magi were heading as they went from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, might readily have been perceived by them to be traveling in front of them. No star or planet moving in the same direction as a traveler can match the impression made by a bright long-tailed comet at a reasonable altitude.

Likewise, a long-tailed comet's descent as it moves from the meridian in the south to the western horizon is much more dramatic than that of any other celestial entity, because to observers the whole orientation of the comet is radically transformed as it descends.

Further, the setting of a tailed comet on the western horizon is uniquely qualified to be perceived to “stand over” a particular house.
45
For examples of comets “standing” over places, we need only turn to Roman his
torians Josephus and Cassius Dio. Using the same verb as Matthew for “stand,” Josephus referred to “a star, resembling a sword, which stood over the city [of Jerusalem].”
46
In a similar vein, Cassius Dio wrote of a “comet” hanging (or raised up) over (
ai
ō
r
ē
theis
huper
) the city of Rome for several days in 12 BC, which would seem to be essentially the same kind of phenomenon that Josephus was describing.
47

As astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe points out, only a tailed comet can appear to “stand over” a place, its long upward-streaking tail seeming to point downwards to one particular location on the earth below
48
(see figs. 6.5–7).

Similarly, New Testament scholar Craig Keener writes, “Without a tail extending as suggested in some modern artistic portrayals of the event, a celestial light could have pointed them only in the most general way or by symbolic means.”
49

For a comet to develop a long tail in the run-up to perihelion and particularly in the period after it,
50
due to the increase of degassing, is, of course, normal.

In addition, it is common for comets to set coma-down and tail-up, because their tail always points away from the Sun. Depending on the location of the comet with respect to the Sun and Earth and on the season, it is perfectly possible for a comet's tail to stand up vertically or near-vertically.

A long-tailed comet might well appear to be pinpointing one particular structure, if that structure is located on the visible horizon and the observer is located on the directly opposite side of the structure to the comet (figs. 6.8–10).