Seeking a Star in the East

[snopes]

It has long been a puzzle for Christian astronomers, and now a professor from the University of Notre Dame thinks he has it figured out -- almost, anyway.

His quest: discovering just what "the star in the East" was that led wise men to travel to Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122102096.html

[Silas Sparkhammer]

So new? Didn't Isaac Asimov cover that, quite some years ago? The magi would have been called astrologers today, and the sign would have been planetary, not stellar.

(Biblical Literalists, on the other hand, point out how the star indicated a specific house in Bethlehem. For this purpose, it could not have been in the firmament, but would have had to have hovered only a few hundred feet in the air.)

Silas

[A Turtle Named Mack]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

So new? Didn't Isaac Asimov cover that, quite some years ago? The magi would have been called astrologers today, and the sign would have been planetary, not stellar.

(Biblical Literalists, on the other hand, point out how the star indicated a specific house in Bethlehem. For this purpose, it could not have been in the firmament, but would have had to have hovered only a few hundred feet in the air.)

Silas

And to have been holding still over that particular house (or cave), it would have to hover - OMG, the Star of Bethlehem was a UFO!

[Tarquin Farquart]

I always thought it was a comet.

[Troberg]

And to have been holding still over that particular house (or cave), it would have to hover - OMG, the Star of Bethlehem was a UFO!

Reminds me of some wierd "documentary" named 'UFO - Gateway to Hell' I downloaded in the belief that it was some SciFi miniseries, but turned out to be a wierd combination of UFO tinfoil hat theorists and pCm people who came to the conclusion that UFOs and crop circles and other UFO-type phenomena where actually some kind of Anti-christ. The supposed aliens are actually demons. All this is "scientifically" verified by taking quotes from the bible out of context.

Great fun, I wholeheartedly recommend it for a good laugh at the expense of stupid people.

[E. Q. Taft]

I thought that the death of Herod the Great was pretty well established as being in 4 BC, which means (assuming the story of the nativity has any basis in fact at all) that Christ would have to have been born before that. This would seem to eliminate some of the later events the fellow suggests.

Asimov, IIRC, suggested that the planetary alignment in Pisces was a possibility, because to astrologers at the time Pisces was associated with the Jews. (It also conceivably tie in later with the fish being a symbol of Christianity, I suppose.) However, he didn't think these alignments were spectacular enough to have attracted all that much notice. He thought a supernova was a more likely explanation, though he didn't have the astronomical data at the time. (Of course, Asimov actually thought the most likely explanation was that the stories of the nativity were probably created some time after the fact; after all, very little detail is given, and the versions in Matthew and Luke do not overlap at all.)

[Insensible Crier]

It was a weather balloon.

[pob14]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

So new?

Silas, you're smarter than I am, so I'm asking in all humility: is this an idiom I'm not familiar with, or are you misquoting Nathan Detroit's "so nu?" from Guys and Dolls?

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by pob14

Silas, you're smarter than I am, so I'm asking in all humility: is this an idiom I'm not familiar with, or are you misquoting Nathan Detroit's "so nu?" from Guys and Dolls?

I ain't gonna agree that I'm smarter than you. There are days I'm barely able to outwit my bowl of oatmeal...

Truth to tell, I don't know: I think I'm quoting from someone who quoted from someone else, etc. etc., and so it might have originated from Guys and Dolls! I only meant it as "So what's new?" or "What else is new?" etc.

Quite a few snopesters have written of their belated discovery that "epitome" and "ep-it-oh-mee" are the same word; you read the first, and hear the second in conversation, but it can come quite late in life that the penny drops and one realizes they're the same. My use of "So new?" from "So nu?" might very well be a case of that!

Silas ("I'm not young enough to know everything." J.M. Barrie in "The Admirable Crichton.")

[ganzfeld]

Now if they can only explain what king Herod was doing there killing babies when he'd already been dead for years. Maybe the UFO brought him there? I don't see the point of investigating a supposed astronomical event in a story that's, well, just a story. [ETA -- Well, it looks like I'm pretty much wrong about Herod being dead and all. But it is still just a story.]

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

Now if they can only explain what king Herod was doing there killing babies when he'd already been dead for years. Maybe the UFO brought him there? I don't see the point of investigating a supposed astronomical event in a story that's, well, just a story. [ETA -- Well, it looks like I'm pretty much wrong about Herod being dead and all. But it is still just a story.]

Isaac Asimov's objection was that no other source refers to the Slaughter of the Innocents, yet numerous of Herod's other, lesser offenses are documented. It would be like a history of Nero that doesn't mention the great Fire of Rome.

Silas

[High Eight]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

So new? Didn't Isaac Asimov cover that, quite some years ago? The magi would have been called astrologers today, and the sign would have been planetary, not stellar.

(Biblical Literalists, on the other hand, point out how the star indicated a specific house in Bethlehem. For this purpose, it could not have been in the firmament, but would have had to have hovered only a few hundred feet in the air.)

Silas

Arthur C Clarke's take on the story:

http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/star_clarke.html

[Valitudinarius Rex]

Also, if they saw the Star in the East,

Matthew 2:2 (New International Version)

and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east[a] and have come to worship him."

how come they travelled WEST to find the new King?

Actually, the NIV has a footnote that says they saw the star "when it rose in the east", which would definitely mean the star was "in the firmament". Although I have on several occasions said to my wife "my, isn't the planet Jupiter bright tonight" only to have her reply "Yes, and it's apparently moving at about 300 mph toward the airport....".

Sigh....per ardua ad astra....

As a student of astronomy, I would love that there to be an astronomical explanation. Unfortunately, the chronology of the entire nativity story is so confused, the best explanation is that the star of Bethlehem is pure myth. The biggest problem is that there is no Roman census that can be even closely linked to the events of the Gospels.

[Furienna]

It seems like the early Christians were adamant to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, even though he came from Nazareth. Because in the Old Testament (Micah 5:2), the prophet Micah talks about a great shephard for the people being born in Bethlehem. And that was considered a prophecy about Messiah being born in that town. But since Jesus came from (and probably was born in) another town, Nazareth, they had to get around it, and that happened in at least two different ways. Matthew implied that Mary and Joseph came from Bethlehem and only moved to Nazareth after they had returned from their stay in Egypt. Luke had a different version though, because he told us the famous story about them having to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem because of a census.