Placing Reality On Hold
People should really stop trying to apply reality where reality shouldn’t be applied. It’s Christmas after all and numerous kooks are trying to find some astronomical explanation for the star of Bethlehem as told in the Nativity story.
There is none. There can be none. The story doesn’t even make sense.
As told in the Bible, and I’ll quote “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”
They saw a star in the east, but they are from the east, so they went east. If you’re to the east of Jerusalem and you walk east, you go away from Jerusalem. A star in the east would have led the three astrologers to the east, which would take them away from Jerusalem. So what are they doing there?
It’s self contradictory, it doesn’t make sense and trying to apply reality to fiction will result in failure.
The King James Bible, from which I took that quote, is translated from Greek, which was in turn translated from Hebrew. The Greek word used is “aster” which literally means “star” but not as we consider a star. Aster could have described the moon, a planet, a comet or a star. Simply put, “aster” was anything in the sky at night. The Greeks knew about comets and had a specific term for them. Also they named the planets and the Moon. The Arabs also did, and were the time’s most prolific and accurate astronomers; Most stars have Arabic names as testament to their meticulous cataloging. The Greeks were also somewhat interested in “new stars”, as they called transient phenomena that weren’t comets. We also have the Chinese who were notorious for recording any celestial phenomenon, they have records of Comet Halley well into antiquity, three supernovae, several novae and records of other comets so accurate that orbits can be determined from them. The ancients were certainly interested in what went on over their heads, they didn’t know what they were as we do, but they sure recorded them. Where are those records for this particular star?
The Arabs and Chinese had nothing to say about some magnificent star suddenly appearing. Yes, the Arabs, who the Hebrews were did not record anything out of the ordinary. The American natives make no record. The Chinese don’t. Neither do the Indians or the Japanese or the Europeans… The likelyhood of a bright star that had no right to be there being missed by everyone on Earth except three astrologers is somewhat remote.
An additional problem is that stars and indeed anything else in the night sky will move over the course of a night. A star in the east at sunset would be in the south at midnight and in the west at sunrise. Following it would lead one in a circle.
If you’re a religious type, you shouldn’t need an explanation. If you’re not, why would you be trying to explain a fictitious account anyway? Exactly who are these people pandering to?