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Review of The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved S04: "Star of Bethlehem"

3/23/2014

17 Comments

 
In the world of American television, ancient mysteries inevitable descend into efforts to prove that the Bible is literally true. You could choose to read this as pandering to the audience, or you might see it as part of a society-wide convulsion over the decline of traditional Christian religion (which often embraced symbolic, or at least nuanced, interpretations) and the rise of secularism and biblical literalism in oppositional tandem. The underlying theme of all the documentaries that explore such topics is the same: If we can prove the small details of the Bible true, then the larger narrative must be true, and you are warranted in planning for life everlasting. “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14).

The Universe: Ancient Mysteries Solved S04 “Star of Bethlehem” is about what you’d expect from a documentary that wants to combine astronomy with the most famous appearance of a star in ancient literature. The documentary opens by asking if the Star is “faith, fable, or fact,” which already puts it a cut above most H2 documentaries. Nevertheless, the promised question of whether the Star of Bethlehem “will return” makes me a bit uneasy. This gets into some strange theological territory that seems a bit beyond an astronomy documentary. In time, the show will debunk this claim, but it will go on to endorse another that is not without its problems so that it, too, can conclude that the Bible is true not just spiritually but factually and historically.
In a famous line, it is often said that the atheist merely believes in one fewer god than the monotheist; otherwise, they are in complete agreement on the fictitiousness of the gods. Here, I simply accept one fewer explanation for the Star of Bethlehem than The Universe, which admirably enough debunks most of the most popular explanations.

The expert on the Star of Bethlehem is Aaron Adair, who wrote the superb book on the subject, The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View (Onus Books, 2013). Adair’s book informs my review below, but you should of course read his book, which is much richer and more detailed on the sources and science behind each potential explanation.

After the credits, the narrator explains that most of us only think we know the Nativity story, but then drops the line before explaining why the tale of the Three Wise Men differs from its scriptural origin. Instead, astronomer John Mosley, author of The Christmas Star, tells us that the ancients used the word “star” to refer to stars, planets, comets, and meteors, prompting the narrator to ask whether the Star of Bethlehem was “faith-based fiction” or an astronomical fact that science can discover. Mosley says that by using “ancient texts” to discover the date of Jesus’ birth, we can examine the ancient sky to find the Star of Bethlehem. This will be a neat trick for a star whose sum total description is that it rose in the east (Matthew 2:2) and that after the magi met with King Herod, “they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was” (Matthew 2:9).

A description of the Biblical narrative of the arrival of the wise men from the East from the Gospel of Matthew (2:2-8) follows, and the complication that this gospel was written at least 80 years after the events is discussed. Oddly, the show uses astronomer Tyler Nordgren rather than a biblical scholar to read the biblical passages from an electronic pocket Bible and comment on them. Frankly, he sounds a little flippant in reading the text, which might have better been placed in the narrator’s mouth. The narrator tells us that the wise men were magi, or astrologers, and the remainder of Matthew’s narrative of the magi (Matthew 2:9-12) is presented, including the confusing passage that the Star of Bethlehem moves in the sky and stands still over the spot where Jesus lay. The narrator notes that to be literally true, the Star cannot be a star as we think of it since stars don’t move in the sky.

The first potential solution to the Star of Bethlehem the show wants to investigate is a pair meteors, one to lead the magi and the other to stand over Bethlehem. This cannot be tested, it is noted, and meteors don’t last long enough for magi to travel by camel from Babylon (which they give as Baghdad) to Jerusalem.

After dismissing the meteors, we go to Padua to look at a 1305 fresco by Giotto in which a comet stands in for the Star of Bethlehem, likely Halley’s Comet, seen by Giotto in 1301. Although this was the model for the fresco, to connect it back to facts, we cite Origen’s claim (Contra Celsum 1.59) that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet, like the comets that inaugurated Roman dynasties. However, Halley’s Comet passed in 12 BCE, too early for Jesus according to most accounts. This leads to a discussion of the Anno Domini dating system, which contains errors that even the pope acknowledge mean that Jesus was likely born between 7 and 2 BCE.

Turning to 66 CE, we listen to Nero’s encounter with the magi (often given as Suetonius, Life of Nero, 13:1, but actually Pliny, Natural History 30.6) during Halley’s Comet. Nordgren suggests that Matthew remembered this at least 14 years later and transferred the visit of the magi to Nero to Herod instead. Offering nothing to back this up, the show speeds ahead to discuss a Chinese record of a comet visible around 5 BCE. A comet visible in the night sky in 2012, Comet Ison, may have been that same comet, and the narrator seems happy about the idea that Jesus’ star has returned. But the comet broke up, and Michael Mischna, a planetary scientist, debunks the claim, noting that Ison was not periodic, had never been, and would never return even had it not returned. The narrator and Mosley note that comets were considered bad omens, and unfit for announcing the Messiah.

After the break, we talk about the possibility that the Star was a nova, but this is dismissed in favor of discussing Kepler’s idea that in 7 BC a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was the Star of Bethlehem because he thought that when planets came together they gave birth to stars as a nova. Thus, the show asks whether the Chinese comet of 5 BCE was an exploding star entangled with a white dwarf. But astronomy finds that this event was too dim to be observed by the naked eye.

After another break, the show decides that looking for bright lights in the sky is fruitless, so it instead suggests that the magi had a unique insight into something that wasn’t bright or shiny but rather subtle. Turning to Matthew’s gospel, the show suggests that the heliacal rising of a certain star in the east was the signal the magi saw. In this reading, the magi saw an astrological omen that lasted for two years since Herod kills all male children up to two years of age (Matthew 2:16). Between May and December 7 BCE, Jupiter and Saturn made a triple conjunction, which might have astrologically symbolized a change in the kingship (Jupiter, king of planets) of the Jews (identified with Saturn). In 6 BCE, Jupiter enters Aries, a constellation associated with the Jews. Jupiter also vanishes behind and then emerges from the Moon that same year, suggesting the birth of a new king in Judea. (As Adair notes, in the East this was a bad omen, not a good one, which makes it inappropriate for heralding the birth of God’s son.)

Of course, this doesn’t line up with the narrative saying that that the star paused over Bethlehem, so this means that we are returning to the idea that the Star is a semi-fictional literary description. Either you are taking the Star literally or you aren’t. Having it both ways opens us to any interpretation—why do we accept this but reject comets because comets don’t stand still? Neither do conjunctions. It doesn’t make logical sense.

The show recognizes this and offers us yet another astrological event.

In 3-2 BCE, there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in Leo, near the king star Regulus, yet another conjunction about a king of Judah (the lion) in triple conjunction. Jupiter crowns Regulus and heralds the birth of a king. Yet another conjunction of these planets occurs in June over Judea relative to the magi’s position in Babylon. According to astrological calculations, the show says, Jupiter’s retrograde motion would have allowed the magi to follow it straight to Jerusalem, arriving when the planet leaves retrograde, appearing to stand still for a day on December 25, 2 BCE, the day that the magi visited the young child. Therefore, they ask, could the Church have chosen December 25 as Jesus’ birthday in memory of the magi’s arrival? Well, no; they chose it to coincide with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, but nice try. Also: The star supposedly traveled before the magi during the trip of six miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and then stopped; but planetary apparent motion doesn’t go that fast—it is a process of days, not hours. The text doesn’t match the sky. Again, as Adair notes, in Eastern astrology this was another ill omen, not a good one.

Unfortunately, most believe that Herod the Great was dead for two years when this conjunction occurred, which the show notes disqualifies this conjunction. However, the show engages in revisionist history and tells us that we should ignore the evidence for Herod’s death established by most historians since the nineteenth century and instead read the statement of Flavius Josephus (Antiquities 17.6.4) that Herod died at a lunar eclipse as talking of the total lunar eclipse of 1 BCE rather than the partial eclipse of 4 BCE. This revision is based entirely on trying to match a lunar eclipse to a preferred date for Jesus, but it does not account for the fact that Herod’s sons, who succeeded him (though not as kings due to Roman policy), dated the start of their reigns to 4 BCE.

In neither conjunction does the show explain the contradiction between the singular star in Matthew and the plural stars forming these conjunctions. Why should we read the motion literally but not the number of stars? It’s very confusing when we are supposed to take the text as a literally true report and when we are supposed to assume it is symbolic—it’s almost as though it were at the convenience of the claimant!

The show concludes definitively that the Star of Bethlehem was a conjunction of Jupiter, though which precise one they do not say. I don’t buy it, and I think that the Star of Bethlehem was a literary device, along with the magi, who otherwise ought not to be expected to care much for the dynastic politics of a client state of their empire’s (the Parthians’) greatest enemy, Rome, much less to do homage to a prince of such a state.

17 Comments
Martin R
3/23/2014 08:24:27 am

"it’s almost as though it were at the convenience of the claimant..." Isn't this standard operating procedure among religious conservatives? I believe that, like most myths written years, centuries, etc., after the inspiration of an event, a little flavoring was added to the story.

Reply
KIF
3/23/2014 10:29:53 am

Alas - there are 2 contradictory nativity stories in the gospels that cannot be shoe-horned together

When thinking "Star of Bethlehem", think Numbers 24:17, "There shall come forth a star out of Jacob"

Reply
charlie
3/23/2014 08:24:31 am

Jason,
Thanks for this commentary. When the super nova was brought up, I was reminded of a short story by Arthur C. Clarke. I do not remember the title of the story, but do remember it was in one of the many books he wrote as collected stories. I am not even sure if I still have that book. As I recall, it was an interstellar ship and the main character/narrator was some sort of Catholic priest, perhaps a Jesuit, though my memory is uncertain on this. They came upon the remnants of a super nova and somehow he dated it to have happened at the time of the birth of Jesus. He ends up questioning his god as to why he had to destroy the star and its solar system to use as a marker for said birth.
Please forgive me for being fuzzy on the details, it has been decades since I last read the story. If I can find the book the story is included in I'll post that information later.
Personally, I think the entire story is fiction, but then I do not believe in nor follow any religion.
Thanks again for all you do.

Reply
Mike formally Titus pullo
3/23/2014 09:10:43 am

When I read Jason's post I thought the same thing. If I remember that short story they discover a destroyed civilization that was advanced with art and culture I think he was thinking of the mionians as the basis of who he described their art. You are forced to ponder why a just and loving god would destroy this civilization to announce the birth of the son of god. The twilight zone used this story for an episode, the 1980s version of the show.

I also read thomas Achilles book the mysterious of the Middle Ages and that essentially said the bible was cobbled together by the so scholars in Alexandria at the library based on historical stories and tablets.

Reply
Mike
3/23/2014 09:11:58 am

Ops I meant to type thomas Cahill .

Aaron Adair link
3/23/2014 09:27:14 am

The story is "The Star" from the mid-1950s, and it won the Hugo award for short Sci-Fi story (in 1955 if I remember correctly). It was also made into an episode of the Twilight Zone in the 1980s.

Reply
Jim
3/24/2014 07:33:26 am

I Googled the story and found a PDF at http://www.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf

Reply
John Lowe
3/26/2014 06:23:29 am

The name of the story was "The Star", by Arthur C. Clarke

The priest was a Jesuit and they came upon the remains of an ancient alien civilization which was destroyed by a super nova. They knew it was coming apparently and made a special building which could withstand the coming apocalypse; in which they left a history of their race. The supernova which destroyed their race was the star of Bethlehem. This caused the Jesuit to lose his belief in God.

Reply
Jim
12/31/2015 11:18:17 pm

The Arthur C Clarke short story, "The Star" (1955)
.

Reply
Brian M
3/23/2014 08:45:42 am

When I was a boy growing up in Chicago, the Adler Planetarium had an annual program on the Christmas Star. they may still. I remember the introduction which noted the possibility of a miraculous event but that such a miracle was beyond the scope of the presentation. Using the Adler's Zeiss Planetarium, they proceeded to recreate the night skies in and around transition from BCE to CE. They demonstrated several possible actual events they observed as potential examples of a celestial event that would be significant enough for the Magi to take special note of. Though I do not recalled the specifics, I am certain that these were the planetary convergences mentioned in the program. I note the statement above 'the word “star” to refer to stars, planets, comets, and meteors' could suggest that indeed the Star of Bethlehem was not a single object but rather rare celestial event notable for it's rarity, not it's singularity. This very point was made in those presentations I attended in the late 50s and early 60s. It seems there is nothing new here.

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Only Me
3/23/2014 08:54:12 am

I think I'll have to agree with you, Jason. Given that TU:AMS is a new series, they may be overreaching for that "Wow!" factor.

It's strange how most accept that Biblical stories included a lot of symbolism, but still try to pick and choose which parts are symbolic and which are literally true, for their own purposes.

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Uncle Ron
3/23/2014 11:46:35 am

What a serious discussion... wink, wink, nudge, nudge... when we all know that the Star of Bethlehem was an alien spacecraft.

Reply
charlie
3/23/2014 12:14:58 pm

Mike and Aaron, thanks for your help. I looked through my entire book collection and that volume is gone. I either loaned it out to some friend who never returned it or possibly donated it to a library before I moved from SoCal to central Louisiana.
The story did make me wonder how a supposed "kind, loving" god could destroy a civilization just to use as a birthday candle.

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Clint Knapp
3/23/2014 12:47:51 pm

Though I haven't read the story in question, it sounds like an exploration of the Vengeful God and the difference in his representation between the Old and New Testaments.

The New Testament of Christian preference is mostly replete with treatises expounding the glory of the kind, loving god and his house of many mansions that seems to have room for just about anyone who accepts Christ.

Meanwhile, the Old Testament god is one that's just as likely to cover you from head to toe in boils because you didn't worship him in exactly the right manner, or tell you to sacrifice your child just to prove a point, as he is to pat you on the head for a job well done.

In that light, if Earth is indeed home to his chosen people then anyone else who might be out there is somehow of lesser importance- or worse, destroyed to prove a point to yet another civilization to bring them in line.

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BP
3/24/2014 03:37:52 am

My favorite Star of Bethlahem story was in an early issue of Heavy Metal. Basically the star was an space ship that exploded because of a dumb accident by an alien.
I thought it quite amusing.

Reply
Dan
3/24/2014 05:49:12 pm

When a documentary wants to delve into ‘ancient mysteries’ and they use the Greek Scriptures as a reference to actual events, they should present the whole picture. People generally have no clue about the details of what the passage in Matthew relates… whether they are church goers or not.

Jason I enjoy your blog, read it regularly. This is nothing more than a view that addresses ALL of the scriptural narrative. Not trying to change anyone’s mind. I AM saying the show’s answer to the mystery has zero chance of being right BASED ON THE NARRATIVE.

For those who don’t believe that a God could direct human actions and influence events, this scenario won’t satisfy. But again, THIS is an attempt to account for what happened and just what the star was as the story is told in scripture.

Astrologers from the east (Chaldea?) see a ‘star’ and associate it with a king being born. They gather together and follow. The account does not say how long but it does lead them to Jerusalem (King Herod).

Herod says go find this king and report back to me so I may worship him to. They leave. The star leads them not only to the town (Bethlehem) but the account says ‘over the house’ where the young child resided.

Now the account says IN A DREAM God tells the astrologers not to return to Herod but go back home. The account also says IN A DREAM he tells Joseph to take his family into Egypt until instructed otherwise. These things transpire according to the narrative.

Herod after some undisclosed time realizes he has been duped and put the order out to kill all male children from two years of age and under. This action reveals his true intentions toward the potential rival. It also gives some indication as to how much time had passed since the Magi reported originally seeing the ‘star’. Joseph stays in Egypt until Herod dies and returns to Israel.

So what exactly is going on in the narrative in Matthew?
The Magi are astrologers obviously. They follow a light that is designated as a star (at least to them). This light moves in a way that no celestial body moves. More importantly, it doesn’t lead them to worship a newborn king, but to an enemy who will destroy him. THEN it does find the young child (not infant).

In the narrative, communication rivaling the stars ‘directive’ is God in the form of dreams. WHY? Because under the Mosaic Law, anyone who practiced divination, or searched for signs in the heavens (astrology) were to be stoned to death. WHY? Because they believed that spirit creatures actual could and would influence their actions if they pursued those things.

Paul who many scholars attribute as having written 13 of the Christian Greek Scripture books noted that the arch enemy of God, Satan was able to transform himself into an angel of light and in the context he talks about his abilitiy to deceive.

So wrapping up, it appears that as the account is written, this star was NOT a celestial object. It was a ploy designed to get the child killed using astrologers who were themselves being used to accomplish this.

It wasn’t FROM God. It wasn’t a celestial body. Similar to an airplane’s headlights viewed in a particular way, its looks like a ‘star’ moving.

One possible implication of the narrative is that Satan was controlling the events via the astrologers in order to kill the young child BEFORE he became the prophesied Jewish Messiah.

So when you put that Star on top of the Christmas tree. . . . .

Reply
Hanoch link
3/25/2014 01:22:41 am

b"h

Just a comment from a POV that accepts the Matthean narrative:

Matt 2:2
λέγοντες, Ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων; εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ.

saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
(Matthew 2:2 ESV)

If the eastern magi actually knew they were looking for the "king of the Jews" then they knew something about Judaism, and likely also about Judea to their west. This is quite possible since there was a very large population of Jews still in the "east" in the area of what today is modern Iraq. These Jews were the descendents of the Babylonian exile nearly 600 years earlier. The local magi likely were in contact with these Jewish residents and as pointed out above, knew about a "star arising out of Jacob."

I don't think the text demands that the star's position be located "in the east." Rather, the magi saw a stellar phenomenon while they themselves were still there in the east. In other words, they probably saw a star "in the west" while they themselves were yet in the east. I don't think planetary conjunctions do the trick, and as has been pointed out, according to the text, no other natural stellar phenomena coincides to what is described, IMHO.

On the other hand, Dan's comment above, while interesting, seems to miss the point that the magi directly connect the star to the "king of the Jews" whom they seek to worship. If others like Herod are jealous of the "king of the Jews" to the point of murder, that is not the fault or point of the star.

Best wishes.

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