The story of how the three wise men followed this 'star' to the newborn King of the Jews is a common part of the Christmas celebrations. Today, we stick a star on top of our Christmas trees, we attach copious amounts of tinsel to small children in school nativity plays and sing about this 'Star of Wonder'.
Perhaps the Star of Bethlehem was a miracle sent to announce the coming of Christ. Perhaps it's just a story (or propaganda) that grew in the telling. But perhaps it was a natural astronomical event that happened by coincidence around the time of Christ's birth? You can see how such an event could easily become part of the legend of the nativity.
Astronomers, being the inquisitive people they are, have often wondered about this and have made various suggestions as to what the star could have been.
But there's a problem. The gospels tell us that the wise men traveled first to Jerusalem to inform King Herod of the appearance of this portentous star. Then they traveled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to greet the new born King. But Bethlehem is directly south of Jerusalem whereas the star appeared 'in the east'. So, how could the wise men follow a star in the east but be traveling south? The answer probably lies in the translation of 'in the east'. The original Greek is en te anatole which doesn't literally mean 'in the east' - it was a technical term for what astronomers now call a 'heliacal rising'.
The stars are fixed in the sky relative to each other and only move across the sky because the Earth rotates. But the planets, the Moon and the Sun move through this backdrop of fixed stars. Occasionally, the Sun will be close to a planet making it invisible in daylight but eventually the Sun will move far enough away that the planet becomes visible again. That time, when the planet reappears again for the first time, and rises in the morning sky just moments before the Sun, is called a 'heliacal rising'. At the time of Christ such heliacal risings were thought by astrologers to be particularly portentous. So, 'in the east' isn't quite what it seems, it simply means a particularly significant astronomical event. It should be pointed out though that some scholars believe the 'east' in the gospels doesn't refer to the star itself but that the wise men themselves were 'in the east' when they spotted it.
But, we still have a problem. The gospels say the Star of Bethlehem came and stood over the infant Jesus' crib. However, again there is something lost in translation. The original Greek word was epano which also had an astrological meaning. It refers to the moment a planet stops its westward motion in the sky and begins to back-track to the east. Astronomers call this 'retrograde motion' and it is the result of the Earth catching up and lapping the planet during their orbit around the Sun.
So, we can easily interpret the gospel writings in an astronomical sense rather than an astrological sense and possibly come up with a natural explanation for the Star of Bethlehem story.
Now, modern theologians who have studied religious texts closely, believe that Christ was born sometime between 7 BC and 1 BC, but most likely in 4 BC. We can easily calculate the positions of the stars and planets during these years to see if anything interesting happened.
In 7 BC there were three conjunctions of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. A conjunction is when the planets appear very close together in the sky. This alignment of Jupiter and Saturn only happens about once every 900 years. So this may well have seemed very important to the astrologers of the time. Although a conjunction of bright planets doesn’t exactly match the events in the Bible, it may well have led to the popular story we tell today.
Several comets appeared in the sky at around this time; one in 5 BC and another in 4 BC. But since comets were usually thought to be harbingers of doom and disaster, it’s unlikely they would have given rise to the Star of Bethlehem story.
But during an eighteen-month period between 3 and 2 BC a remarkable sequence of events occurred. First Saturn and Mercury were in conjunction, then Saturn and Venus, then Jupiter and Venus twice, and finally, four planets, Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury, all appeared very close together in the sky. At one stage Jupiter and Venus were so close that they would have looked like a single very bright star. And to top it all off Jupiter twice came very close to a star in the constellation Leo called Regulus, a star often associated with the birth of kings. Such a sequence of events only happens once in 3000 years!
Other suggestions for astronomical events giving rise to the Star of Bethlehem story have been proposed. Although none of them exactly match what the gospels say, or agree with the likely time of Christ's birth, they are nevertheless compelling in the astrological sense. The wise men, or magi, were astrologers and they were well aware of the prophecies of the Old Testament that a new king would be born to the people of David. They had probably been watching the skies for decades for anything that foretold the coming of the king. Any one of the events (or sequence of events) mentioned above, could have been enough to set them on their journey to Bethlehem.
But, whether the Star of Bethlehem was a natural event or not, the story will always be an important part of the Christmas story. And it gives us an excuse for dressing our children up in tinsel for nativity plays.
Happy Festive Season to you all, whether or not you celebrate Christmas!
Paragraph #5 above is enough for me to label the "mythsterious star certainly mysterious ! I've been an amateur astronomer since 1944, and there IS NOT any moveable object in the sky that would "fit the bill" except a well lit re-fuelable drone, and they didn't exist then...
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